Recording Six Players in a Room That Isn't a Studio

A church or a hall is a fourth instrument on the take. With six players in it, the room stops being a place you record in and becomes part of the arrangement, and the mic plan is a decision about how much of it the writing can carry.

The published accounts we lean on describe a quartet and small-ensemble sessions, not six players, so we reason from them rather than claim a six-player result. The principles hold as the group grows. The number of phase relationships between mics grows with it.

If you are weighing how a room changes a score, what changes when the score is played in the room covers the writing side.

Test the room with the real players

Not every church sounds good, and the only reliable test is the exact combination of instruments playing in the building. An empty room tells you little about what six players will do to it.

The same guide asks for a usable dry area, so you can play a take back in a dead acoustic and judge what the mics caught rather than what the room is doing to your ears. It also warns that headphones and most hi-fi speakers mislead, and suggests checking takes on two or three systems, a car stereo included.

Then there is noise. The guide lists visitors, traffic and grounds maintenance, and recommends a quiet building away from main roads. Disused buildings that no longer hold services can be booked for a day without interruption. It quotes a rate from as little as £25 a day. The page dates from January 2013, so treat that as history and ask for a current figure.

A location day has no second take tomorrow, which is why we keep a backup recorder running even when we trust the main deck.

Omni or cardioid

The most useful case study we know is a string quartet recorded in St Lawrence church, Rowhedge, Essex: an octagonal 1838 stone building with a vaulted timber roof and a capacity of about 200. One engineer, six mics, and four close mics that didn't match.

Everything started in cardioid, spaced evenly to limit phase trouble, and phasing stayed a problem. Switching every close mic except one to omni made the ensemble, in the engineer's words, "much more cohesive", at the price of a less controlled stereo image. A mid-side pair mounted high in the room, with a figure-8 side mic at right angles to the players and a cardioid mid mic, brought the width back. The engineer reported that the mix needed very little work.

Richard King, speaking to Sound on Sound, makes the general version of the point: omnis for the main array when the room suits the music, and an entire ensemble on two or three mics instead of six cardioids, provided the room is decent. He's blunt about the alternative. Cardioid string spots, unless you have many on each section, give a weak, thin sound.

For six players the argument gets stronger. Every extra close cardioid is another path to phase against the others.

Bleed: move closer, keep players close, skip the gobo

King's most practical line is about distance: a foot closer to the instruments, he says, removes about 20 percent of the reverb, and in a reverberant room he would rather move the mics than add absorption.

On isolation he's sceptical of gobos. A gobo between a mic and a player cuts that player's direct sound, but the reflected sound can go up, so the leakage gets worse. A gobo can still help a player hear less of their own reflections, which is a different job.

His answer to leakage is to accept it. With omnis you embrace it, keep the players close together so they can balance each other acoustically, and avoid headphone mixes where you can. Spreading players out is what makes them ask for headphones. He also notes that stereo leakage is easier to live with than mono leakage.

The room's decay is part of the arrangement

Once the capture is settled, the question is how much of the room stays. King describes two moves with reverb. In a poor room he runs it with no pre-delay, to mask unwanted reflections. In a beautiful room he pushes the pre-delay so the reverb lands after the real reflections and does not smear them.

The decay a church gives you is long and fixed. The music has to be able to carry it. Fast passages and dense voicings that sit well in a dry room can blur there. Judge that with the actual players in the actual building, which is the same test as the first section, repeated with the mics up.

On sound for picture, as on records, we would rather choose a room whose character suits the music than fix a room that does not.