Sidebar I: So What Went Into Our Grammy Material Recording?

You might be interested in how Grammy Material got made in this case. The recording was made at Lang Concert Hall, a smallish, steeply raked concert hall on the campus of Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia. We could only record when the college was out of session, due to noise issues. As it was, we lost lots of takes due to aircraft and truck noise from nearby Airports ‘n Interstates. We recorded in 6-channel surround format. All told, we recorded twelve mic channels, but ended up only using six.

We set up a nearby rehearsal room as a control room, using a combination of Genelec 1030A's for the front monitors and the overhead, and Paradigm Mini Mark IIIs for the surround monitors, facing forward as a stereo pair. Placement was comparative casual.

We used four API mic preamps, plus the stock 03D preamps and a Symmetrix. We ran it all through the Yamaha 03D and recorded at 16-bit 44.1 kHz. resolution to two Tascam DA-38s. No signal processing of any sort. Nothing fancy.

The secret to our success, as far as I’m concerned, was Curt’s ears and abilities in regard to mic placement, and our use of a pair of Soundfield ST-250 stereo mics for a “Double-MS” array. We used my elderly Schoeps tube mic for a discrete center mic that was roughly coincident with the front Soundfield, an AKG 414 cardioid facing upward midway between the two Soundfields (for the overhead channel), and a pair of Neumann KM-84s inside the “echo” piano, to augment the amplified sound of the echoing piano strings, a key element in the music.

We also recorded Left/Right outrigger channels with a matched pair of Audio-Technica 4050s and Left/Right spaced omni channels (Earthworks) for surround, just in case we needed them. We didn’t.

In post-production, we did no EQ or mixing, just five of the six discrete channels encoded to Circle Surround,® which is a matrix-surround scheme similar to Dolby Pro Logic but more oriented to music production. The resulting 2-channel master can be played in either stereo or through a Circle Surround® decoder. I have no idea how the Grammy folks listened, but for what it may be worth, our recording was the only surround recording nominated.

We did some significant compression on the recording, and there's an interesting story there. For this sort of work, I’m normally leery of compression, as the dynamics are an integral expressive element in the music, and this is especially true for George Crumb’s music. However, I like to do Noise Level Analyses of my recordings using my TEF Analyzer, and I was stunned to discover that our dynamic range was greater than 72 dB, which in turn is 10 dB greater than the most dynamic commercially released classical recording I’ve ever measured. So, I was more than a little concerned that the recording would be a little, er, too dynamic for normal playback. Definitely unlistenable in a car, for instance. Therefore, I wasn’t too surprised when the conductor, Jim Freeman, complained about the excessive dynamic range during playbacks. Believe it or not, he actually asked for compression! This is a first in my experience - a classical conductor actually asking for the dynamic range of a recording to be reduced! So, we did, reducing the dynamic range to about 60 dB, still 20 dB greater than most classical recordings I’ve measured.

So that’s how we did it. Modest means, except for some really good mics, great players, music and hall. And the proof is in the pudding!