In this part of the blog we are lookng at the final performance of Orchestral Evolution (a modular piece of music for a pop-up orchestra, for all instruments and abilities), and how I went about recording it.
This blog would be really helpful for anyone working with music in the community, looking to record a large ensemble, or for someone after an affordable pro mic …. read on for more..
You can watch a short documentrary about Orchesral Evolution here….
Our challenge was to record our performance and of course to be able to live mic the performers so we could boost sections of our ‘pop-up Orchestra’ if we needed.
We needed a condensor mic, that was pro quality, durable, but also realistically priced. There is a reality involved when mic’s are used in schools; school budgets are tight, so a mic needs to be replaceable at a reasonable cost. Plus we want a setting that is relaxed and not focused on ‘OMG! please dont knock that mic over’.
Enter the Audio-technica AT 20202. This mic is around the £80-£90 mark. Whilst it’s light, its also built like a tank. Importantly it has no added buttons on the mic, so its ‘un-interfear-able’ during live performances, particularly awesome for working with young students who are likely to wana touch the mic…
Now for us, we had a digital mixer and plenty of xlrs etc. But it’s worth mentioning that the AT2020 can come as a USB only version. So no need for audio interfaces and all that milarky if you dont want too.
The AT 2020 has an improved Cardio pattern… which might mean something to you it might not. If it doesn’t; basically … the majority of the sound is picked up from the front, so its kinda the perfect level of directionalness.
So for ‘Orchestral Evolution’ we needed a mic to solve all manner of problems… We had no idea how big our orchestra would be, but we did know we needed mics that could handle all instruments, be pretty directional so we could have a degree of control. Whilst at the same time, not be hyper directional to the extent that we need a mic for every couple of instruments….its a big ask!
I got in touch with my friends at Audio-technica for advice, and the experts pointed me in the direction of this AT 2020 and boy were we happy, for all the reasons I have mentioned already and more.
In the end we used 8 mics. As you can see from the above video clip and the below diagram the mics were fairly evenly placed…in the natural cemi-circle of the orchestra, with 2, then 2 and finally 4 along the back.
I’d recommend the AT2020 to everyone. Keen to hear other thoughts and reports on other mics too, just drop me an email or comment below. I hope this blog has been helpful 🙂