Pastry Party - World Map - Multitrack and MIDI Download
Added 2020-05-22 08:05:13 +0000 UTCAs promised, here's another multitrack session. This time it is the recording of the main titles for my score for Pastry Party. As I was mentioning already in one of the previous posts about this project, we recorded a symphony size orchestra together with a jazz rhythm group.
The score was performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and recorded at Smecky Studio Prague.
Here's a picture of the studio:
You can see that the studio is rather a small one with practically no own reverb. Fortunately the ceiling is rather high which makes the sound quite balanced but the problem in this studio is that due to its small size, loud brass tend to overpower the rest as well as early reflections in the room that you get from the loud brass give away the small size, no matter how much reverb you put on the recording.
However, for this particular project and esthetics the sound of this studio was ideal as it wasn't desirable to get a huge and epic sound with loud brass but the rather intimate quality was really benefitial here.
I personally always like to record as much as possible live and also have as many musicians as possible play together in the same room in order feed of each other's energy as well as create a homogenous sound. That's why all "additional musicians" except the drums/latin percussion in this project were recorded in that room. We had the Upright bass, Accordion, Acoustic Guitar and Piano behind the conductor with some separation.
The drums and latin percussion were in a small room adjacent to the studio but were playing together with the orchestra by having a video and headphone feed from the main room. But in order to not have the rather loud drum kit not bleed on all microphones in the room (which would have made the sound muddy) it was necessary to have them in an extra space.
Here's a small video featurette that was released with the game showing a bit of the recording situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-ohgaAY_qY
You will notice in the multitrack session that there are a few channels which carry no signal whatsoever (for instance the drum tracks) as they were not playing in this particular cue but were active in other cues that I will upload as multritracks in future posts.
The general microphone setup in this recording was a Decca Tree (Left, Center, Right), Outriggers and Surround Microphones plus quite a generous amount of Spot Microphones on Sections and individual players.
The seating was quite standard for the orchestra. Strings from left to right were 1sts, 2nds, Violas and Celli. The Double Basses were sitting behind the Celli. The woodwinds were centered behind the strings. Right from the woodwinds there were Trumpets and Trombones+Tuba (in two rows, Trumpets sitting front row, Trombones+Tuba sitting back row (Tuba far right). Left from the woodwinds the four horns were sitting in two rows of two players behind each other. Over the complete width of the orchestra, behind woodwinds and brass there were the percussion with Timpani in the Middle.
You will find in the Multitrack that there are tracks called something like "F Horns L" and "F Horns R" which doesn't mean that you should pan them hard left and right but rather that they should still in this case remain rather in the "left corner" with the left mic being panned a little further to the left than the right microphone"
With the panning of the band members, it might be the best approach to place them in the stereo field where they feel like sitting properly and rather in the center. With the piano, try experimenting spreading the L and R channels quite far in the stereo field and see how it differs when you pan them closer to the center.
Again, it is worth listening through all the individual signals as there is a lot to discover there, also in regards of how close and far microphones sound in a generally rather small space.
Again, don't hesitate sharing any mix attempts as I'd love to hear your approaches.
The Multitrack Session of this track can be downloaded at:
user: baguette
password: baguette
More tracks from this score will soon follow as Multitracks.
The score sheet as PDF as well as the MIDI file are attached below. You will notice that in the recording there is a one bar gap after the intro which was necessary to later edit the cue in a way that it would be loopable in the game.
