19 Jun
2010
19 Jun
'10
9:05 p.m.
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