Options for the assignment

As you have seen before, I didn't get a single positive reply for my e-mails sent to various orchestras, musicians and venues. Therefore, I am forced to reconsider what I am going to work on for my final assignment.
As I have written before, I will be recording a concert of Fitzwilliam Choir which is singing together with St Edmunds Hall Choir in St Peter's Church in Leicester. Quite possibly, this recording will became my assignment for the Final Project - that is now being discussed with my supervisor. The other option is to use the Kettle's Yard recording and finally finish the production of the album to hand it in as the Final Project.
As for the recording of the 2 Choirs, so far I know that it looks like it is going to be quite challenging:

'...the main choir will be singing near the front of the church, but during two of the pieces there will be groups of four soloists who would probably be singing near the back of the church.

[...] the organ scholar at St Edmunds Hall still doesn't know exact numbers for the concert. I'd guess numbers in the combined choirs would be between 25-30, but will tell you as soon as we get a definite answer!'

Looks like I will have to take big, fat and heavy Fostex HDD recorder with mixing table and a tonne of microphones...

Kette Yard recording - 3rd and 4th sessions

Session 1


Intro


I forgot to check my notes from the last session, so I came to the studio not knowing what is left to be done with the 1st track. To avoid doing things against my previous tactics, I decided to start working on the second track.


All changes to all the plug-ins had to be done using automation, to keep the work I did on other tracks intact. What happened in this session was:



Added EQ for strings track
Because the track starts with double bass solo, I automated pan on strings to have them on the middle with a little stereo spread. All the other tracks were muted for the duration of the solo, and I faded them in once they started playing.


EQ on strings track


Adjusted drums volume
In this piece, drums go rather quietly and don't really reach the threshold of the expander that I set up earlier, so I changed its settings a bit.


Put through valves
I tried to worm the sound of this track up a little, so I added some base (low shelf below 200Hz lifted up quite a bit), and decreased low-middle frequencies (wide dip at around 500Hz). As there was already base and high cut applied in Logic, I didn't use them here.

Valve EQ for the whole mix

Then, I sent it to compressor to rise the levels up (primarily I've done it in Logic, but i wanted to have it done by valves). I used 1:10 ratio, but set the threshold so that it would only compress louder bits. I set the attack quick, but release is rather slow, to smoothen the dynamic changes. Gain makeup was adjusted to give peak at around 0dB back in Logic.


Valve compressor for the whole mix




Session 2



That's it for the valves
I had a good, comparative listen to both valve and 'from the box' versions and I realised that for some reason the valves made the recording less clear. It has lost some of the stereo space, and somehow it felt like put through a blender, all mixed and messed up together. Therefore, I decided to not use valves this time.


Starting track 3
This one is quite special, because only guitar and strings play in it. I realised that all the settings from the previous track work pretty well on this one, except for compression settings. Distinction between strings and guitar is much clearer here, and unfortunately when guitar goes loud, compressors would react intensively, creating unpleasant feeling of strings sound being damped.
I couldn't just turn the guitar track down, as strings track contain almost as much of it as of strings themselves and really, varying the guitar track volume didn't quite change anything. To avoid over-compression, I changed the compressor on strings a bit: increased threshold and reduced gain. On the main mix compressor (that I came back to using after deciding on not using valves) I changed attack and release times to make it work less violently.
Additionally, as other microphones were switched off for this piece, I panned strings hard left and right, leaving the guitar a bit to the right.
This all gave pretty clear, dynamically varied effect.


Arrange view showing regions layout and automation on all the tracks.