Letting It Bleed? (a little)

[Devlars]

What would you, the TapeOp masses, say is the best way of recording overdubs of a choir? I need to have an 8 piece female choral overdub onto a song of mine and I want to record as many of them at once as possible but I do not have the capacity to give each of them their own "cans" I only have a 4 channel headphone amp. I'm thinking of recording them in two sets of 4 but as I said the dynamic would be much better to have them all singing at once. I could easily pipe the music through a set of monitors but being that I will be recording them in a church auditorium with a stereo configuration of LDCs, what might be suggested to keep from having too much bleed. I know that performing overdubs while listening to monitors was the standard until 66\67 so I have no doubts that it can sound great but some assitance would be greatly appreciated.

[Devlars]

[chetatkinsdiet]

I've never done this, but just thinking out loud....seeing how no one else is jumping in here.....
But, if you did simply play back the prerecorded track on monitors, loud enough to hear, but still fairly low....I don't think the bleed would be bad.
You're more than likely using fairly directional sdc mics, right?
Just set up the monitors so they can be heard, but not pointing into the pattern of the mics as much. This should really be cool. You know, you could always have cans on, or get someone else to wear cans and sort of direct them. ...arms waving, etc...you know what i mean....You wouldn't really have to know what you're doing, officially, just to help the singers keep time. That might be enough.
Other than that....doesn't BSW always have that special 8 pairs of cans for $89....something liek that?
later,
m

[Devlars]

No I was intending to use LDCs but I suppose I could try SDCs as well. I hadn't thought about simply directing them while wearing a pair of cans myself and singing the part with them. That would certainly eliminate the bleed altogether, they're a talented bunch and could probably pull it off. Has anyone else done this or have any suggestions, by the way C.A.D. thank you for your thoughts.

[rydberg]

You could use a pair of monitors flipped out of phase and use only 1 LDC placed in the null point of the 2 speakers. Record 8 women in 3 separate passes using this mono mic, then spread them out at the mix stage as L-C-R. You'll eliminate a lot of speaker bleed this way. You'll also get a bigger image, better spread, and a thicker sound. Add a bit of real short delay with some creative panning and you're good to go.


P.

[stuntbutt]

I have done it in the studio. It was one occasion where a dead room was an advantage. I used a JBL 4310 about ten feet away from the choir and pointing directly at them. The speaker was six feet off the ground. The mics were AKG C414 set to hypercardoid in ORTF. The mics were placed about three feet in front of the speaker. The idea being to get the speaker in the null of the hyper pattern of the mics. The speaker should be just loud enough for the singers to hear while they are singing. I recorded a short passage and then played back the choir with the track while switching the polarity of the choir and listening to the bleed. It turned out that the bleed was less with the polarity not flipped. If the bleed had been less with the polarity flipped, then I would have reversed the polarity of the speaker. How bad was the bleed? Well it's obviously much more than if you had the choir on cans, but remember, the bleed is the song. Just give them a well ballanced reference to sing to and the bleed shouldn't be too obtrusive. But like I said, this was in a very dead room. In a reverberant church the bleed may have some reflections in it that may make it unworkable. Good luck!

[flanneljammies]

Why don't you just have then share headphones: take your four pairs apart and give each person a single ear piece? (They'll have to stand pretty close together and hold them with their hands.)

[Devlars]

Why don't you just have then share headphones: take your four pairs apart and give each person a single ear piece? (They'll have to stand pretty close together and hold them with their hands.)

Cos I probably wouldn't be able to put the cheaper sets back together as they're not meant to come apart whereas the Senheisers are. Though you may then ask, "so what they're cheaper sets so who cares?" but I need all of them cheap or no...good thought though.

[logancircle]

Yeah, totally conduct that shit. Either that or split up the group into 2 sections of 4. If it's 4 altos/4 sopranos, get 2 altos and 2 sopranos singing together each time and record them ORTF (same parts standing L/R both times, don't move the mics between takes), 2 takes. If you want to be able to pan the seperate parts, make sure the women singing those parts are in the same position is respect to the mics each take. This sounds fun...

[nacho459]

I do stuff like this all the time, the bleed isn't bad as long as you use aren't feeding click into the monitors. I have even recorded lead vocals this way and it works fine. You probably won't even hear the bleed unless you solo up the track.

[spankenstein]

I've got the MoreMe headphones and you can switch them to mono and invert the cups so two people can share one pair.

[elloweez]

Nacho is right... just try the speaker method first...it could save you alot of hassel and you probably will not even notice the bleed.

[snatchman]

Hi Devlars ! I had a similiar project to record and ran into almost same problem. I have a 5 channel "can" amp, but needed 10 sets of cans. Don't know if it's proper, but I just went to Radio Shack and picked up 5 stereo headphone splitters,plugged each into a channel on amp.Just plug 2 sets of cans per channel and ended up with 10 sets of cans. Worked fine! Actually, I've used this proceedure several times since then,never had a problem, amp still works(have not seen any smoke yet!).

[drumsound]

If you decide to use a speaker (or two) just put the minimum of instruments in that mix. Just a bit of the main chordal instrument, and maybe a tad bass, and some rhythm inst. if needed.

Then of course run it as softly as you can get away with. And work with the nulls of the mics.

[joel hamilton]

I personally wind up making as good a submix of everything as I can in a short time, so the bleed from the monitors sounds good. Bleed isnt the issue as much as bad sounding bleed.

Just make what is coming out of the monitor sound like a great chamber, then go have people sing in the "chamber" with the speakers. Can add an amazing amount of additive depth when you actually send the first pass of 8 women INTO the submix, and let it get re-recorded along with the second pass of 8. I have done this with strings, and wound up with a symphony's amount of depth after like 3 passes!
Amazing. Every time you send something out to the chamber, you effectively double the room size it is perceived to "live" in (sort of), so I would give that a shot for something like a womens choir in a modern song.