Brass Band Logo

NJH Music Logo

Some of the contents of the pages on this site are Copyright © 2016 NJH Music
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: Recording Bands

HI, John!

As "principal recording engineer" for the Illinois Brass Band (US) I belive
I can make some constructive comments on this topic.

I, too started out recording my concerts for fun and posterity and practice
reasons as well.  These suggestions I believe are valid for these purposes
and for "acoustic" ensembles of many types.

I personally believe in making simple recordings.  The goal, as I see it, is
to make as good a representation of the performance as possible, but not to
create a seperate "creation" where the recording takes on a life of it's
own.  You will find recordists that believe the latter philosophy to be the
valid one, but I am not one.

For starters, then, I recommend sticking to a two microphone technique.
This way, you don't need a mixer, and thus you don't need to be fooling with
it when you should be concentrating on playing (I assume you are a playing
member of your band).

I began using a two cardioid (or hyper-cardioid) pair, in an orientation
refered to as near-coincident.  In my method (similar to the ORTF setup) the
mics point away from each other at a roughly 45 degree angle from a midline
between them, so that when they are placed in front of the band, the right
mic points at a spot just in front of the back row on the right (the
Euphonia, in our case), and the left mic points at a spot just in front of
the back row on the left (the solo cornets, in our case).

I place the mic pair somewhere approximately 4m or about 15 feet in front of
the band and 3m or 10 or so feet above the floor of the stage.  In many
theatres, this corresponds to a second or third row centre seat.

I then run the microphone cables to a preamplifier, one of several that I
have designed and built, but there are many good ones available from music
supply houses.  Even an old cassette deck that has microphone inputs could
be used.  The preamp output goes into a digital audio tape (DAT).  An
important thing to remember when recording digitally is not to record "hot"
like you can in analog.  The level meter must never exceed 0dB.  I generally
set my levels prior to the concert, and set the loudest passage to around
-6dB to allow for a litle more volume during the concert (when we get
excited and sometimes play louder! ;-) ).

Another good method is to use a pair of omnidirectional microphones, placed
a couple of meters in front of the band, spaced by about two to thee meters
apart.  Again, I like to get them up high (3 or 4 meters) so as not to get
the brightest sound from the cornets.

Once you have a DAT recording, you can get a digital input card for your PC
and some sound editing software, and make CDs with a CDROM burner.

There is, of course, alot more to it than this, but this should give you an
idea of what is involved.

Try practicing at band rehearsals, so you don't learn the hard way at
concerts.

You may be amazed at the quality of the recordings you produce!

Hope this helps!1

Guy Clark
solo cornet, Illinois Brass Band


--

[Services] [Contact Us] [Advertise with us] [About] [Tell a friend about us] [Copyright © 2016 NJH Music]