4 Part Music Blog

The most common question I am asked when talking about 4 Part Music as a recording company is “Where is your studio based?”.

The answer “We don’t have a studio” is usually met with some surprise as the expectation is that a recording company has a studio from which it records.  This of course is often the case. Over the years we have often wondered about investing in a studio – perhaps partly to have an answer to this question!

But, in business it is important to be very clear about your aims and position in the market. 4 Part Music has been set up to work “on location”.  The primary reason of course is that our target market is made up of choirs and organists and such musicians do not lend themselves to being recorded in a studio. For such recordings the Church, Cathedral or School Chapel becomes the studio.   This means therefore that we carry around all the equipment you would normally house in a studio.

The most challenging part of the setup is the venue itself. As churches vary in shapes and sizes we have to adapt our setup accordingly. This is where a multi mic technique is crucial.   We have to ensure we capture the choir, the organ and the acoustic – assuming there is one.  Where this matters most is when we come to master the recording.  Our aim is to always be in a position where we can rebalance the sound in accordance with the musical directors wishes.  This could be a case of, more choir, less organ or taking out some of the acoustic.  Obviously, unless we have recorded all these elements separately as well as together we would be unable to do this.

Even where we are recording an organ on it’s own we still follow a similar principle of recording the instrument as well as the acoustic.  The biggest danger of any on location recording is that microphone placement has to be determined for each different location.  Get it wrong and you can either end up with a recording which sounds like it was done in a cupboard or even worse sounding too distant as if the microphones were left outside in the car park.

The second day of recordings at Prior Park College included Bob Chilcott’s “Nova Nova”, Mozart’s Laudate Dominum and the Kyrie from Schubert’s Mass in C.  With the latter two pieces we were introduced to two of Prior Park’s stunning Soprano soloists and we were all amazed at the quality of these girls voices.

Prior Park College

In addition to the Director of Music, Roland Robertson, directing the choir, we also have 2 other teachers from the school who are acting as producers in the control room with myself and my sound engineer.  This has meant we have had to implement our talk back system which enables the producers to talk directly to Roland in the Chapel from our location approximately 50 metres away.  We are also able to offer play back both through multiple sets of headphones in the control room as well as through speakers into the chapel which means the choir are able to hear back the sections just recorded and therefore take on board the comments from the producer.

Technology aside, the most important aspect of all this is the quality of the actual recorded sound.  Luckily as the college chapel isnt being used at the moment we are able to mark the exact microphone positions as one of the key elements to multi session recordings is that microphone placement needs to be exactly replicated between each session.  This also means that when we go back and set everything up again later for this evenings session it takes less time to put up all the kit.