4 Part Music Blog

On Saturday we recorded the Nelson Recorder Trio. This is our first collaboration with the trio and the first time we had been given the opportunity to record this type of ensemble.  As such we had to make sure we were fully prepared and perhaps in hindsight we did go rather over the top setting up 16 channels of microphones to record 3 instruments!  However, the trouble is we only get one chance to record so better to be safe than sorry!

The session lasted just shy of 3 hours with a short break in the middle for coffee and cake (well there’s always cake involved!).  Our plan is to edit the various takes next weekend and produce an approval disc by the middle of the following week.

Whilst we were at the Magdalen Chapel with the microphones set up I took the opportunity to do a little recording on the organ with the Chapel organist Dr Robert Anderson.  We have committed to produce a joint CD to raise funds for the chapel but it’s proving somewhat harder than we had originally anticipated!  More on that later…

Only 2 days to go until our next recording of the Nelson recorder trio who are based in our hometown of Bath.

We have been planning this recording since about September last year when we carried out a test recording to explore suitable venues. In the end the venue chosen was the Magdalen Chapel in Bath where, incidentally, I am the organist. Initial concerns from the musicians were expressed due to the fact that the chapel is carpeted. For this reason we carried out a free of charge test recording to see if the venue was suitable.

The test recording was also a good opportunity for us to understand the instruments we were to be recording. The most obvious feature of recorders is they are considerably quieter than a lot of instruments. The biggest challenge for this is not our ability to record but more to ensure the venue is as quiet as possible.

Following the recording in June 2009, we have just released the new CD of Prior Park College’s Chapel Choir entitled “Laudate”.  The CD was recorded over 3 nights with quite a grueling schedule of between 3 and 4 hours each night with only short breaks.  Given this, the chapel choir performed remarkably and the end result is something for everyone to be proud of.

Proir Park College is a co-educational Catholic day and boarding school occupying a magnificent Georgian mansion in Bath.  The choir has an outstanding reputation for excellence and has performed in a number of English cathedrals as well as throughout Europe.

Copies of the CD are available from Roland Robertson, Music Department, Prior Park College, Ralph Allen Drive, Bath, BA2 5AH or telephone 01225 835353.

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.

Communication today has never been easier.  It seems that everyone is Twittering their every move or living out their lives on Facebook, Linked – In and a whole host of other social networking websites.  Then you have business networking, the likes of 4 Networking, BNI, FSB and so forth not to mention countless small networking organisations all of which have their place.  Then, back online you have blogs (such as this one), forums, video messages and podcasts, all of which are ways of promoting your business or your life or anything else you wish to share.

With the explosion of business networking in recent years, a podcast is a great way to give your customers a personal message about your business when you’re not there. What’s more with automated delivery straight into iTunes or some other similar program, it’s easy for your customers to opt-in to your podcasts and then have the freedom to listen to them whenever they want via their iPod or similar device.

The question then is how to go about recording a podcast.  The easiest way for most people is to do this using the microphone built into the laptop or buy a cheap USB microphone and connect it to a PC.  In principle this will work and there are plenty of free audio programs out there which will help to achieve a reasonable quality of audio.  All you then need to do is to go through and edit the podcast so that there are no strange gaps and maybe re-do areas where there is a stutter and there you have it.

So if it’s so easy then why do 4 Part Music now offer a service to record podcasts?

Well, it comes down to the quality of audio which is already in mass circulation.  The most obvious source of audio would be the radio. Anyone who listens to their local radio station or one of the BBC stations is used to the way it sounds.  That level of quality is almost impossible to achieve from a tiny mic located in the average laptop.

The quality of any audio recording is subject to a number of factors.

1. Location:

We do not currently have a studio but do all our recordings on site, or on location as we refer to it. This makes our customer’s lives much easier. However, that means we have to effective create a studio environment everywhere we go. This we achieve through a number of portable accoustic panels and foam which is placed at various points to “deaden” the accoustic in the room.

2. Microphones:

Using a high quality microphone is one of the most important factors in any recording.  For a podcast we generally use a very high quality condenser microphone for each person coupled with pop shields as necessary.

3. Hardware:

All our recordings are captured at 96/24 which is the accepted standard for high quality studio recordings and recorded onto the computers hard drive via the Pre Amps and Analogue to Digital converters.

4. Cabling:

Even the microphone cables and other connectors all have to be of the highest possible quality and often we will use cables with a silver core.

Is this a bit excessive for a podcast?

In short no! As we have seen, anyone can essentially record their own podcast using a laptop and some free software.  To make a difference we need to offer the same standard of audio you would expect from the BBC.  This I hope we achieve, which for £50 a podcast we hope represents excellent value for money.

To find out more visit our Website.

He may have been known as the King of Pop, but recent evidence has suggested that Michael Jackson was working on several instrumental and classical music compositions shortly before he died.

US composer David Michael Frank , who worked with Jackson on a TV tribute to Sammy Davis Jr in 1989, claims he had met with the star a few months ago to discuss helping him with the orchestral arrangements of two new classical compositions he was working on.

Michael Jackson

Jackson, who once told German magazine Bunte that he didn’t really like pop music and would much rather listen to classical music, ‘impressed’ Frank with his knowledge of classical music.  “For one of [the pieces], he had a whole section of it done in his head,” Frank told Billboard Magazine. “He had not recorded it. He hummed it to me as I sat at the keyboard in his pool house and we figured out the chords – I guess this recording I made is the only copy that exists of this music.”

That was the last time the composer saw Jackson, although the star called Frank few weeks ago about the progress on the arrangements and working on more instrumental music – including a jazz piece.

“I hope one day his family will decide to record this music as a tribute and show the world the depth of his artistry,” said Frank.

Jackson’s death from cardiac arrest at the age of 50 stunned his fans across the world and sent some of his biggest hits back to the top of pop music charts. His single ‘Man in the Mirror’ skyrocketed to number one in the UK’s Big Top 40 singles chart , over 20 years after it was first released, thanks to an unprecedented number of downloads and radio airplay.

Our final recording session at Prior Park last night went extremely well and was very productive. Highlights of the session included Weelkes Hosannah to the Son of David, Eric Whitacre’s Lux Aeternae and Tallis’s Salvator Mundi.

The session over ran slightly as we had a few recordings of people dropping pencils and banging doors which weren’t on the schedule but it has to be said, Dave and Andrew Sackett who were producing the recording for Prior Park did a great job of keeping the session under control and on time.  The next stage is to go through all the 12 hours worth of raw recorded data and start work on the edits which we hope to do in the next few days.

Here is a short excerpt taken from the Kyrie of Schubert’s Mass in C recorded last night.