Use what you got, make it work.

[dino]

Although this isn?t about making a record, it is about trying to record an extremely difficult (for me) live music situation without a lot of suck factor. I would have posted this on a sound re-enforcement, or video forum, but because the issue is about music recording, I felt that yoos guys should take a crack at it first.
These days, my audio is used in digital film production, for broadcast, or in my little home recording setup. I have found myself a little over my head in preparing for this event.
An upcoming audio for video gig involves couple of Steinways and a single vocal microphone.
One piano will be the accompaniment to the other. The vocal mic will be used with only one piano playing.
I?m sending a stereo feed to the video camera, and a mono PA feed for the vocal mic only.
I will also have my little sony two track recording 24/96.
The equipment at my disposal is limited, but I?m going to give it my best shot.

Routing will be handled by what appears to be a decent and brand new 16 channel mixing board. I have a couple of better than average solid state preamps, a single actual tube pre (not starved plate) and a few crappy budget stand alone pres.
Microphones available are two different makes of cardioid SDC?s One set brighter than the other.
For LDC?s I have two surprisingly nice budget models, and one really nice one.
Two ribbons, one figure eight, the other cardioid. (MS?)
A matched pair of unusual but cool Sennheiser MD211 Omni dynamics.
An RE20, two RE10?s, two old 57?s, a new beta 58, and some other odds and ends.
I have one well known decent mono compressor and two inferior stereo compressors from the same people.

I have thought this out to the point where I have a plan A. I would now like to hear how actual talented, properly trained people would handle it.
Some of my thoughts were to;

Close mic both pianos in XY and pray the cameras limiters don?t crush the poop out of it .

Back off and treat it as an ensemble.. Allow enough distance for the two sounds to blend?Single XY or MS?. and pray the limiters don?t crush the poop out of it

Find a sweet spot, stick my best mic there, record mono?.a.p.t.l.d.c.t.p.o.o.i

Drag my DAW, monitors, screens, and racks there and multitrack the darn thing. Shoulda bought a laptop. Not a practical solution at this point.


I?m probably dead meat but it should be educational.

Thank you folks in advance?

dino

[Nick Sevilla]

Drag my DAW, monitors, screens, and racks there and multitrack the darn thing. Shoulda bought a laptop. Not a practical solution at this point.

That would be the best solution. Impractical, yes, but the most flexible, as far as getting a better result.

Mic up like this:

Stereo pair for each piano, where they will get the best of the piano, and still reject enough of the other piano.

Your Best Microphone and the nice Mono compressor on the Vocal. Do not let the compressor do more than 1-3 dB of compression at this point, you can always add more later.

Do NOT compress or limit the pianos in any way. If you need to do this, you need to do this later in the DAW, so it sounds as transparent as possible.

Hopefully, there will be some rehearsing, THAT is when to get the mics placed, plus a test recording done.

Be conservative in your levels, as invariably the artists WILL play louder when in front of the audience.

Feed the camera a stereo or even MONO mix from the FOH mixer, just for reference purposes, as you can use a video editor later on to edit and place the mixed audio in there with the now edited performances.

Is there a FOH engineer? How cooperative is this person? 2 people can set this gig up in about 10 minutes, with plenty of time over for getting the levels, and test recording.

Cheers

[mscottweber]

Is this going to be a live recording, in front of an audience? If not, is it going to be more of a "studio" type recording, where you are free to do multiple takes and you don't have to worry about stands and whatnot being in the way of an audience?

I think a lot of these decisions depend on the style of piece, and the circumstances on which it is being recorded

[SpencerBenjamin]

I'll let others with more experience comment on mic placement for the music, but in terms of the camera:

- Depending on the type of camera, you should be able to disable AGC and set up levels manually, so there is no limiter in play. Ideally try & feed some 1kHz tone (sometimes built in to mixing desks, but otherwise you can generate it yourself & have it on an iPod) at line level to the camera, & this should hit -20dB on the camera's meters. Otherwise err slighlty on the side of caution. If you can get the camera model I can tell you if that is possible.
- If you decide to record the sound separately & having timecode sync is impractical, at least try to have some sort of clap - have the camera (or cameras) shoot a closeup of someone tapping the mic (once only). Your editor will love you for this. If necessary this can happen to the side of stage & not go through the PA (but obviously must go to multitrack). Of course the camera must keep rolling after this or it's pointless. If this sounds bleedingly obvious, you'd be amazed how many times I've seen dv shooters button off after recording the clap!
- Obviously record at multiples of 48kHz...
- You should be able to record the camera onboard mic for reference if you're recording the music separately & in this case not worry about sending it any of your mix. Just extra hassle for very little gain... (sound joke there).

[dino]

Thank you guys, all great information.
Basically it?s a small auditorium / conference room. Two hundred people I believe I heard.
The camera will probably end up being one of the semi pro, one third inch three ccd models, shooting standard DV. It will be aBLE TO take +4, BUT my experience with these machines has been that the audio front end is just barely OK. If you don?t smack it too hard, it?ll sound passable. I am however, absolutely sure that in this situation a couple of grand pianos will have the electronics in that little camera begging for mercy before the second measure. I hate to turn off the AGC but I know I have to. If you all think it would help I might try to pick up one of those little RNC?s for the 2buss that?s sent to the camera.
I?ll be the one feeding the PA speakers, but only for one song and for speeches. The piano mikes will not be going to the PA. The mixer is a brand new Soundcraft GB4?? Seems nice enough for a PA mixer, don?t know how it will work for recording.
I do have some time before this thing happens so nothing needs to be decided immediately.

Thanks again folks.
dino

[SpencerBenjamin]

You're right, the audio on the 'prosumer' cameras can be a little Micky Mouse. You probably know this already, but make sure the audio format is 16bit not 12bit (some cameras have the option to record 4 channels @ 12bit or 2 channels @ 16 bit. 16 bit doesn't give you alot of headroom, especially with a couple of Steinways which have incredible dynamics. But the AGC, even on the high end professional cameras, generally sounds awful. Obviously the best option would be to record your sound seperately, but otherwise a decent pair of limiters will be essential. Compression will also help, as the signal to noise ratio at low volume levels is usually pretty rank.

[Nick Sevilla]

So,

How did it go?

[dino]

This thing happens on the 28th of February
The idea of multi-tracking is tempting, but considering the age of my DAW, and the fact that I don?t think my Motu 828II and Alesis AI3 are capable of handling the dynamics that will be thrown at them, I?m just going to record stereo 24/96 to a Sony D50. When it was just the one piano, I was toying with using a couple of Grace 101?s with either Oktava or Rode SDC?s. Now that it has evolved into two pianos, I don?t have another set of matching pre-amps to use. The only other decent pre I have is a UAM610. I thought about using it with a Royer 121 as a mono pickup of the second piano. I even tossed around the idea of backing off and capturing the whole thing using the Royer and a Beyer M500 in an MS configuration, but I won?t have a lot of time to experiment. The room might not be acoustically right for any distant mic?ing techniques anyway.

The interesting thing is; the Soundcraft GB4-16 preamps don?t sound bad at all. I never heard of this particular model before, but it seems to be a decent little board, and relatively cheap compared to an actual recording mixer like a Toft.

At some point in the future I?ll probably get a Macbook and an Appogee Ensemble and make this rig a little more portable. In the mean time, I?ll try to do the best I can with what I have. That?s the whole Tape Op mentality isn?t it?

Thanks again folks
U da best

dino

[dino]

Speaking in stereo terms, are there any suggestions as to how I should handle the panning of two pianos?
One will be the lead instrument and the other will be an accompaniment. The thoughts there were either to put the second piano hard panned L/R and the first piano more centered, or to follow the physical layout, and camera perspective with the first piano panned to 2 o?clock L and 5 o?clock R and the second one at 7 and 10.

Am I getting myself in trouble here?

Later?. d

[Nick Sevilla]

Speaking in stereo terms, are there any suggestions as to how I should handle the panning of two pianos?
One will be the lead instrument and the other will be an accompaniment. The thoughts there were either to put the second piano hard panned L/R and the first piano more centered, or to follow the physical layout, and camera perspective with the first piano panned to 2 o?clock L and 5 o?clock R and the second one at 7 and 10.

Am I getting myself in trouble here?

Later?. d

Hi,

How can you ask this, about panning pianos, right after stating that :

I?m just going to record stereo 24/96 to a Sony D50.

If you go and record with only a Stereo pair of mics, you will never be able to pan anything afterwards.

I still say record as multitrack. Yes, your gear can handle the dynamic range of the pianos. You just have to be a little more conservative when setting your levels, in order to avoid distortion.

Afterwards, if you need more gain you can do it.


Oh, BTW, can you be at the rehearsals? You can set it up and do a test recording run, which is a luxury, in live situations. This way you can deal with any unexpected issues, like bad cables, too loud / too soft levels, etc. Believe me, they'll love you if you do this. It shows that you care enough about their project that you take a little more time to make it right.

Cheers

[dino]

Sorry, I was talking about the feed to the camera. The catch here is the necessity for the video guy to have something usable. I'm happy to provide the video people with the still hypothetical multitrack files for editing later, but I don't think the organizers have a clue as to what they?re asking for. Their deal with the camera guy is separate from anything I?m donating, I offered to provide a feed to the camera and a couple of speakers and mic?s. I figured I might as well make a two track recording on my own. It got complicated with the addition of the second piano. Now I?m here with my tail kinda between my legs, looking for alternatives, just trying to get better sound than the mikeonastick they were expecting.
dino