[Scott Dorsey]

Frank Stearns wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) writes:

You can see one here on the singer doing the Dvorak piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlt-2iQ6kzQ

The intention on the part of the producer was to make the concert sound like
a film soundtrack rather than a live orchestra, but I didn't have enough
sectional mikes or time available to do the full Hollywood treatment.

Sounded pretty good, though. And, you can get fairly close to that scoring sound
with less than 30 microphones. The wind symphony I did a few days ago (55 piece)
wound up sounding close to "good Hollywood." I did that with a stereo pair (KM183s
right over the conductor's head), two front left/right outriggers also with two
rear-section mics high up center left rear and center right rear (Gefell M940
hypers), supplemented upstage far left and far right by Shure M202 microflexes.

I close spotted the french horns with Gefell M930s. The 183s did most of the work,
but the "focus" from those Gefell hypers let me "reach in" where needed to get that
big scoring sound. With those dedicated horn channels, I was able to turn three
somewhat overwhelmed instruments into a 12-horn battery, when the piece called for
a big ("Hollywood") french horn sound.

Did you spot the fiddles? What I really missed I think was that up-front
mushy mashed potatoes sort of fiddle sound that seems a big part of the film
soundtrack sound. Spots would have helped a lot. A couple extra hours would
have helped a lot.

(Typically, I probobably wouldn't do this much in a hall setting, but this space is
really tailored for speech. RT60 above 5 Khz is about 30 ms. Poorly suited for
orchestral recording. But it's the only game in town.)

For a film orchestra, that might not be too far off. Build it from spots,
add a little reverb. It won't sound anything like the real thing but it'll
sound like a movie.

The recording mix was pretty much just the PA mix with the percussion turned
down; I was making the recording mix from the PA console without proper
monitoring. The mix on the video has been collapsed in a little and some
reverb added. It feels awfully heavy-handed to me.

Ah, I see. Well, part of the mark of a good mix is how much abuse it can take as it
goes downstream. Again, spectral and musical balance seemed good, so the mix took
the insults quite well.

No, no, I mean that the original mix was very heavy handed... the percussion
stands out like a sore thumb to me for instance. The video guy actually did
a very good job with it. (He was Syd Weinstein by the way).

Sounds like a fun gig. How long have you been doing it? How did you land it the
first time?

When I was 14 years old I was at an SF convention and they were looking for
someone to run a 16mm projector and I said that I knew how to run a projector
and next thing I knew and a couple decades later I was sound designer for
Worldcon. I have pretty much retired from that position but I still get
volunteered for the weirdest things at the last minute. It's great fun.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."