stickman393


Wait - no one has mentioned the obvious. If the quartet is playing to a pre-recorded track, they are going to have headphones, and therefore, they will presumably be listenting to each other's instruments through the headphones also.

This may put some limitations on how you set up the mikes. You'll probably need one set optimized for performer monitoring, and then the main set to actually capture the performance.

Or have i missed something?

Jeff, post 11: "Now I have forgotton that they might be playing to a pre recorded track, is that right. So if you do an M/S recording you will have to do a temporary decode live and send it to their cans as well as the music obviously. If you get the balance right there (slightly more quartet so they can hear each other well) then you should be OK too. When I have recorded quartets playing to tracks sometimes micing them individually might be the better option."
 
But yes, this is important to prepatory work done and will add other dynamics that may affect how well the quartet plays depending upon their experience with this type of setting.  Might be better to keep it simple s***** or not and cover all your bases and be able to provide a mix they can live with in the cans?

spindlebox said: but at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself - or your client's overall goal - and work FOR THE SONG AT HAND.

I say: well, yes. That's what I've been saying all along. Do the best recording for the song at hand. We can have different opinions on how to achieve it. But again, since no one here has any idea about what the song at hand is really like then all advice on how to record it is just spittin in the wind. Including mine. But mine covers the most eventualities. jamescollins is certainly free to ignore it.

I don't have time to read through all the responses but I did a string quartet a month ago and have done many "string" sessions here. I positioned the quartet in a semi-circle with violins on one side and cellos on the other. Go on YouTube and look at many of the string quartet seating arrangements and I think you will see this is a typical setup. The advantage to this arrangement is that you have the lower/darker stuff more on one side and the brighter stuff on the other. I used a simple X/Y arrangement about 8 feet back. In some cases the cellos were overbearing so it was rather simple to reduce them since they were more to one side. Gentle (GENTLE) mastering. Avoid brink limiting clipping if you can stand it. I generally try to avoid getting the mics too close - that bow noise... yuck ha ha

Record the quartet as if you are recording a quartet.  Record the others with their own close mics

I cannot recommend XY, it is almost NEVER used in professional classical recording of ensembles.   ORTF or NOS if you are using cardioids, AB omnis even better.