On Nov 16, 10:59 am, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...
"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
I listened on my computer speakers, Monsoon 2000 planars.
Both recordings have a too-prominent clarinet, though the wet version
is better-balanced. The wet version is more pleasing; the dry sounds
a if it were recorded in a room with inappropriate or even unsympathetic
acoustics.
I hear nothing Korngoldy about it, but it does have an appealing
early-20th-century "potted palm" quality. I assume that was what
you were aiming for.
William, this kind of music was influenced by immigrant Jewish Klesmer
musicians, because, in those days, they were not yet accepted as part of
the
cultural mainstream. Clarinet is very prominent in Klesmer, and this was
carried over into early film music. If one's expectations are rooted in
classical chamber music, one could be disappointed. In this case, I think
there is a specific preservationist objective.
I don't disagree with you, but I've heard many, many Korngold scores. His
music is more akin to Strauss (note the anachronistic music in some sections
of "Robin Hood"). This piece was not of that ilk.
There are a lot of pieces I could have put up, some a bit more
"Korngoldy" -- I have literally many thousand of these little pieces,
all arranged for a variable-sized orchestra that can range from a
piano trio to about 30 pieces, and based on the catalogs that
sometimes appear with the music, there's a lot more music that was
published that I don't have. The breadth of the silent film orchestra
repertoire is daunting, but when you remember that more live music was
being played in film theaters than anywhere else on the planet, the
surprising thing is not that there's so much of it, but that it's been
so completely forgotten.
But I digress from my point, which was that I want to see if anyone
has helpful advice to improve the recordings!
So thanks for all of the comments. I have read them all, and will
continue to do so.
I didn't dwell on my set-up in my first description, partly because I
didn't want to get too sidetracked into a discussion of this versus
that mic and/or preamp, but it's not figure 8 -- these movie scores
are more likely than some things to be played back in mono, so after
lurking in this group for a while I bought a Rode NT-4 and I therefore
do x-y stereo. I also bought a pair of NT-5s which I've sometimes used
as a spot mic on the cello or violin, but I found I generally didn't
add much from those channels, since even though it DID sometimes
improve the instrument tone, it also made the instrument too loud in
the mix.
No one so far has blamed anything on the mic and the preamps, so I
think if I spend more money, I want it to be on the room itself.
The other big part of this is that I am recording and playing the
piano simultaneously. This partially explains the low levels -- if I
red-line the levels in a loud piece, I probably won't notice until
we're done playing, and the other musicians will scalp me when I tell
them we have to do it again because I screwed up. Also, it made sense
to me to try to record the entire film score at the same level, and
this particular piece is pretty quiet. If there's an on-screen fire,
storm, or sword fight; the music gets substantially louder. I
experimented with a post-production compressor to make the quiet
pieces louder without topping out the loud ones, but it made me
nervous since I don't know what the hell I'm doing, so I've been
leaving it off. But, if I'm careful, I can almost certainly record at
somewhat higher levels.
The NT-4 is plugged into a Mackie Onyx board, which I bought partly on
Mike Rivers' recommendation as having useful, inoffensive, but quite
affordable pre-amps. I know there are better pre-amps, but I feel that
the pre-amps are probably not the weak link in my chain. I think it's
the room. I provided "dry" and "wet" because I use the reverb and eq
to mask some issues, and I thought the "dry" might prompt some useful
comments.
There is a carpet on the hardwood floor, but when we roll it up, the
clarinet just takes over. Its sound smears around the room (he's
sitting way off to the side but you may notice there's still almost no
directionality). I'm afraid the real solution is to remove the rug
while damping the ceiling -- but that's a huge project. Since the
ceiling is 8 ft high I don't want to hang a cloud ceiling because
it'll start bumping heads; and above the ceiling drywall there's blown
insulation in an attic, so removing the drywall and replacing it with
a softer ceiling would be a big, messy project. One thing I'm
considering is attaching fabric-covered fiberglas panels over part,
but not all, of the ceiling. I'm not trying to make the room dead, I
just want to control it a bit.
However, I have not tried partially rolling up the rug so that the
cello has hardwood around it but the clarinet is on carpet. That would
be worth a shot.
I have the stereo mic on one side of the room since we need to all fit
on one side of it. It's about 5 ft off the floor, and 15 inches from
the wall. I did attach a piece of fiberglas insulation panel to that
wall to reduce direct reflections. I had a lovely spot picked out in
an irregular part of the room where no flat walls faced the mic from
closer than 8 ft, but to my frustration, none of the musicians liked
the sound I was getting from there.
Thanks again, this advice is invaluable for me to figure out what to
tweak next.
Rodney Sauer
Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
www.mont-alto.com