Where and When Orchestral Recording Probably Won't Work:
Much of what I will bring up here repeats the material in the mike techniques basics article. It bares repeating here. Every recording technique has its limitations. This technique will not give good results if the acoustics are bad. The acoustics are part of the recording. If you are indoors and the room is reverberant it will likely sound even more reverberant in the recording. If the reverberation sounds bad, there is not much you can do, record some other place. If the reverb is pleasing but too strong (like a church) you can try moving the mics closer to the players. But, then you may not get a good balance between the parts. If you are in a church and the steelband is playing classics or slow gospel, the extra reverb is probably OK, that music was intended to be performed in a reverberant church. If they are playing fast soca, forget it, you will probably end up with mush.
I should comment, the steelpan is an acoustic instrument. If the acoustics are lousy, you may well not get a good recording no matter what technique you use, even close miking. Close miking (on all the instruments, best multitracked) will give you a chance at an acceptable recording, better than orchestral miking in this case; but if the acoustics are truly bad, even the close mics will pick up some of the bad acoustics.
If there is a PA system, often forget it, unless the system is kept low, and the speakers are way away from the mics, unfortunately not usually the case. Also, all too often the people doing PA will mike pan very poorly and get really lousy sound through the PA system. I think all of us have been exposed to this. I have rarely gotten a usable orchestral recording when there was a PA system in use; I usually don't even try any more. The one exception I will mention is at Queens Park Savannah Panoramas. Frank Agarrat of Rent-A-Amp, who does PA there is sensitive to the need to keep the PA out of the judges' ears (and therefore also out of the recording mics) and avoids providing amplified sound near the judges' location.
If there is supposed to be PA and you have some control over the event and can get the cooperation of the FOH (Front of House) sound reinforcement mixer and setup person, and you have multitrack equipment available, you can carefully mic each pan (miking whole areas doesn't work with typical live band setups) and either use mic splitters to feed both the FOH SR console and the recording device, or take "prefade" sends from the FOH console to feed the multitrack recorder, and you might possibly get a good recording which you can mix down in "post". This technique (best with the mic splitter transformers) is used at most pop music concerts when a "live" recording is being made. What generally won't give good results is to record the mixed output of the FOH mixing console. The mix which sounds good in the sound system (if it even sounds good) will probably not be a good recording mix.
If there is a crowd directly in front of the band with no space, the only way to possibly get a good recording is to get the mics up high above the crowd or (if you can set up before the event starts) hanging above the band. Recording through people is like putting the mic in a pillow! Also, if there is a crowd and little space, you may get far too much crowd noise in the recording. Sometimes a loud energetic crowd will add "spirit" to a recording, sometimes it just drowns out the music.
Watch out for the audience member close to your mic who decides to have a private conversation during the recording. Crowd noise is OK in moderation; what were supposed to be private conversations now made public in your recording are really annoying. This is particularly an issue during soft numbers or parts of numbers, or stops in the music.
You may be done in by low flying aircraft, motorcycles, loud trucks or buses, dropped folding chairs or beer bottles, barking dogs, you name it. Environmental sounds are a real problem. If you have expensive restoration software and copious time, you may be able to clean up some noises, maybe not.
If there is any chance of a breeze, use the windscreen designed for your microphones. Wind noise is obnoxious.
Rain may be an issue. I used to put "baggies" over my mics if it started to rain, but raindrops hitting the baggies will make loud pops. I have sometimes rescued recordings made in the rain by using the software designed to remove scratch pops and clicks from recordings of LP's. Now I am using the Rycote windscreens, which are nearly waterproof, so I don't usually bag the microphones in the rain. (The DPA microphones will not be permanently damaged by water, but a well-placed raindrop entering an un-windscreened microphone will interfere with the sound until the microphone dries out. I carry spare microphones to use in that event.)
Watch out for SLR cameras with large external flashes. Don't let them be used near your mics; they often make a loud but brief "pop" every time the flash goes off. That can make a mess of a recording.
Needless to say, cell phones are an issue. If it is strictly a recording session, get everyone to turn them off, if it's a live event, good luck! Also, don't put a cell phone near your recording gear. The signal from the phone, even when not making a call, may get into your wiring and make interference severe enough to ruin a recording.
It goes without saying that the band needs to be well rehearsed. If this is strictly a recording session, and they have to do multiple takes, after a few it all goes downhill, go on to the next song or take a break. Also, performing for recording is much more critical than a live performance. If someone hits a wrong note in a live performance, it is gone, and usually forgotten in an instant. When you record, everyone hears that wrong note every time the recording is played, over and over. If doing a recording that isn't a live event it is a good idea to do at least two "good" takes, all else being equal, the second take is usually better, and you have a back up if something you didn't hear during the recording is bad in one of the takes. If you are recording live events to make a composite album, the more events you record, the better choice of takes you have to choose from to make an album.
One final point: If you are doing a recording without an audience, (i.e. not a "live event") try to have someone like the captain or arranger talk to the musicians and ask them to:
- Not drop their sticks in the pan at the end of the take and:
- Not to play their own personal little solo at the end of the take. You need to be able to record the decay of the last note in relative silence.
Either of these actions sounds very unprofessional, particularly in a recording.