About This Multitrack

[Mike Senior]

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

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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, and the stage setup changed at the last moment. As such, the miking was mostly an exercise in educated guesswork, but the session turned out to be reasonably salvageable nonetheless. That said, this particular musical number probably presented the greatest mixing challenges.
  • 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 singers were located on the right-hand side of the strings/keyboard. I had hoped that the oboe would perhaps be located there too, or else at the other side of the stage, but at the last moment the oboe soloist decided that he'd prefer to stand at the back of the stage, directly between the second violin and viola -- which caused some balance problems.
    
  • 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 two singers. 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 main problem is the oboe. A strong oboist is already more than a match for string quartet in terms of balance, but this balance inequality was exacerbated by the last-minute stage-layout change -- putting him much closer to the main stereo pair than the strings, and equidistant from both string spot mics. As a result, it's almost impossible to stop the oboe dominating over the strings in the balance. Fortunately, the player had a decent sense of balance himself, riding his level down when the singers were singing, which avoided complete crash-and-burn.
    
  • 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 alternative replacement main 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.)
    
  • I'm wondering whether some fine M&S EQ of the main pair might help a little with the balance. Irrespective, a medium-narrow cut of the main pair or omni spots at 1.5kHz does a lot to help the balance.
    
  • 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.