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About This Multitrack - Mike Senior - 12-06-2012

You can find the multitrack files for this project in the 'Mixing Secrets' Free Multitrack Download Library.

Before posting a mix, please read The Three Commandments!
Please post your mix as a new thread, rather than as a reply to this sticky.

Here's some more project info you might find useful:
  • About The Raw Multitracks: This multitrack is a recording I did of a live classical chamber-music concert in the Barocksaal of Munich's Asam Schloessl in December 2011. I had to set up the whole rig in about an hour from a standing start, with the added complication that the available area for mics and musicians was extremely cramped. As such, the miking was mostly an exercise in educated guesswork, but the session turned out to be reasonably salvageable nonetheless.
    • The musicians: The musical director was centre-stage, seated at the keyboard with his back to the audience. He was playing the harpsichord patch of a Clavinova electric piano, the speakers of which were on the underside of the keyboard's stand base, facing the audience. Arrayed behind him (from audience perspective) were a string quartet, with violin 1 on his left, violin 2 centre-left, viola centre-right, and cello on the right. Because of stage-depth constraints, the singer were located on the right-hand side of the strings/keyboard.
    • The mics: My main stereo rig was basically an ORTF pair placed on a stand over the centre of the strings, widened slightly to adjust the strings image. In addition, I placed an omni spot mic between the first and second violins, and another between the viola and cello to give me some balance control. A cardioid spot mic at the side of the stage was covering the singer. In addition to all those, I'd also rigged an M&S pair (with a hypercardioid Middle mic) about two feet off the floor just in front of the first row of the audience for the benefit of a cello concerto earlier in the programme -- not a tremendously useful mic signal here, but I've included it in case you can use it!
  • Challenges You're Likely To Face:
    • The harpsichord transients are coming through the string spot mics quite heavily. The harpsichord is also all over the Middle mic of the M&S pair, because of its audience-facing speakers, so there's little mileage in trying to press that into service as an extra general-purpose stereo pair.
    • I deliberately miked fairly close in order to hedge my bets (having never heard the room or players before the concert), so all the mic signals are fairly dry. On the one hand that gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of adjusting the ambience with artificial reverb, but it does mean you have to work a bit harder in that respect at the mix.
  • Some Mixing Tips: I've only done a rough mix of this so far, but here are some ideas:
    • Phase is important in any live multi-mic session, but especially when the mics are in quite close proximity. Personally I delayed all the spot mics to match the main pair, but whether this is appropriate in your mix depends on whether you're planning to rely as heavily on the main pair as I did. (If it's of any use, here are the rough measurements I took from the main ORTF pair on the day: 130cm to the violin 1/2 spot; 120cm to the viola/cello spot; 220cm to the vox spot; and 240cm to the front M&S pair.)
    • If you split the M&S pair's Sides signal off as a mono signal, that might have potential as an extra ambience/tonal-support mic.
    • Natural-sounding reverbs are almost certainly the order of the day here, so chambers, plates and springs are probably not as useful as rooms and halls here. I'd give the reverb a reasonable bit of predelay (30-40ms maybe) to avoid cluttering the mix signals too much. Bear in mind that the hall we recorded in was quite small (about 10mx15m), but with a high ceiling (maybe 8m).

If you have any other general questions about this multitrack, just reply to this post and I'll see what I can do.