Recording a pipe organ in a church
cheze...@hotmail.com
This is not a volunteer gig, so it isn't too high pressure. However,
time is the problem for all involved. I plan to do this with 3
mics...KM184's x-y on the organ and an AT4040 on the vocalist. They
want to do the vocals and organ together...they have always worked
together and don't want to dub the vocals. So...what is a good
starting point with regard to mic placement? The pipes are near the
cieling which is about 20' tall. How close do you think I should try
to get the mics to the pipes? I'm thinking of having the vocalist
about 15 feet away facing the organist, and the pipes, so the cardiod
4040 will be pointing away from the mics into the open church.
Before anyone says to experiment...I am looking for a reasonable
starting point from some of you guys that do these types of recordings.
Time is tight for what they want to get done in one session. What are
the pitfalls that I'm missing? I have a song set up on my pc and have
tested all the mics so I can just hit the red button once I'm set up.
Unfortunately I only have a PC so I am going to lug it with me. A
laptop would be nice, wouldn't it?
Tom
Scott Dorsey
>I am going to record our churches organist and primary female vocalist.
> This is not a volunteer gig, so it isn't too high pressure. However,
>time is the problem for all involved. I plan to do this with 3
>mics...KM184's x-y on the organ and an AT4040 on the vocalist. They
>want to do the vocals and organ together...they have always worked
>together and don't want to dub the vocals. So...what is a good
>starting point with regard to mic placement? The pipes are near the
>cieling which is about 20' tall. How close do you think I should try
>to get the mics to the pipes? I'm thinking of having the vocalist
>about 15 feet away facing the organist, and the pipes, so the cardiod
>4040 will be pointing away from the mics into the open church.
Skip the 4040. Mike the room, and get the organ sounding good. In a
lot of places that is going to take some trial and error to get the
overall balance between direct and reflected sound right. You don't
want things too close or too far, and you want the lower registers to
sound even.
I tend to find omnis are less trouble; the Jecklin disc allows closer
placement than an ORTF pair and the low end on omnis tends to be more
solid. But the KM184 is fine if that's what you've got.
Once you have the organ sounding okay, bring in the vocalist and move
the vocalist around until she is clean and solid in the main pair.
I find sometimes I need to drop the main pair a lot to do this... I
tend to want to go high to get the organ sound right, but then I have
to drop down to slightly above head height to get the vocal right.
You do what you can.
>Before anyone says to experiment...I am looking for a reasonable
>starting point from some of you guys that do these types of recordings.
> Time is tight for what they want to get done in one session. What are
>the pitfalls that I'm missing? I have a song set up on my pc and have
>tested all the mics so I can just hit the red button once I'm set up.
You can't do that. You are better off starting with a single pair, and
setting things up to use that one pair. Bring a pair of monitor speakers
so you can hear the playback on something that images properly. Expect
to spend an hour or so while the organist plays scales or something (and
don't forget the pedals) if this is your first time doing this.
> Unfortunately I only have a PC so I am going to lug it with me. A
>laptop would be nice, wouldn't it?
Hell, the monitors are going to weigh more than the PC anyway.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
geoley
<cheze...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1129935601.3...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Depending where the pipe chamber/s are located such as in the chancel or at
the rear of the church in the choir loft will dictate where you set your
mics. Most of the church music I have recorded has been solo organ, so did
not have worry about vocals. I have a pair of Schoeps omni mics that I have
used in my Jecklin Disc with excellent results, but I see no problem
including a vocalist with that setup. If you don't have access to a Jecklin
Disc then I would try using your KM184 mics in a spaced configuration. Just
my 2 cents.
George
Unknown
Do exactly what Scott Dorsey says.
Kurt Riemann
SSJVCmag
1129935601.3...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,
"cheze...@hotmail.com" <cheze...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I am going to record our churches organist and primary female vocalist.
> This is not a volunteer gig, so it isn't too high pressure. However,
> time is the problem for all involved. I plan to do this with 3
> mics...KM184's x-y on the organ and an AT4040 on the vocalist. They
> want to do the vocals and organ together...they have always worked
> together and don't want to dub the vocals. So...what is a good
> starting point with regard to mic placement? The pipes are near the
> cieling which is about 20' tall. How close do you think I should try
> to get the mics to the pipes?
30-70 feet
> I'm thinking of having the vocalist
> about 15 feet away facing the organist, and the pipes, so the cardiod
> 4040 will be pointing away from the mics into the open church.
>
> Before anyone says to experiment...I am looking for a reasonable
> starting point from some of you guys that do these types of recordings.
> Time is tight for what they want to get done in one session. What are
> the pitfalls that I'm missing? I have a song set up on my pc and have
> tested all the mics so I can just hit the red button once I'm set up.
>
> Unfortunately I only have a PC so I am going to lug it with me. A
> laptop would be nice, wouldn't it?
Organist where they;d normally be for performance (in a classic loft that'd
be with the organist facing the pipe gallery back-to-congregation) and the
vocalist facing out to the congregation at the edge of the coir loft.
A pair some 5-30 feet out from the edge of the singer should be a place to
start.
Richard Crowley
>I am going to record our churches organist and primary female vocalist.
> This is not a volunteer gig, so it isn't too high pressure. However,
> time is the problem for all involved. I plan to do this with 3
> mics...KM184's x-y on the organ and an AT4040 on the vocalist. They
> want to do the vocals and organ together...they have always worked
> together and don't want to dub the vocals. So...what is a good
> starting point with regard to mic placement? The pipes are near the
> cieling which is about 20' tall. How close do you think I should try
> to get the mics to the pipes? I'm thinking of having the vocalist
> about 15 feet away facing the organist, and the pipes, so the cardiod
> 4040 will be pointing away from the mics into the open church.
>
> Before anyone says to experiment...I am looking for a reasonable
> starting point from some of you guys that do these types of
> recordings.
But it depends a great deal on the acoustics of the space and
how well the instrument was integrated into the room.
Just stating that the ceiling is 20' tall is only a tiny piece of
the puzzle. You don't have ANY opportunity to experiment?
We're talking about just the organ. You can always add the
soloist later.
Arny Krueger
> I am going to record our churches organist and primary
> female vocalist. This is not a volunteer gig, so it isn't
> too high pressure. However, time is the problem for all
> involved. I plan to do this with 3 mics...KM184's x-y on
> the organ and an AT4040 on the vocalist.
I've recorded the organ in my church literally 100's of
times. I'd pull this gig with at least 5 mics - two for the
organ, one for the soloist and two to pick up room ambience.
Using a coincident pair for the organ sounds like a good
idea, although spaced omnis or cards will give a more open,
phasey sound as you no doubt know.
> They want to do
> the vocals and organ together...they have always worked
> together and don't want to dub the vocals.
Three critical balances to achieve:
(1) Vocalist versus organ
(2) Vocalist versus room
(3) Organ versus room
I was reviewing this list, and its almost like a problem in
solving simultaneous equations. You need a certain number of
independent variables to get a solution. Hence 5 mics, since
4 mics are paired, and pairs aren't independent variables.
Counting each pair as one independent variable gives you
three independent variables and three sonic *unknowns* or
goals to achieve. A mission that is not necessarily
impossible.
> So...what is
> a good starting point with regard to mic placement? The
> pipes are near the ceiling which is about 20' tall.
Pipes are vented to the air at two locations - one near the
bottom, one near the top. IME its a good idea to keep your
mics away from either place. Mic too close and you pick up
a lot of mechanical and pneumatic sounds that people
generally aren't used to hearing and generally don't want to
hear.
> How close do you think I should try to get the mics to the
> pipes?
No closer than about 15'. No further than about 30'.
> I'm thinking of having the vocalist about 15 feet
> away facing the organist, and the pipes, so the cardiod
> 4040 will be pointing away from the mics into the open
> church.
If you put the vocalist at least 20-30 feet from the organ,
she should be able to get so much closer to her mic than the
organ, that obtaining a good track of just her voice will be
no problem. Organs radiate a lot of sound at frequencies
where mics aren't usually that directional. They also tend
to be *large* horizon-to-horizon sources of sound, so its
not like you can point a cardioid's null at one place and
"poof" the organ's sound goes away in that mic.
> Before anyone says to experiment...I am looking for a
> reasonable starting point from some of you guys that do
> these types of recordings.
That's why I suggest using so many mics - record at least 5
mics on 5 tracks and mix to suit later on. I actually use
yet another pair so that I have both spaced and coincident
mic versions of the organ itself to mix with.
>Time is tight for what they
> want to get done in one session. What are the pitfalls
> that I'm missing?
Recording an organ in a gross sense is easy, as their sound
imposes itself on everything at that end of the room. If
there's an reasonably sensitive mic within 20-30 feet of an
organ, its more challenging to *not* pick up the organ, if
you get my drift.
Again, unless you're micing an organ pretty closely, you're
going to get a fairly consistent sound from the organ
itself, because they are not all that directional at 15-30
feet or more. Organ sound tends to be very permeating, as
you no doubt know.
The room is probably pretty reverberent as well, and this
matters. You don't want the organ or vocalist to sound dead,
but you don't want them to sound like they are performing in
a gym or the world's largest bathroom.
IME one of the major challenges of recording an organ in
addition to getting the 3 balances I mentioned above is
obtaining a clean smooth rendition of the bass notes.
A room the size you're in (you really didnt' say except the
ceiling is somewhat low) is probably going to have a number
of localized standing waves around the organ. This will make
the bass pop in and out, as the organist goes down the scale
which can sound kinda ugly. YOu probably can't eliminate it
but you can hope to minimise it.
You might want to listen while the organist is practicing,
and using one-eared listening, walk around and pick a
location where the bass balance is as desired and smooth.
You should also adjust the vertical location of the mics to
fine-tune this.
Also, there may be things laying around that rattle at some
frequencies. Get them away from the mics if you can.
SSJVCmag
Krueger" <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:
> If you put the vocalist at least 20-30 feet from the organ,
> she should be able to get so much closer to her mic than the
> organ, that obtaining a good track of just her voice will be
> no problem.
A Coles Lip mic might allow this kind of isolation, but I seriously doubt
any sort of 'completely isolated' track of the vocalist is going to happen
anywhere in the church. Add to this the absurd idea of placing the vocalist
so far from the organ that her whole sense of performance is shot to hell...
> Recording an organ in a gross sense is easy, as their sound
> imposes itself on everything at that end of the room. If
> there's an reasonably sensitive mic within 20-30 feet of an
> organ, its more challenging to *not* pick up the organ, if
> you get my drift.
>
> Again, unless you're micing an organ pretty closely, you're
> going to get a fairly consistent sound from the organ
> itself, because they are not all that directional at 15-30
> feet or more. Organ sound tends to be very permeating,
And th elarger the instrument the hraer it is to get close and get any sort
of idea what it really sounds like. The organ is rivalled only by a full
symphony orchgsetra for how wide a source it appears to a mic and thus
inviolably how far back you MUSt be to really hear the thing ballanced. The
closer you get, the more you focus on ONE PART of the instrument's elements.
Even a small self-contained instrument with all the pipes in a 12 x 18 foot
single case hardly sounds complete closer than 15-20 feet just to start.
> A room the size you're in (you really didnt' say except the
> ceiling is somewhat low) is probably going to have a number
> of localized standing waves around the organ. This will make
> the bass pop in and out, as the organist goes down the scale
> which can sound kinda ugly. YOu probably can't eliminate it
> but you can hope to minimise it.
Again, this vanishes as a problem with reasonable distance.
> Also, there may be things laying around that rattle at some
> frequencies. Get them away from the mics if you can.
THIS is one of those things that drives us crazy! you will be likely to not
even notice them at the venue but when you get home....
GS
my 2 cents:
put a finger in one of your ears an walk around until you find the best
sounding point in the church with right mix of reverberant sound and
direct sound. (the finger in one ear stops your brain to make realtime FX)
There you put 2 omnis's (small diameter like KM183) on a tall stand
(height 10 to 15 feet or even higher) and a distance from 51,5 cm to 80
cm -whatever this is in inch- (depends of the distance to the organ and
determines to recording angle of the spaced omni's )
Some numbers for you:
Distance of spaced omnis recording angle
51,5 cm 2 x 90 degrees
60 cm 2 x 59 degrees
70 cm 2 x 47 degrees
80 cm 2 x 40 degrees
I would not choose the distance greater than 80 cm because at bigger
distances a 'whole in the middle' gets greater and greater.
For the vocals I would start with a figure-of-eight (ribbon?) with a
null pointing to the organ. So you get the vocals and the room.
br
GS
cheze...@hotmail.com schrieb:
SSJVCmag
<NoM...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> my 2 cents:
>
> put a finger in one of your ears an walk around until you find the best
> sounding point in the church with right mix of reverberant sound and
> direct sound. (the finger in one ear stops your brain to make realtime FX)
> There you put 2 omnis's (small diameter like KM183) on a tall stand
> (height 10 to 15 feet or even higher) and a distance from 51,5 cm to 80
> cm -whatever this is in inch- (depends of the distance to the organ and
> determines to recording angle of the spaced omni's )
>
> Some numbers for you:
>
> Distance of spaced omnis recording angle
> 51,5 cm 2 x 90 degrees
> 60 cm 2 x 59 degrees
> 70 cm 2 x 47 degrees
> 80 cm 2 x 40 degrees
>
> I would not choose the distance greater than 80 cm because at bigger
> distances a 'whole in the middle' gets greater and greater.
>
> For the vocals I would start with a figure-of-eight (ribbon?) with a
> null pointing to the organ. So you get the vocals and the room.
How is this possible?
SSJVCmag
And for the contexturally challenged, we're not asking about how a
bi-directional mic works, I'm specifically looking for some magical
juxtaposition where a concert organ, that probably encompasses some 45deg or
better of an acceptance angle from the mic position, can disappear into a
null that's only a few degrees wide for any sort of complete isolation.
cheze...@hotmail.com
apart or use one of the stereo placements? the other mics I have are 1
Octava MC01 with an omni cap, the 4040, sm-57 and a beyer M160. There
is no budget for more mics on this recording.
BTW...this is a big chuch..the organ and pipes are in the front to the
left of the alter where the ceiling is low. The peak in the rooms
center is much larger.
Again, thanks to all of you guys. We are going to do a chior recording
next spring using what we learn here. THis project is a wedding
sampler for couple to choose music from. It's replacing a cassette
from the board which sounds pretty bad.
Tom
Arny Krueger
news:BF7FCEAB.15692%t...@nozirev.gamnocssj.com
> On 10/22/05 5:40 AM, in article
> MIWdncFOP_O...@comcast.com, "Arny Krueger"
> <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:
>
>> If you put the vocalist at least 20-30 feet from the
>> organ, she should be able to get so much closer to her
>> mic than the organ, that obtaining a good track of just
>> her voice will be no problem.
>
> A Coles Lip mic might allow this kind of isolation, but I
> seriously doubt any sort of 'completely isolated' track
> of the vocalist is going to happen anywhere in the
> church.
Good thing I never said anything about the vocalist's voice
being "completely isolated"
To illustrate the effects of reasonably close micing, let's
do the math:
In free space which is approximated by a large room, as we
all know sound intensity falls off with the inverse square
of the distance. The vocalist's mic is 1/2 foot from her
mouth, and let's say it is 20 feet from the mic to the
organ. The ratio of attenuations is 40 squared or 1600.
The attenuation due to distance is on the order of 60 dB.
Obviously the vocalist is not as loud as the organ, but 60
dB attenuation is a lot to overcome. In order to have two
sounds that can be mixed as if they are distinct, there
needs to be no more than 20 dB of separation. Seems
doable.
>Add to this the absurd idea of placing the
> vocalist so far from the organ that her whole sense of
> performance is shot to hell...
In my church the pipes are more than 20 feet from the organ
console, most of that distance being in the air. The pipes
are close to the ceiling which is 27 feet up. Our layout is
far from being unusual.
If I wanted to put the vocalist closer than 20 feet from the
organ pipes I'd have to suspend her in mid-air with a
harness, or record her inside the organ chambers. ;-)
>> Recording an organ in a gross sense is easy, as their
>> sound imposes itself on everything at that end of the
>> room. If there's an reasonably sensitive mic within
>> 20-30 feet of an organ, its more challenging to *not*
>> pick up the organ, if you get my drift.
>> Again, unless you're micing an organ pretty closely,
>> you're going to get a fairly consistent sound from the
>> organ itself, because they are not all that directional
>> at 15-30 feet or more. Organ sound tends to be very
>> permeating,
> And the larger the instrument the harder it is to get
> close and get any sort of idea what it really sounds
> like. The organ is rivalled only by a full symphony
> orchestra for how wide a source it appears to a mic and
> thus inviolably how far back you must be to really hear
> the thing ballanced. The closer you get, the more you
> focus on ONE PART of the instrument's elements. Even a
> small self-contained instrument with all the pipes in a
> 12 x 18 foot single case hardly sounds complete closer
> than 15-20 feet just to start.
Agreed.
>> A room the size you're in (you really didnt' say except
>> the ceiling is somewhat low) is probably going to have
>> a number of localized standing waves around the organ.
>> This will make the bass pop in and out, as the organist
>> goes down the scale which can sound kinda ugly. YOu
>> probably can't eliminate it but you can hope to minimise
>> it.
> Again, this vanishes as a problem with reasonable
> distance.
Certainly not true with the organ in my church, anyplace in
the room. There are almost no damping materials. No
curtains, no padding on the seating, 95%+ of the surface
area of the floor is tile. Walls and ceiling are stone,
masonry, polished wood or plaster. There are not a lot of
structures that add random diffusion. It rings and it has
all sorts of standing waves.
SSJVCmag
>> MIWdncFOP_O...@comcast.com, "Arny Krueger"
>> <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:
>>
>>> If you put the vocalist at least 20-30 feet from the
>>> organ, she should be able to get so much closer to her
>>> mic than the organ, that obtaining a good track of just
>>> her voice will be no problem.
> "SSJVCmag" <t...@nozirev.gamnocssj.com> wrote in message
> news:BF7FCEAB.15692%t...@nozirev.gamnocssj.com>> ... I
>> seriously doubt any sort of 'completely isolated' track
>> of the vocalist is going to happen anywhere in the
>> church.
On 10/24/05 6:44 AM, in article JemdnX-ar-i...@comcast.com,
"Arny Krueger" <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:>
> Good thing I never said anything about the vocalist's voice
> being "completely isolated"
Oh I don;t know... Whoever used the phrase
"obtaining a good track of just her voice"
pretty much makes that clear.
> To illustrate the effects of reasonably close micing, let's
> do the math:
>
> In free space which is approximated by a large room, as we
> all know sound intensity falls off with the inverse square
> of the distance. The vocalist's mic is 1/2 foot from her
> mouth, and let's say it is 20 feet from the mic to the
> organ. The ratio of attenuations is 40 squared or 1600.
> The attenuation due to distance is on the order of 60 dB.
>
> Obviously the vocalist is not as loud as the organ, but 60
> dB attenuation is a lot to overcome. In order to have two
> sounds that can be mixed as if they are distinct, there
> needs to be no more than 20 dB of separation. Seems
> doable.
I'm not sure where this '20dB' threshold comes from. I've done much work
trying to deal with separate 'isolated' track assembly and even things 30dB
or better down, if they;re not right, will screw it up in a heartbeat. Worst
I've ever had to deal with was a bluegrass family band tracked in a house,
and while they had managed a pretty high level of isolation, I had to work
on the only possible take of a player and fix the intonation and playing so
it was passable... It was a hell of a balance as even the VERY down-there
distant sound of the band in that solo mic still caused an 'interesting'
flanging/chorus-like 'sparkling' to be added to the mix unless the fixed
solo instrument was kept lower than one would've liked in the mix.
This is not that cut-n-dried. With classical work, where subtleties are all,
when the organ's field/reflections/reverb are all over her mic, this gets
worse. Just the distance-timing issue alone, if not corrected by shifting
her track so it's in synch with the main organ tracks, will cause unpleasant
issues in the timbre of the instrument. Then there's the idea of maybe
wanting to replace parts of her performance... Her original voice WILL be in
the organ mics both somewhat directly and significantly as part of the room
field, and the replacement takes will NOT be adding the same color that the
lo-level organ field still hitting her mic would be adding.
Granted I'm being pretty perfectionist here, but 25 years of dealing with
classical work tends to make me feel that's a fair assumption for this sort
of thing.
>
>> Add to this the absurd idea of placing the
>> vocalist so far from the organ that her whole sense of
>> performance is shot to hell...
>
> In my church the pipes are more than 20 feet from the organ
> console, most of that distance being in the air. The pipes
> are close to the ceiling which is 27 feet up. Our layout is
> far from being unusual.
>
> If I wanted to put the vocalist closer than 20 feet from the
> organ pipes I'd have to suspend her in mid-air with a
> harness, or record her inside the organ chambers. ;-)
Your church is only 20 feet long from organ loft to altar?
The idea I was countering here was 'separating the singer form the organ for
separation', not some sort of absolute distance issue... That'd take (as I
was visualising from the description) putting her way off away from the
pipes, Heck, The CONSOLE is usually 20' or better from the pipes, even in
the loft, and the console position is USUALLY about where the vocalist works
from too, so that there is a reasonable balance of the two to work with.
Together they make up a single ensemble that radiates and works best set up
that way. From there I can;t see (as I said) ANY way to get reasonable
isolation of the singer, so the distance issue arises. Take the singer down
into the altar area or someplace equally distant so as to achieve some sort
of 'isolation', and she's nowhere near where she can have any sense of being
part of the musical performance. (Choirs and soloists down at the altar,
60-200' away from the console/loft are a VISUAL choice more than any sort of
a musical choice. The timing issues are a bitch for both the organist and
the singers).
Not the point, Arny you of all people know how to read words carefully, I
said the PROBLEM vanishes, not the waves. In a highly reverberant field like
a church, the whole POINT of the organ being in a room like that is the room
makes a lovely (hopefully lovely) complex mess of all the reflections and
they average out pretty well, especially farther out in the room, which is
where you;re supposed to be listening anyway. There'll be more than one
place to hang a mic where it sounds good.
Arny Krueger
>>> On 10/22/05 5:40 AM, in article
>>> MIWdncFOP_O...@comcast.com, "Arny Krueger"
>>> <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> If you put the vocalist at least 20-30 feet from the
>>>> organ, she should be able to get so much closer to her
>>>> mic than the organ, that obtaining a good track of just
>>>> her voice will be no problem.
>
>> "SSJVCmag" <t...@nozirev.gamnocssj.com> wrote in message
>> news:BF7FCEAB.15692%t...@nozirev.gamnocssj.com>> ... I
>>> seriously doubt any sort of 'completely isolated' track
>>> of the vocalist is going to happen anywhere in the
>>> church.
>
> On 10/24/05 6:44 AM, in article
> JemdnX-ar-i...@comcast.com, "Arny Krueger"
> <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:>
>> Good thing I never said anything about the vocalist's
>> voice being "completely isolated"
> Oh I don;t know... Whoever used the phrase
> "obtaining a good track of just her voice"
> pretty much makes that clear.
I don't want to haggle over subjective measures of some or
all. I'm used to working with voice tracks that are
predominately but not completely some person's voice. I
figure that a voice track needs only be pure enough to be
mixable so that that person stands out or is hidden in the
mix.
>> To illustrate the effects of reasonably close micing,
>> let's do the math:
>>
>> In free space which is approximated by a large room, as
>> we all know sound intensity falls off with the inverse
>> square of the distance. The vocalist's mic is 1/2 foot
>> from her mouth, and let's say it is 20 feet from the mic
>> to the organ. The ratio of attenuations is 40 squared
>> or 1600. The attenuation due to distance is on the order
>> of 60 dB.
>>
>> Obviously the vocalist is not as loud as the organ, but
>> 60 dB attenuation is a lot to overcome. In order to
>> have two sounds that can be mixed as if they are
>> distinct, there needs to be no more than 20 dB of
>> separation. Seems doable.
> I'm not sure where this '20dB' threshold comes from.
Experience with mixing, live and recorded.
> I've done much work trying to deal with separate
> 'isolated' track assembly and even things 30dB or better
> down, if they're not right, will screw it up in a
> heartbeat.
I'm with you there in some contexts, but not this one.
>Worst I've ever had to deal with was a
> bluegrass family band tracked in a house, and while they
> had managed a pretty high level of isolation, I had to
> work on the only possible take of a player and fix the
> intonation and playing so it was passable... It was a
> hell of a balance as even the VERY down-there distant
> sound of the band in that solo mic still caused an
> 'interesting' flanging/chorus-like 'sparkling' to be
> added to the mix unless the fixed solo instrument was
> kept lower than one would've liked in the mix.
If an interfering signal is 20 dB down, it can cause a
maximum of +/-1 dB variation with any signal that it
interferes with. 30 dB isolation cuts by about a third.
> This is not that cut-n-dried. With classical work, where
> subtleties are all, when the organ's
> field/reflections/reverb are all over her mic, this gets
> worse. Just the distance-timing issue alone, if not
> corrected by shifting her track so it's in synch with the
> main organ tracks, will cause unpleasant issues in the
> timbre of the instrument. Then there's the idea of maybe
> wanting to replace parts of her performance... Her
> original voice WILL be in the organ mics both somewhat
> directly and significantly as part of the room field, and
> the replacement takes will NOT be adding the same color
> that the lo-level organ field still hitting her mic would
> be adding.
> Granted I'm being pretty perfectionist here, but 25 years
> of dealing with classical work tends to make me feel
> that's a fair assumption for this sort of thing.
Now we're talking about matters of taste. Is 1 dB enough
control over variations due to cancellation, or do we have
to go down to 0.3 dB?
In contrast, variations in low pedals due to room acoustics
are easily 12 dB.
I could plow through my archives and look at the typical
attenuation between my vocal mics and room mics when the
organ is playing, but that sounds like work. ;-)
>>> Add to this the absurd idea of placing the
>>> vocalist so far from the organ that her whole sense of
>>> performance is shot to hell...
>>
>> In my church the pipes are more than 20 feet from the
>> organ console, most of that distance being in the air.
>> The pipes are close to the ceiling which is 27 feet up.
>> Our layout is far from being unusual.
>>
>> If I wanted to put the vocalist closer than 20 feet from
>> the organ pipes I'd have to suspend her in mid-air with a
>> harness, or record her inside the organ chambers. ;-)
> Your church is only 20 feet long from organ loft to altar?
No, its more like 30+ feet because its a diagonal shot. It's
about 20 feet from the lip of the loft to the back of the
floor of the platfrom. BTW, we don't have an altar, so I'm
thinking about the middle front of the platform.
> The idea I was countering here was 'separating the singer
> form the organ for separation', not some sort of absolute
> distance issue... That'd take (as I was visualising from
> the description) putting her way off away from the pipes,
> Heck, The CONSOLE is usually 20' or better from the
> pipes, even in the loft, and the console position is
> USUALLY about where the vocalist works from too, so that
> there is a reasonable balance of the two to work with.
Our console is probably more like 40' away and around a
corner. The organist can really see all the pipes.
Last time I had a soloist and an organist to record, it was
a wedding and the soloist stood next to the organist. Just
to make life interesting, the organist complains of getting
lots of leakage from the sound system, and not being able to
hear the organ well enough.
> Together they make up a single ensemble that radiates and
> works best set up that way. From there I can;t see (as I
> said) ANY way to get reasonable isolation of the singer,
> so the distance issue arises. Take the singer down into
> the altar area or someplace equally distant so as to
> achieve some sort of 'isolation', and she's nowhere near
> where she can have any sense of being part of the musical
> performance. (Choirs and soloists down at the altar,
> 60-200' away from the console/loft are a VISUAL choice
> more than any sort of a musical choice. The timing issues
> are a bitch for both the organist and the singers).
Agreed.
Well, it doesn't always work like that. I've long noticed
(like since when the organ was installed in the late 60s)
that the bass notes from the organ sort of came and went as
the organist goes down the scale. The last few years I've
been the sound guy here, and I now know that our unpadded
pews work sort of like the opposite of bass traps, and have
a fairly high-Q peaking resonance around 118 Hz.
>There'll be more than one place to hang a mic where it
>sounds good.
I wish.
As we both knows churches aren't all alike, and he'll
shortly have his own fish to fry!
SSJVCmag
>> Your church is only 20 feet long from organ loft to altar?
>
> No, its more like 30+ feet because its a diagonal shot. It's
> about 20 feet from the lip of the loft to the back of the
> floor of the platfrom. BTW, we don't have an altar, so I'm
> thinking about the middle front of the platform.
Small church!
I think you;re in a MUCh smaller chapel than I think of as 'church' and so
reverb times drop, reflections predominate, and these resonance thigns move
WAY up the spectrum and get REAL annoying.
>> There'll be more than one place to hang a mic where it
>> sounds good.
>
> I wish.
>
> As we both knows churches aren't all alike, and he'll
> shortly have his own fish to fry!
And that's really the ONLY answer. It's usually the first one we give here
and equally usually the one that triggers rude and desperate responses about
"tell me the secret!!"
Arny Krueger
>
> I think you;re in a MUCh smaller chapel than I think of
> as 'church' and so reverb times drop, reflections
> predominate, and these resonance thigns move WAY up the
> spectrum and get REAL annoying.
FWIW the room is about 43 feet wide, 27 feet high, and about
130 feet from the back of the organ chamber, to the back of
the balcony.
SSJVCmag
Krueger" <ar...@hotpop.com> wrote:
Then I'm wholly confused then, what's this "20' from organ to front altar
area" I thought you was sayin? That's a far cry from 130'!
Richard Crowley
> Then I'm wholly confused then, what's this "20' from organ
> to front altar area" I thought you was sayin? That's a far cry
> from 130'!
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
20 ft from organ to altar-area, added to...
110 ft from altar-area to back of balcony.
Jim Gilliland
I think SSJVC was imagining the organ to be at the back of the hall.
Obviously, he's mistaken.
SSJVCmag
Crowley" <rcro...@xpr7t.net> wrote:
AH... My problem is then clear:
My ASSumption that the ORGAN/console is in the BALCONY...
Ack.
Only church pipes like this I've done is DC's National Shrine (MASSIVE)
which has an IMMENSE double organ system where there's pipes up front with a
console in a SIDE choir loft off the altar area (first organ install)
AND
A later MUCh bigger instrument in the larger big choir loft balcony FAR BACK
at the rear of the church (at 200' or so!) and they're both tied together
and cross-connected. Playing the rear console with musicians at the altar
area is a REAL test of the organist's timing mettle!
Arny Krueger
Here, I'm talking about the size of the room.
20' is about as close as a mic on the floor can get to the
orgain, 'cause its up in that loft thingie.
Arny Krueger
> On 10/24/05 9:53 PM, in article
> 11lr41a...@corp.supernews.com, "Richard Crowley"
> <rcro...@xpr7t.net> wrote:
>
>> "SSJVCmag" wrote ...
>>> Then I'm wholly confused then, what's this "20' from
>>> organ
>>> to front altar area" I thought you was sayin? That's a
>>> far cry from 130'!
>>
>> Seems pretty straightforward to me.
>> 20 ft from organ to altar-area, added to...
>> 110 ft from altar-area to back of balcony.
>
> AH... My problem is then clear:
> My ASSumption that the ORGAN/console is in the BALCONY...
>
> Ack.
No, the organ is at the *alter* end of the church. In front.
>
> Only church pipes like this I've done is DC's National
> Shrine (MASSIVE) which has an IMMENSE double organ system
> where there's pipes up front with a console in a SIDE
> choir loft off the altar area (first organ install)
> AND
> A later MUCh bigger instrument in the larger big choir
> loft balcony FAR BACK at the rear of the church (at 200'
> or so!) and they're both tied together and
> cross-connected. Playing the rear console with musicians
> at the altar area is a REAL test of the organist's timing
> mettle!
I guess!