Salvation Army Band Music

[Donna Miller]

Hi Guys and Gals.
I hate to ask, but I am really stumped. I'm designing Saroyan's Time of Your Life. The script calls for a Salvation Army Street Band to pass outside playing two pieces. One is "Let the Lower lights Be Burning" which is critical and the other is listed as "Blood of the Lamb" but it could be anything like "Onward Christian Soldiers" or any basic religious piece.

To be clear, and hopefully save some replies, I have looked at YouTube, the London sound survey, the Folkways label, a few websites dedicated to non-contemporary Christian music, the Salvation Army's websites national and local, and iTunes. MIDI files will not help me, as I am not a musician of any sort and we do not have it in the budget to hire musicians. I do have it in my budget to pay a modest fee to anyone who has a usable file.

The difficulty seems to be that recordings have only been made of the large professional Salvation Army Bands in concert halls and the like. What I am looking for is a small street band: trumpet, sousaphone, tambourines and big bass drum (or something like that). The whole street band concept seems to have died out before convenient location recording was born. And although I can fine a few examples of a modern street band in England, they seem to do mostly Christmas Carols.
Thanks for reading,
-Donna

[Steven Devino]

You could try working with a local marching band to do the recordings
Steve Devino

[Jim vanBergen]

Have you asked the local high school or middle school band, or someone involved in the production if they have kids in a brass choir? I agree, you want it simple: trumpet, a trombone, maybe a sousaphone, tambourine or tenor drum and a bass drum is more than enough, and you should be able to capture it with a hand-held recorder in less than twenty minutes- clammy notes are part of the expectation- and you could get the brass part and add in bass drum samples with little trouble. Hope these thoughts help. 

JvB

--
Jim van Bergen
AudioArt Sound, NYC
917-826-1626
vanber...@gmail.com

[Donna Miller]

Yes, Jim and Steve I have certainly considered recording a band, and I even have one in mind, however I'm really hoping that someone will say "I've done that show! I have that recording!' and then sell it to me. Although this show doesn't go up for a week-and-a-half, I'm a bit booked up on other projects and would like to bypass the hassle if I can.
Thank you though, for giving it your consideration.
-Donna

[Matt Otto]

The other option is to track down the MIDI’s and then have someone with a decent Sample library put them into their favorite sampler and go from there. 

Matt Otto
(609) 707-2978
Off List: motto...@gmail.com
http://www.mattottosound.com

[John Leonard]

I've done that show - I may have the recording somewhere. Deadline?

John

[Donna Miller]

We tech in about a week, open in a week-and-a-half.
-Donna

--- On Tue, 11/10/09, John Leonard <jo...@johnleonard.co.uk> wrote:

[david avery]

try contacting :

Bill Richardson
AV Coordinator
The Salvation Army
Agincourt Community Church

acc...@yahoo.ca

he is active on the "church sound check" mail list

[paperst...@gmail.com]

If you record something, it might be best to get the director there at
the session. Today, I am re-recording a twenties style honky tonk
piano for a production because the director wants a faster tempo than
what we got first time around. The director was even here during that
initial tracking session, but once they tried it out in rehearsals it
wasn't working. So second time is hopefully a charm for me. You might
only get one chance to record it, so getting the director involved
right away is a great CYA plan.

While you may or may not be getting the answers you wanted here, you
are definitely getting the right answers here. Best of luck to you.

[Matt Otto]

Hey Paul,

When something like that happens to me. I usually throw it into the Apple Loops Utility that comes with Logic Studio change it from a non-looping to looping. That then tells me the bpm and I adjust the slider at the bottom to match what it tells me and save it. Then in Logic I open it up and it now syncs with the tempo. So if the recording is at 120 and I change the tempo to 130 it will then speed it up to 130. This actually works rather transparently. Especially if you click the transient tab in Apple Loop Utility and change it from 1/16th Notes to 1/32th Notes or 1/64th Notes but 1/16th still produces a rather transparent result. Of course your milage may vary.

Matt Otto
(609) 707-2978
Off List: motto...@gmail.com
http://www.mattottosound.com

[paperst...@gmail.com]

I cheated today, rehearsal tonight will tell if I was successful.

The pianist couldn't make it today, so I tossed the original audio
file in Peak Pro and used change duration. I gave them the original
plus three different faster tempos to choose from. It was getting
shortened to play a bit faster and more Scott Joplin-like. The
original pianist was a touch too tentative when doing the original
take. I also tried the time compression algorithm in DP, but it was
less successful than what I got from Peak. I had just sold my original
MBox and realized that I also have Serato Pitch N Time which is
arguably my favorite time compression/expansion tool. I'll pick up an
MBox 2 for Xmas or something just to be able to run PT and therefore
Pitch N Time.

If the geeky method doesn't work, and I'll know after rehearsal, than
I'm back to recording a different performance. No big deal really. At
least the audio work I did on the 30 minute movie that precedes the
live performance came out great, and the vidiots were happy. I -
almost- have this project totally off my desk.

[Mitchell Greenhill]

Acid is great for this kind of work.

[Ted Pallas]

If you know any DJ's Serato runs on the same bones as Pitch and Time.
Traktor, which I own, has also served me well. If you'd like to FTP
the track I can give it a go.

Ted Pallas
Live Media Design
Founder, ://grove.nyc
t...@grovenyc.net
cell - 516 286 9661

On Nov 11, 2009, at 5:43 PM, "pa...@paperstreetaudio.com" <paperst...@gmail.com

[Ray Gibson]

Aha! I wish I had checked the list earlier. I designed this show
last year and found this site:

http://salvoaudio.com

It has like, millions of hours of recordings (just guessing here) of
Salvation Army bands around the world.

Good luck!!!!

Ray Gibson

[Donna Miller]

Wow, awesome resource! Thanks!
-Donna

[Michael Pulsford]

Hey Donna,

Not sure where you're at with the various suggestions, but it occurred to me you could perhaps fake the effect you're after by taking one of the recordings you've found which were made indoors, playing it through a speaker set up in the street and re-recording it (kind of like the worldizing technique used in American Graffiti: http://filmsound.org/terminology/worldizing.htm) and later mixing in some marching sounds synchronized with the music.

Just a thought, anyway!  It's what I'd do if the deadline was getting too close to be able to record anything to spec.  For maximum (cough) realism you could record it from inside a house while a helper wheeled the speaker past on the street outside.

Cheers,
Mike

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