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

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

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Recording Trumpet with Engineer Michael Bishop & Cancer Blows Charity Concert

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

Darlingside

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)

Fab Dupont / Will Knox

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.

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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.

 

Robert Friedrich on Recording The San Diego Symphony

Pianos (dual) – R-122V, R-122
Woodwinds – SF-2
Strings – SF-2
Hall Ambience – SF-24

Recording Engineer: Robert Friedrich
Producer: Erica Brenner

In this video, Grammy-winning engineer Robert Friedrich talks about using ribbon microphones extensively while recording the San Diego Symphony playing “The Carnival Of The Animals.” Of particular interest is his microphone technique on the dual pianos, which were positioned side-by-side and recorded with a pair of R-122V’s and a pair of R-122’s.

Pianists: Jon Kimura Parker and Orli Shaham

Videographer and Photographer: R Chaney

“Carnival of the Animals” (Camille Saint-Saens)

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Brian Setzer Live

Electric Guitar – R-121
Bass Amplifier – R-122
Drum Overhead – SF-24

FOH and Live Recording Engineer: Jimbo Neal

In this video, Jimbo Neal explains how he uses ribbons for sound reinforcement and recording Brian Setzer’s live performances.

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Lukas Rossi and Kenny Aronoff

Drum Overhead – SF-24
Drum Rooms – SF-24, R-122V, R-122
Electric Guitar – R-121

Recorded by Ross Hogarth
Recorded at Sweetwater Studios, Ft. Wayne IN

Grammy winning Producer/Engineer Ross Hogarth gives a seminar on his techniques for recording drums and electric guitars with ribbon mics, showing mic placements and letting us hear mixed and isolated ribbon-recorded tracks.

Drums – Kenny Aronoff
Full mix, conversation about drum mic placement, then isolated ribbon-recorded tracks.
“Dreamer” (Lukas Rossi)
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Electric Guitar – Lukas Rossi
Full mix, conversation about electric guitar mic placement, then isolated ribbon-recorded tracks.
“Dreamer” (Lukas Rossi)
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Arturo Sandoval – Ribbon Microphone Demonstrations

Trumpet – R-122, SF-24V
Piano – SF-24V

Recorded at Sweetwater Studios, Ft. Wayne IN

Arturo Sandoval demonstrates his trumpet and piano recording techniques in the best way possible, laying it down in the studio. Each of these videos feature Arturo soloing on the trumpet and then doing some extraordinary piano playing. For the trumpet demonstrations, engineer Don Murray removed Arturo’s solo tracks from two recordings featured on Auturo’s record “Dear Diz (Every Day I Think of You)” and Arturo recorded new solos.

Recording chain Trumpet: Royer R-122 and SF-24V into Millennia HV-3D preamplifier. Bricasti reverb. Recorded to Pro Tools.
Recording chain Piano: Royer SF-24 and two Mojave Audio MA-300’s into Millennia HV-3D preamplifier. Recorded to Pro Tools.

The instruments are miked the way Arturo records in the studio:
Trumpet – one R-122 close mic, with an SF-24V at a distance and blended for added dimension.
Piano – One SF-24V at the knee of the piano, with two Mojave Audio MA-300’s set in Cardioid and spread out.
(Arturo normally uses SF-24’s in the distant trumpet position and on piano, but we had SF-24V’s on hand.)
Trumpet: “Things to Come” (Walter Gilbert Fuller, Dizzy Gillespie)
Piano: “Surena” (Arturo Sandoval)

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Trumpet: “And Then She Stopped” (Dizzy Gillespie)
Piano: “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” (Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach)

 

 

Foghorn Stringband

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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Recording Electric Guitar Video Series with Ross Hogarth and Tim Pierce

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Grammy winning Engineer/Producer Ross Hogarth and session guitarist extraordinare Tim Pierce joined us to create an 8-part video series featuring an in-depth look at Hogarth’s electric guitar miking techniques. These videos are an excellent opportunity for recording engineers at all levels to learn new methods or brush up on some great guitar miking techniques.

Recording Electric Guitar, with Ross Hogarth and Tim Pierce. Session 1 of 8.
Divided by 13 amplifier into a Marshall 4-12 cabinet.

Video 1 of 8

Introduction to blending a Royer Labs R-121 ribbon microphone with a Shure SM57 dynamic mic on electric guitar.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 2.
Marshall JCM 800 amplifier into a Marshall 4-12 cabinet.

R-121 and SM57 blend vs R-101 & SM57 blend

Two microphone blends are compared; a Royer Labs R-101 ribbon microphone and Shure SM57 dynamic mic, and a Royer R-121 ribbon microphone and Shure SM57 dynamic mic.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 3.
65 Blackface Fender Deluxe

Blending a Royer Labs R-121 ribbon microphone with a Shure SM57 dynamic mic on a combo amp.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth. Session 4.

Microphone Placement Techniques

In this video, Ross demonstrates his dual microphone positioning techniques on a guitar cabinet, then uses an open speaker to clearly show where to put mics and why he likes these positions.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 5.
Supro combo with 15-inch speaker.

Another example of blending a Royer Labs R-121 ribbon microphone and a Shure SM57 dynamic mic, this time on a beautiful Supro combo amp with a 15-inch speaker. Very nice, warm vibrato on this amp.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 6.
Diezel head into a Marshall 4-12 cabinet.

In this video with Tim playing drop-tuned guitar, we compare an R-121 & 57 blend and an R-101 & 57 blend on a cranked up Diezel head through a 4-12 Marshall cabinet.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 7.
Magnatone Stereo Combo Amp

Ross uses the R-121 & 57 blend on a great old Magnatone stereo combo amp, with an SF-24 stereo ribbon microphone centered 1-ft back from the amp to capture excellent stereo guitar tones.

Recording Electric Guitar with Ross Hogarth & Tim Pierce. Session 8.
Supro combo with 6-inch speaker.

This video of an R-121 ribbon microphone on a Supro combo amp shows the amazing tone and size you can get from properly miking a small amplifier.