Ten days ago, I made an archive recording of Birmingham Opera's presentation of Jonathan Dove's new work, Life Is A Dream at a disused factory: the orchestra were in a fixed position, but the performers, including a 100-strong amateur chorus, and the audience, moved around the space. I was very restricted in how I managed to make this recording and I opted for a mix of fixed and moving M/S set-ups, spot and ambience miking, using both a mobile Soundfield SPS200 and a fixed, at the orchestra position, Core-Sound TetraMic. I'm currently listening through the recordings in order to make a definitive archive copy and when I listen to the sections of the orchestral performance in surround from the TetraMic, the results are thrilling. Similarly, the chorus sections recorded with the Soundfield in the huge space of the empty warehouse listened to in surround, are much more involving than when I drop down to a two channel mix.
I've recorded Dove's work before, in Peterborough, where the performers and audience moved from the interior of the cathedral to a shopping mall via the town centre and at The Hackney Empire Theatre, where there were two choirs at opposite sides of the top balcony, an Oud ensemble in one of the high boxes, a steel band and a Salvation Army band at the opposites sides of the rear of the theatre, a jazz ensemble in one of the stage boxes and a conventional chamber orchestra in the pit. This is modern, accessible material that benefits hugely from the space in which it's performed and, although the final edit will be in stereo, I will also be supplying a surround version, just for the hell of it. I think that there's far more spatial music out there than you might think. Regards, John On 3 Apr 2012, at 00:58, Marc Lavallée wrote: > > Two weeks ago, I saw a performance of Répons by Boulez. It was a > canadian première, 30 years after its creation. The audience surrounded > the orchestra, and six percussion instruments surrounded the audience, > along with 6 speakers. It was happening in a very large room (an old > boat factory), so there was an incredible mix of close and distant > sounds. I saw many other concerts with instruments and sounds > surrounding the audience, with music from John Cage, Terry Riley, > Steve Reich, and even Schubert. It may not be common, but it does > exist, so we should expect some more surround recordings in a not so > distant future. One of the most interesting 5.0 recordings I heard is > the Virtual Haydn project, that recreates the acoustic experience of > small concert halls of the 18th century. _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list Sursound@music.vt.edu https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
