[LAU] OT: Microphone choice for pipe organ

Jonathan Gazeley jonathan.gazeley at bristol.ac.uk
Sat Jun 19 19:05:42 UTC 2010


Thanks Jörn for your reply.

On 06/19/2010 09:18 AM, Jörn Nettingsmeier wrote:
>
> large diaphragms are mostly show-off, in my experience. good large
> capsules can be quite nice, but they are expensive to manufacture, and
> their directivity patterns are a sad joke. if you're on a tight budget,
> go small diaphragm. i like the røde nt55. for 500€, you get a matched
> pair with cardioids *and* swappable omni capsules.
>
> after having heard a direct comparison, i'm now pretty convinced that
> the only way to record an organ is with omnis or very wide cardioids, as
> main mikes, due to their extended low frequency response. with
> cardioids, no matter how good, you are simply missing two octaves at the
> bottom, where the nice 32' oomph is.
>    

Unfortunately the organ at this church only has a 16' pedal :( In any 
case I don't want to be throwing any of those lovely deep frequencies away.

I've never used omnis in any situation before, but I'll see if I can 
rent some to see if they give good results before buying. I don't have a 
lot of money to spend on volunteering at the church, but I would like to 
produce the best results possible with the available funds.

> if you can't use omnis because of the reverb situation or because they
> pick up nasty echoes from the choir, you will have to use a shelf eq to
> bring the 32' back to where it belongs, but that can be difficult.
>
> depending on the configuration of the organ, having another pair at 4-5m
> height to capture the upper stops can be useful.
>
> if you're not looking for very precise localisation, just pleasant
> spaciousness, AB miking rather than XY is the technique of choice. with
> large sounding bodies such as orchestras or organs, it has the
> additional advantage of more uniform coverage as the spacing increases.
> (finding just one spot where all parts of the sounding body have good
> balance can be hard.)
> using two (or even three) omnis on an organ, spaced several meters
> apart, is not uncommon.
>    

Thanks for this tip also. AB is a bit more tricky, because one 
microphone would have to be either side of the aisle, and the 
powers-that-be are not keen on having cables strung around with a full 
church. I'll see what I can do...

If anyone is interested, I've written this up in a post on my blog, with 
a diagram of mic placement and some sample recordings using condensers 
and dynamics. Any feedback (whether as blog comments, or replies on this 
list) would be very welcome.

http://blog.jonathangazeley.com/2010/06/recording-a-pipe-organ-and-choir/

Cheers,
Jonathan


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