Category Archives: Violin

Recording the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square & Millennial Choirs and Orchestras with Royer

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Jason Graham, Recording and Broadcast Engineer for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, explains how he uses ribbon mics when recording The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square (formerly Mormon Tabernacle Choir) and also The Millennial Choirs and Orchestras.

Preamplifier and placement information is included in the video. The songs featured in the video are included below in their entirety. 

Mics used:

SF-24V: Choir, Oipe Organ, Room
SF-2: Choir
SF-24: Sections
R-122V: Strings
R-121 Harp
dBooster: support Woodwind mics

Amazing Grace

Be Still My Soul

Bile Them Cabbage Down

Come, Come Ye Saints

Erlkonig

Recording Trumpet with Engineer Michael Bishop & Cancer Blows Charity Concert

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Multi-Grammy Award winning recording engineer Michael Bishop explains how he mics and records this phenomenal CancerBlows live performance. Featuring some of the best-known trumpet players alive, the music is fantastic and Michael’s thoughts on how to capture brass, orchestra and big band properly using ribbon microphones is invaluable.

 

Huge thanks to Ryan and Niki Anthony, Michael Bishop and Erica Brenner.

See more details about CancerBlows.

 The recording is available on Music=Hope Records and all proceeds from the sale of the recording help fund cancer research. Purchase the music: CD/DVD (the full concert and music experience): https://www.cancerblows.com/shop.php

High Resolution HDTracks 

Stream the music

Maja And David – Fiddles & Foot Percussion

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Maja & David – Fiddles & Foot Percussion

Fiddles both miked with SF-2 ribbon microphones.
Foot percussion – Mojave Audio MA-100 microphones

Signal Chain:
All mics to Universal Audio 8p’s using Neve 1073 mic pre plug-ins. A/D conversion done in the 8p. Recorded to Pro Tools. Recorded in a Kansas City hotel room during Folk Alliance.

Engineers: Dan Ankney and Nathan Heironimus

Maja Kjær Jacobsen and David Boulanger lay down some great fiddle and foot percussion. Things really get moving around 1:30 into the video. Hard to believe this is two people playing when you hear it! 

VIEW HD

Darlingside

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Recorded live at the Folk Alliance Convention, in the Sweetwater/Royer/Mojave Pop-Up Studio

Stereo Room Mic – SF-24
Cello – SF-2
Violin & Violinist Vocal – SF-2
Acoustic Guitar (left, into small guitar amplifier) – R-122V
Foot Taps – Mojave Audio MA-100’s
Acoustic guitar (right) – Mojave MA-300
Vocals – Mojave Audio MA-1000, MA-300, MA-301

Darlingside came into our Pop-Up studio with a few friends and a ton of energy, worked out the final details of the song on the spot, then killed it in this beautiful take.

Engineers: Dan Ankney, Nathan Heironimus
Mixed by Dan Ankney

Recording Chain: Royer Labs and Mojave Audio microphones fed into Universal Audio 8p’s. Recorded to Pro Tools.
Sweetwater Studios, Royer Labs and Mojave Audio set up a portable Pop-Up studio in a hotel conference room at the 2016 Folk Alliance Convention in Kansas City and recorded a number of artists and groups attending.

Darlingside “Birds Say” (© Darlingside)

Rachel Barton Pine

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Solo Violin – two SF-2’s

Producer: Steven Epstein, Engineer: Bill Maylone
Recorded at St. Paul’s United Church Of Christ, Chicago IL
Scroll down for video with comments from the producer, engineer and artist.

In this exceptional solo violin performance, Rachel Barton Pine plays a Guarneri del Gesù in St. Paul’s church, Chicago, IL.

Recording chain:  Two SF-2 ribbon mics to John Hardy M-1 preamplifiers to RME Fireface 800. Recorded to Pro Tools 10.
No compression or outboard gear. Due to being on location in a large church in an urban area, the only EQ is a 50 Hz, first order hi-pass to keep out the rumble from buses outside. Original recording is 24 / 96, converted to 16 / 48 for the video.

Rachel Barton Pine performs Preludio to Bach’s E Major Partita for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1006

For more information on Rachel Barton Pine, visit https://rachelbartonpine.com

In this accompanying video, Steven Epstein, Bill Maylone and Rachel Barton Pine offer their thoughts on the recording process.

Fab Dupont / Will Knox

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Acoustic Guitar – SF-1
Violin – R-121
Banjo – SF-2
Standup Bass – R-122
Drum Overhead – SF-24
Drums, Tom-Toms – R-122
Drums, Kick – R-122V
Drums, Hi-Hat – R-121

Producer: Fab Dupont.  Engineer: Meredith McCandless

When our friend Fab Dupont set out to record singer/songwriter Will Knox’s album “The Matador And The Acrobat” with engineer Meredith McCandless, they decided to track the album entirely with Royer ribbons (except for a condenser on Will’s vocal and a dynamic on the snare). Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the recording process that Fab and company so kindly put together for us.

Fab-tn

 

Vocals & Guitar: Will Knox
Violin: Clayton Mathews
Banjo: Kyle James Houser
Standup Bass: Chris Anderson
Drums: Timur Yusef

Visit Fab’s website at www.fabulousfab.com. Visit Flux Studios at www.fluxstudios.net.

Puremix.net is an educational website featuring a wide assortment of videos on recording, mixing, mastering and much more. Puremix.net was created by Fab Dupont; his partners in Puremix now include Ben Lindell and Ryan West.

 

Rafael Manriguez and Quique Cruz

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Violin – R-121

Engineer: Brian Knave
Recorded at White Cow Studio.

One R-121 on violin.

From the Wariznake Productions release “Amistades / Friendship”.

“Cancion del atardecer” (Rafael Manriguez)

Roger Wojahn & Scott Wojahn – Commercial Scores

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Percussion – R-121
Electric Guitar – R-121
Violin – R-121
Drum Overheads – SF-12

Recorded and mixed by Steve Kempster.

Song 1. R-121’s on all percussion instruments and brass. SF-12 stereo ribbon mic on drum overhead.
Recorded to Sony 4038 (16-bit) at Signet Sound, Hollywood, CA. 

1. Commercial (Roger Wojahn & Scott Wojahn)

 
 

Song 2. R-121’s on all percussion instruments, guitars and violin. SF-12 stereo ribbon mic on drum overhead. 
Recorded on a Sony 3348 (16-bit) at Village Recorders, Los Angeles, CA.

2. Commercial (Roger Wojahn & Scott Wojahn)

Ukrainian Radio and Television Orchestra

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Full Orchestra – SF-12 Stereo Ribbon

Engineer/Producer: Russell Dawkins
Recorded at the studios of the Ukrainian Radio/Television Orchestra, Kiev.

Recording chain: One SF-12 stereo ribbon microphone with 35-feet of Monster cable connected to a Studio Technologies mic pre, then 6-feet of Monster cable to an Apogee A/D converter, to coaxial cable to the digital ‘in’ on a portable DAT machine. No compression or reverb used.

This exceptional recording of a full orchestra was made on one SF-12 stereo ribbon microphone, positioned over the conductor’s head, at a distance that achieved a nice balance of the orchestra and hall ambience. We use this recording regularly in seminars, as it’s a wonderful example of the amazingly natural reproduction a high-quality ribbon microphone is capable of delivering. The off-axis response is perfect, transients are natural with no overshoot or ringing, and the flat frequency response captures the full range of the orchestra with no peaks or dips anywhere throughout the frequency range.

Sergei Prokofiev – “Romeo and Juliet, Suite No. 2”

 

 
Sergei Prokofiev – “Romeo and Juliet, Suite No. 2” excerpt 2

Foghorn Stringband

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Bluegrass Band – SF-24
Acoustic Guitar – SF-24
Fiddle – SF-24
Mandolin – SF-24
Standup Bass – SF-24

Recording Engineer: Stephen Schauer

Recording Chain: See Recording Notes below

Foghorn Stringband playing live at Old Style Guitar Shop, presented by The Bluegrass Situation. Great performance of the old Stanley Brothers tune We’re Going to Paint the Town and Kennesaw Mountain Rag. Caleb Klauder on mandolin, Sammy Lind on fiddle, Nadine Landry on bass, and Reeb Willms on guitar.

 

foghorn-strings

Recording Notes from engineer Stephen Schauer:

I had a wonderful opportunity to shoot and record a little video of Foghorn Stringband for Ed Helm’s traditional music website, The Bluegrass Situation (www.thebluegrasssituation.com). This kind of music is close to my heart, so it was a blast to get this time with such an amazing and talented group of folks.

We had an hour with the band and a crew of just 3, so I had to operate a camera AND run sound. The audio setup had to be fast and simple with great fidelity AND not clutter the frame. Using a Royer SF-24 in the center of the band allowed them to play in a traditional way – gathered around a single mic as was done for the last hundred years. It allowed them to huddle up close, and a great performance that you can only get when the band can really hear themselves and play off each other’s energy. The sonic character of the mic was a great complement to voices and the strings.

Regarding the technical side, we kept it simple so I didn’t need to do much fancy footwork in the edit and mix. I had the SF-24 front and center and tried to contain the performers within the front lobes of the figure 8. The room was tiny, but thankfully it was trapezoidal so there were fewer standing resonant tones in the room. The SF-24 is 9-% of what you hear in the recordings.

I panned out the Royer 60% left and right until the soundstage felt like it matched the visual, I put a little notch in the EQ around the lead singer’s voice to help bring it forward, and rolled off the bass of the SF-24 with a mellow high pass curve set at around 70hz (to clean up the room tone and leave space for a close mic I had on the bass, which was panned to match her position).

I had an AKG 451EB on the floor close to the bass, with a low pass filter set for 700 Hz, and a Beyerdynamic MC834 in the adjacent guitar showroom for nice real room ambience that I could mix in later if needed, rather than relying on reverb plug-ins. The MC834 had a high pass filter set at 500 Hz, and the mic was mixed back about 5 dB.

On the master, I pushed up the 300-1200hz about 1 dB, used a little preset compression that sounded good, added a tiny bit of reverb, and used a limiter with about 2db threshold to get the overall levels up for the video.

I recorded directly into a Tascam HS-p82 with no outboard preamps and mixed it all in Reaper with the stock plug-ins, on my laptop.

-Stephen Schauer

 

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