1. Your favourite song – Awaken by Yes
2. Your least favourite song – Friday by Rebecca Black
3. A song that makes you happy – Paris by Apathy Point
4. A song that makes you sad – Nimrod by Edward Elgar
5. A song that reminds you of someone – Think of Me from Phantom of the Opera
6. A song that reminds you of somewhere – Millennium by Robbie Williams
7. A song that reminds you of a certain event – The Zookeeper’s Boy by Mew
8. A song that you know all the words to – Shake Your Tailfeather by Ray Charles & The Blues Brothers
9. A song that you can dance to – In The Mood by Glenn Miller
10. A song that makes you fall asleep – Awaken by Yes
11. A song from your favourite band – Comforting Sounds by Mew
12. A song from a band you hate – Psychosocial by Slipknot
13. A song that is a guilty pleasure – Someone Like You by Adele
14. A song that no one would expect you to love – Summer Nights from Grease
15. A song that describes you – Silence by Delerium
16. A song that you used to love but now hate – The Hamster Dance by the Cuban Boys
17. A song that you hear often on the radio – Born This Way by Lady GaGa
18. A song that you wish you heard on the radio – Judas Iscariot by Rick Wakeman
19. A song from your favourite album – Going For The One by Yes
20. A song that you listen to when you’re angry – Sandstorm by Darude
21. A song that you listen to when you’re happy – Hillbilly Music by Kitty, Daisy & Lewis
22. A song that you listen to when you’re sad – Adagio for Organ & Strings in G Minor by Tomaso Albinoni
23. A song that you want to play at your wedding – Prelude and Fugue in C Major by Johann Sebastian Bach
24. A song that you want to play at your funeral – Vevey (Revisited) by Yes
25. A song that makes you laugh – London Underground by Amateur Transplants
26. A song that you can play on an instrument – What’d I Say by Ray Charles
27. A song that you wish you could play – Toccata from 5^th Organ Symphony by Charles-Marie Widor
28. A song that makes you feel guilty – Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid II
29. A song from your childhood – Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio
30. Your favourite song at this time last year – O Verão em Amsterdam by Sensuàl

Where everything is

Before I get stuck in, let’s see a diagram of the church so it makes more sense when I talk about microphone placement.

• The choir sit in the chancel of the church, which is narrower than the nave and has a lower ceiling.
• The organ is mounted on the wall above the main door, at the opposite end from the choir. The bases of the pipes are about 3m from the ground, and the whole assembly is probably 5m tall and 3m wide.
• I sit near the front of the church with my mixer, laptop and other kit.
• The nave of the church (not including the chancel) is approximately 20m long.

Microphones

• For the choir I’ve always used an XY pair of small-diaphragm condensers (Behringer C-2, approx £40 a pair). I’ve varied the position slightly to alter the balance between the men (who sit further left as we look at the diagram) and the ladies (nearer the right). I’m happy with the presence of the choir. The microphones lack a little bit for the basses and tenors, but the choir sound close and intimate with enough reverb to give a sense of open space.
• On most occasions I use a single large-diaphragm condenser (a Behringer B-1, approx £100) for the organ. I stick it on my tallest stand – just over 3m tall. This puts the microphone about level with the bottoms of the pipes, which is not ideal. It is a few metres away from the pipes, and I tilt it upwards to face towards the centre of the front diapasons (bearing in mind there are many shorter pipes behind the diapasons), so it collects a good mixture of sound. In general I’m happy with the sound of the organ captured by the B-1, although it’s only in mono. It has a pseudo-stereo feel when combined with the stereo feed from the choir mics, which pick up a lot of the organ’s reverb.
• On the most recent recording, I decided to use an XY pair of cheap dynamic mics (Behringer XM1800, approx £25 for 3) for the organ. I thought the true stereo effect added a lot, and the dynamic mics did a good job of capturing the low frequencies of the organ. However, being cheap dynamics, they produced quite a bit of noise (which I mainly removed on the computer) and the response to the very high harmonics wasn’t great.

Samples

It’s all good and well talking about it, but we should listen to some samples.

All of these recordings feature the XY small condenser mics for the choir (which also pick up stereo reverb from the organ). The difference here is choice of main organ mic.

Conclusions

• You’d think an expensive (ish) LD condenser would blow cheap dynamic mics out of the water. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case here, and I’m not sure why. I think it could be simply that the dynamic mics are working in stereo, and the LD condenser is just in mono.
• Perhaps this means the solution to my problem is to buy another B-1, and have the ability to record in stereo using an XY pair of LD condensers.

I own a lot of recording kit, and in the past I attempted to set up a home recording business. It never took off, and in the end I only used it a handful of times, and to record some music with my then flatmate.

Since then, it’s sadly sat around gathering dust.

But this weekend I was asked to record the Passiontide Sequence evening choral service at St Mary’s church, Fishponds, based on an order of service called The Way of the Cross. It was pretty short notice and I was fairly disorganised (such as remembering on the afternoon that all but two of my microphone stands are in my parents’ attic!).

In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed tinkering and playing with the kit, and I’m extremely pleased with the outcome. Click the icon below to hear a sample – Trisagion VII from The Way of the Cross.

Trisagion VII

I haven’t recorded this choir or organ before, or done any work in the church itself. In the end I decided to use an XY crossed pair of small-diaphragm condensers in front of the choir stalls, and a single large-diaphragm condenser on a tall stand a few metres away from the organ pipes (above the door at the opposite end of the church).

Lessons learnt:

• Small-diaphragm condensers can be quite sibilant
• Small-diaphragm condensers are not great at picking up the lower frequencies (bass and tenor singers). Next time I will probably use a crossed pair of small-diaphragm condensers and a crossed pair of dynamic microphones to pick up the full range of frequencies and worry about blending the signals later.
• The organist suggested that the microphone was a bit too close to the organ and would probably be swamped by the high sound pressure level. As it turns out, SPL wasn’t a problem, but in future I will place the microphone a few feet further back to collect a more even and colourful image of the organ. Of course, pipe organ’s aren’t supposed to be listened to at five metres’ range, or your head will explode.
• I may try replacing the single large-diaphragm condenser for the organ with a pair of dynamic mics, to get the organ recorded in stereo too.
• Pipe organs make a lot of hissing from air leaks, which shows up in the recording as background hiss. Be prepared to do a some kind of intelligent noise reduction (rather than just cutting out all high frequencies, which also removes the letter S).
• Buildings like churches are always bigger than you think. I thought that a 10m cable would reach to the organ microphone, but I had to join 2 x 10m cables together. I will buy some 20m cables for next time!

last.fm can also recommend other music you might like, based on your taste which it works out from what you’ve listened to recently. I don’t bother with this because I don’t like being told what to do

last.fm is free to join and the scrobbler will run on many platforms. I currently scrobble on:

• Rhythmbox running on Fedora at home
• Windows Media Center running on Vista at home
• iTunes on Mac OS X at work

Of course, as with every similar site, there is a widget you can embed into your website, Facebook page, etc, etc. So here’s mine.

If you’re really interested in seeing more of my musical history, my Music Profile has many more views. You can even compare your musical tastes to mine!

No, really. I’m not interested in comparing tastes or building a network of friends, and I don’t expect you to find my history interesting. I just scrobble because I find my personal results interesting. Give it a go; you might too.

Back in my day, trance was tuneful, I’m sure of it…