What to consider when recording a choir on location

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There are many different choirs up and down the country of varying sizes and abilities who will perform a wide range of choral music in a multitude of venues and acoustic spaces.  As a result of this, there is no single way of recording a choir.  However, that said, Choral recordings are technically quite demanding and often challenging to do and can show up any weakness in technique or equipment.

So if you are planning to record your choir in the near future, here are just a few things you should consider:

1. Venue

For most traditional choirs, which would include church choirs or school choirs, the performance space will be instrumental to the final recording as you need to capture the venue as much as the choir.  There are many churches and halls with ideal acoustics to record a choir. Probably the biggest challenge is finding somewhere which is away from external noises, such as passing traffic or aircraft flying overhead.  A decent acoustic will also help the choir to perform well which again will benefit the final recording.

2. Choir Layout

Traditionally most choirs tend to arrange themselves in about 3 or 4 rows depending on the size of the choir with each voice part grouped together. For a recording this type of set up will generally work well although if possible the rows should be raised up as they go back in order for everyone to be heard.  If at all possible it’s always worth trying to put the loudest and the least good singers further away from the microphones.  We would generally set up a number of microphones in front of the area where the choir are, but with sufficient space for a conductor to stand in the middle.

3. Repertoire

It may seem an obvious point but when you are preparing for a recording it is always worth ensuring the repertoire is properly rehearsed in advance of the recording session.  Even the best musicians will often require more than one take to get a performance they are happy with. On a few occasions we have found ourselves recording what sounded like a last minute rehearsal and then were faced with editing together the best bits.  Obviously as a recording company we are happy to do as our customers wish and there’s no harm in a few edits to get the best from your recording.  However, I’ve heard some sound engineers proudly say they had to deal with nearly 200 edits in a single 1 hour album.  In my view this is slightly missing the point of a recording!

4. Discipline

We always do our best to be friendly and approachable, and hopefully we achieve this! However, a recording session can be quite hard work, and often a lot harder than people imagine.  Even a 3 hour session with a short break half way through is a lot of concentration from a school choir for example who may be used to just rehearsing for 1 hour at a time.  Every take needs full concentration from everybody involved taking care not to cough or rustle pages half way through.  We always make a short announcement at the start of the session to remind people of these little details. However, if you are planning  a recording it’s worth trying to build some of these ideas into your choir during the rehearsals leading up to the recording session.

If you would like to find out more about 4 Part Music location recordings for your choir then please click here.

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Recording a School Choir with Full Orchestra

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In conjunction with our sister company, Recordings 4 Schools, we spend a lot of our time recording school choirs.  This can be anything from a barbershop quartet up to the entire school singing hymns at a morning service in the school chapel.

Typically a school recording will be with the school choir or perhaps a chamber choir and they will be accompanied on the school piano or failing that an electronic keyboard.  Over the years we have come across a wide range of school pianos which have included everything from a battered upright with several keys, broken or even missing up to a full size Concert D Steinway. Obviously we always try to ensure the instrument being used has at least been tuned for the occasion.

However, even with the best piano available we have found that a piano only accompaniment doesn’t always do justice to the choir.  As a result we decided to take matters into our hands and give schools the chance to get the very best they possibly could from a recording with 4 Part Music.  By using various bits of technology which we won’t bore you with, we are now able to add a full orchestral accompaniment to any recording.  Generally speaking we use virtual instruments such as East-West which are becoming remarkably true to life nowadays.  However, it is entirely possible to add real instruments to a recording after it is “in the can”.

We have recently added some orchestration to a recording we made with St Edmund’s Girls’ School in Salisbury which you can hear if you click here.  We are still experimenting with this a service so currently throughout May we are offering schools the chance to have orchestration added to their recordings at no extra cost and we always welcome feedback on any of the samples which we will be putting online over the coming weeks.

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St Edmund’s Girls’ School Chamber Choir – CD Preview

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Anyone following us on twitter or Facebook over the last few weeks will know we have been working on a CD  we recorded in March of the Chamber Choir at St Edmund’s Girls School in Salisbury.

A mere 6 weeks later the album is now ready to go to be printed and should be delivered to the school in the next few days.  In the meantime we thought we would share a few of our favourite tracks with you.

  •  Location Recording by 4 Part Music
  • Choir Conducted by Petra Randall
  • Piano – Brian White
  • Solo – Shannon Lamont-Robinson
  • Orchestration – Jules Addison
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Continuing the 4 branding with Recordings 4 Choirs

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Our latest addition to the 4 Part Music online portfolio is now online in the form of Recordings 4 Choirs.  This new website takes its inspiration from our Recordings 4 Schools site which has proved hugely popular with schools up and down the country.  The idea is fairly simple. We wanted a way of showcasing the work we do with choirs and being able to promote that part of the company which specialises in making recordings with choirs of all types.  Whether its a barbershop quartet or a choral society with 200 plus members, 4 Part Music have not only been there, done that and most likely got the t shirt, but more importantly we want to do it again!

We need to do a little promotion for this new site but we hope that in time it will help us generate more recordings with choirs all over the UK.

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Recordings for Schools

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For a while now we have had a sister site called Recordings 4 Schools.  We set this up in order to provide somewhere to display the work we do in schools as this has formed a very important part of our business over the last 8 years.  Until recently, however, we have been rather bad at keeping it updated.  Earlier today we updated the audio samples page to let you hear a few more of our recent school recordings. There is still a lot to do so I thought it would be a good idea to put some of the more important news on here first.

Orchestral Accompaniment for School Choirs

Most of the recordings we undertake with school choirs are often with piano accompaniment.  This is great and obviously part of our job is to capture the school choir as it sounds.  Most CDs will be sold at concerts or to parents so it’s very important that the recording is a fair representation of the choir.

That said, I have recently started to add orchestration to choir recordings using a sample library called East-West.  Very simply, this allows additional instrumental tracks to be added to the original choir recording so that instead of choir plus piano, you could end up with choir plus piano, plus full orchestra.

There should be some examples online very soon.

 

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Lunchtime Concert Recording

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Next week we are hoping to do another recording with Michelle Falcon, professional Viola player.  It’s still subject to confirmation but in the meantime here are the details of the concert for anyone who wishes to come along.

Thursday 29th March
1.00 – 1.45pm
Manvers St Baptist Church, Bath
Michelle Falcon (Viola) & Olga Paliy (Piano)
Programme:
Martinu Sonata No 1
Brahms Sonata No 2 in Eb major
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Recording at St Edmunds, Salisbury

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Over the last couple of weeks, we have been busy recording the Chamber Choir at St Edmund’s Girls’ School in Salisbury.  The recording was partly a result of my accompanying the choir on their recent trip to Paris.  The girls sang so well I felt it would be worth making a CD.  So  over two evenings during the last couple of weeks we got the choir together to record a number of the songs they sang whilst on tour in Paris during February 2012.

Having looked at various options in the school we decided the drama studio would be the best location for the choir to sing in as it gave a little acoustic but more important there was sufficient space and height in order to properly mic the choir.   This recording also gave us an opportunity to try out some new microphones.  Not microphones for recording but rather to further enhance communication between the production desk and the music director.  By giving the choir director an ear piece and wireless radio pack I was able to talk to her from the production desk in private.  One of the main reasons for this is I had been asked to produce this recording and was therefore required to comment after each take.

We could very easily have connected up another teacher had the school wished to produce their own session.  In addition to the in ear communication (which incidentally is the same system used by the BBC to speak to presenters from their production desk) we also run a live video feed.  This proved particularly useful when I spotted the choir had drifted slightly to one side during the recording so I was able to go down to the drama studio to realign them thus saving a lot of fiddling around in post production to keep the sound even.

In the end it only took a couple of 2 hour sessions to record the 10 tracks required to make the album as the girls were extremely well prepared by their Director, Petra Randall.  We will be launching the CD at the Paris Evening at St Edmunds on Friday of this week.

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Recordings for Choirs

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One of the questions many customers will ask is what do you specialise in?   Over the years we have recorded many different things from organs to oboes, chamber choirs to choral societies and even a few studio recordings of singers.  Looking at this wide range of experience gained over the last 8 years it is sometimes difficult to add a specialism.

However, when we started 4 Part Music back in 2004 our intention was to record choirs and organs.  This stems from the fact that we operate on location rather than out of a studio and generally speaking most choirs are recorded on location.  Certainly a cathedral choir would want to be recorded in their own cathedral with obviously the cathedral organ.  I somehow don’t think anyone will ever dismantle a cathedral organ to put it in a studio for the purposes of making a recording!

So far this year we have recorded the Pewsey Belles, ladies choir in Wiltshire and will shortly be recording St Edmund’s Chamber Choir in Salisbury.   We are also in discussions with a number of schools about recording their choirs over the coming weeks.

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Recording the Pewsey Belles

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On Tuesday evening we travelled to Pewsey to record The Pewsey Belles.  This is a relatively new choir formed by Lesley-Anne Hornbogen and Felicity Dainton.  I was then brought in to become the musical director, although if I’m honest I feel that is rather a pretentious title so won’t use it again in this post!   The choir was formed in April 2011 and is made up from ladies who live in and around Pewsey in Wiltshire.  Albeit I am a little biased, the ladies have done extremely well in such a short space of time.  As such I decided we should do a short recording.

The aim of the recording was to firstly show the ladies just how good they sound and secondly to generate some audio samples to be used on the choir website which, it is hoped, will lead to more engagements for the Belles.

The recording itself was carried out on location in the Wesleyan Church Hall in Pewsey.  As a venue it could be argued it wasn’t perfect. Lots of windows, quite a tall ceiling with lots of wooden panelling and very little to damp the sound.   However, as a location recording company part of our remit is to find ways to record in less than ideal spaces.  If we just recorded in a purpose built studio all the time it would be far too easy!  Added to this I wanted to conduct the choir and we don’t have a pianist.  In order to do this we pre recorded the piano tracks so they could be played whilst recording thus removing the need for a pianist.

Pewsey Belles Recording

Set up ready to receive the choir

The plan was to record 5 songs. 4 with accompaniment and 1 without.  In total we had the hall booked for 5 hours from 5pm – 10pm and the choir booked to record from 7pm to 9.15pm.  This left us with 2 hours to unload and set up an 8 channel recording with talk back and video facility with all cables properly secured and safe passage left for the choir of 30 to get in and out of the venue safely.  In addition staging was assembled.  At the end of the recording session we then had 45 minutes to take everything down again, back up the data recorded and repack the vehicles.

I’m pleased to say the recording went exactly as planned and right on schedule.  Our next task is to do some mastering back in the studio with the aim of publishing the tracks within the next couple of weeks.  Watch this space!

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Editing work for Michelle Falcon

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This week has been mostly spent in the studio editing a recording a few weeks ago at Real World Studios with Michelle Falcon, a Bath based professional Viola player.

Michelle Falcon

Michelle Falcon

There are often misconceptions about the differences between editing, balancing and mastering a recording.  For us following a location recording the first process is to edit the raw data to produce rushes. In essence all we do here is take out the rubbish – we don’t mean bad performances simply recorded data which is of no use – eg talking between takes, drinking tea and false starts etc.    Once everything is marked up we then present the musicians with the data from which they can choose to make the final master.  Sometimes we make this choice on a client’s behalf if we are asked to produce the album but often it is either the musicians themselves or a musical director in the case of a choir who will listen to all the various takes to decide which is best and should be used in the final CD.

This week then, I have been editing some tracks recorded by Michelle Falcon, a combination of Viola solo with some Viola and piano accompaniment which we recorded on location at Real World Studios.   From this I now have a selection of tracks which have been very roughly balanced so that Michelle can choose which takes will make it into the final album which we hope to put together in a couple of weeks time.

Once Michelle has decided on the takes to be used, the next part of the process is to stitch together any edits in order to create the final track. This is then approved by Michelle before we get to the mastering process and produce her demo CD.

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