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Best Microphones and their Placement

Sampling pipe organs and turning them into something you can play in Hauptwerk.
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davidgarner16

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Best Microphones and their Placement

PostSun May 21, 2006 4:35 pm

I'm looking for a little bit of advice as I embark on an attempt to
produce my first sample set.

I'm planning on sampling the organ in the church of St Magnus
the Martyr in Central London. It's a medium-sized Wren
church.

If at all possible I would like some suggestions about which
microphones I should use ... I imagine that decent microphones
will be phenominally expensive and I will have to try and hire
them somehow.

Also, where should they be placed? I imagine somewhere in the
middle of the church, where a member of the congregation would
sit?

I'd be eternally grateful for any help. Given the traffic noise in
the area I'm expecting to do the recordings extremely early
on a Sunday morning when traffic is at a minimum and I'd
like my attempts to be first-time-right if at all possible!

David.
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Martin_Dümig

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PostWed May 24, 2006 10:35 am

Hello David,

at first, untill now i don't have experience in sampling organs. I will start this night for my first sampling session. (already got permission and keys from parish). But i have made some thoughts about the session....

Martin Dyde has made remarks in recording organs and placement of microphones in his document:
Hauptwerk Version 1 Creating Organs Manual:
http://www.crumhorn-labs.com/Documentat ... Organs.zip. This points remain true for HW2.

1. Microphones, pricing and type:
As with all things, you can spend as much money as you want for microphones. I think, the correlation between fidelity and cost is exponentiell. Working with cheap microphones may be a waste of time. I am using AKG C3000B Single Cardioid Large Diaphragm Microphone, and am very satisfied with them. They are MUCH better than the dynamic microphones i used before. You get them for around 300$ each. But they need phantom power, which my recorder supplies.

Some weeks ago, one of my mics had to go to repair, and i asked my dealer for the cost of lending a mic. He wanted around 10 € per mic and weekend.

2. Placement:
This is matter of the goal of your sampleset. If you want it for recording music, the mics must be placed where they would be placed for the real recording of a concert. If you want the samples for life playing, i would place the mics near the organ console, so that you have the sound like sitting at that console. If you want dry samples, you have to place the mic rather near to the pipe mouth...


I think, the environmental noise will be the largest problem for the recording. The normally silent church changes to a noisy place, if you want to do some recordings. Suddenly, you hear the bird on the tree near the church, singing, an airplane crossing the sky, some people talking in front of the church, the wind pressing against some weak windows and so on. So i too will take the night for my first sampling session. And i think, the better the first recordings are, the less problems we will have later in processing the samples.


Good luck for you - Martin Dümig
You can play Bach on every organ.
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Glen Mounk

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PostSat Jan 10, 2009 10:22 pm

I have downloaded two sample sets that are dry recordings, and am quite dissapointed with the bourdon sounds.
To me its a mistake to place a mike near the mouth of the bourdon pipe, when making dry recordings. Bourdon pipes are different that diapasons. Bourdons are placed against walls so that the walls will resonate or vibrate when the pipe is sounding. I feel that microphones should be placed a few feet away from bourdon pipes so that they can pick up the resonating frequencies from the walls rather than the "noise" coming out of the mouth of the pipe.
It doesn't matter once a person gets past middle C on the pedal board, but notes below that just don't sound right to me.
Glen

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