Coming into the second QWO rehearsal, I felt more comfortable in the way we set up and maneuvered ourselves around the musicians. To make sure we have the best set up possible for the weekend's concert, this rehearsal we decided to change up the amount and positioning of the microphones used.
On the back end of the orchestra, where we last had NT1s on an omni-directional capture, this week we took out one of the microphones and also had them set to a cardioid capture setting. We did this because we thought it would be beneficial to have the sole focus on the percussion section. In hindsight, when we listened to the session a few days later, we found that this set up was not as fruitful as we had thought. A lot of the mid-frequency range instruments such as saxophones, flutes, and clarinets seemed to be drowned out by the fact that this new microphone set up made the percussion a lot louder and clearer in the mix. We also had the issue that we could hear when percussionists changed sticks or mallets in order to play all the different types of percussion needed in each piece. Although the musicians are likely to be quieter during an actual performance than during practise, we didn't really want to take that chance and so we decided that on the day of the concert, we would have the back-line mics on an omni-directional setting.
We also thought that it would be nice to have two room mics capturing the audience during the concert, then we would have a stereo reverb that we could blend into the final mix. The concert is taking place in a huge, church-like room so it should sound awesome.
The following is the proposed set-up for Sunday's concert;
2 X DPA 4011As for the overheads
2 X KM184s for the front side mics
2 X AKG C414s for the back line
2 X NT5 for room mics
My next blog in this series will be about how the concert and final mixing session goes!
Comments