Beethoven 3

Posted: Mon May 29, 2006 1:56 pm

Hi,
after having read (and enjoyed and learned from) the story of theProkofiev piano piece I simply had to add my own little contribution.

This is a live recording with "my" little orchestra at the end of March this year. We are a group of amateurs, the piano soloist is professional though.

The room was a rather small wooden church, decent but not really good. The piano ended up to the left and a bit behind the orchestra, which I to a certain degree has edited away. The piano mics are a pair of DPA 4003 tucked under the lid, not the best of positions really. One of our members works as piano technician, and you could see from his frown that he did not really like the piano, so a bit of EQ has been used.

I have some gripes about details here and there, but mostly I am satisified. I think you can hear the edit a bit too well, a few notes comes from the dress rehearsal.

Critique is welcome.

http://hem.bredband.net/trombonisten/B3_2.mp3

Gunnar

Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 2:41 pm

Gunnar, this is not bad, I think. Tonally the sound of the piano and orchestra is good. The only things, and these are minor, that come to mind which could be improved is the closeness of the sound and the room size seems to make itself known.

I can hear that the strings are miked quite closely, as is the piano. Did you multitrack and can you add some reverb to these mics only to distance them a bit more.

Did you have some ambience mics as well?

Posted: Sat Jun 03, 2006 9:20 am

Thank you for the comment David.

It was indeed multitracked. No ambience mics though.

There was a pair of omnis in the piano. I would normally not do it this close for classical, but the flutes were sitting more or less inside the piano (they did use hearing protectors) due to the odd setup of the room. Wanted to avoid getting too much spill from them. Every time I use the DPA 4003-s I find that they give very useable results even when I botch things up, definitely my favourites.

The main pair was MS setup more or less were you would expect it, perhaps a bit too close. It was Sennheiser MKH30+MKH40. I am not sure what to think about these really. Sometimes they do disappoint with a bit of "sterile" sound.

The two omni outriggers were much too close as well as too low, the first row of the audience were more or less in the lap of the violins. Close but cozy I would say.

There was also an omni on the timpani to get a bit more resolution there.

Afterwards I have time synched the tracks and added a slight amount of reverb to the recording in Samplitude. Just maybe I should add some more.

I am very much enjoying recording on location, always learning heaps every time. On this occasion I additionally played the trombone (no trombones in the piano concerto though) and did chores as presenter / conferencier. Thinks were a bit hectic at setup time so I did not get any chance to setup any spot mics on the bassons which I really missed in the mixing.

Gunnar

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