Micing a Choir

[Solstace]

Apologies if this has been mentioned before - the search came up with nothing so I though I'd pop this question...

 

In my church, we have the weekly headache in the evening services of micing the choir (of 10-20 people) in such a way as to make them audible during the worship. This in itself shouldn't be a huge problem, however when one considers the following typical instrument line-up that supports the choir, often all playing at once, a few issues begin to creep up:

 

1 LOUD church organ - these don't have volume controls as such, and our organists refuse to use the Swell pedal...

7-piece band (with drums and percussion)

10-piece orchestra

2 lead singers

 

For choir/instrument micing, we have a batch of AKG C1000's in our setup (being robust and reasonable all-rounders), of which four are currently on stands, set in around 4-6 feet in either direction from each corner of the choir "stalls" and set to around 8 feet (at the back) and 6 feet (at the front) in height. If it adds a sense of perspective, the church is stone walled, with high ceilings (far too high to "fly" the mics) and has capacity for something like 800 people (though we've pulled in 1200 before now).

 

Our MD won't reduce the instrument count or the arrangement of each song as it "spoils the effect" or "reduces the effect of the music ministry". We can't move anyone around as the positions are determined by the building layout, requiring structural alterations and a costly parochial license to change. It'd be a 3-month survey, case-study and PCC vote just to ditch the seating of the stalls and get the choir standing closer together, or to get some taller (therefore more visually obtrusive) mic stands.

 

In short, my question is, are there better alternatives to the AKG C1000 (in hypercardioid mode) and our current stand positioning? I've tried and liked the AKG C3000's in this setup, but I just wondered whether there were other suggestions?

[Big Dave]

I've done something very similar to what you are trying to do twice recently - once at a Princes Trust Concert (using Sennheiser MKH40's) and the other was a Gospel type church service (using AKG 451's) for 5-600 people.

 

The age old problem with choirs if your not close micing them, is balancing what you are picking up from the choir and the ambient noise of the band, other vocalists and in the case of a church, the congregation.

 

For the church service, we had a choir of about 25 people on raked seating covering 5 rows. We were fighting the band and the 500 strong congregation (measured at over 100 db at the desk with no PA) we were using Martin W8s/WSX for FOH. All we did was carefully place 4 or 5 mics on tall boom stands around the edge of the choir at no more than 12 inches above their heads and aimed the capsules back at the choir. and away from everyone else. We picked up enough level to give them a place in the mix.

 

I've got a really bad pic of it somewhere. I'll try and find it.

 

HTH

[paulears]

I guess your main snag is simply that you need to get the microphones closer. I've always thought that huge boom stands look dreadful in church type situations - Ideally what you need is the schoeps/akg style old long opera tubes and a short floor stand. schoeps is ridiculously expensive, the old 451 style tubes out of production. AKG, do still make tubes for the blue line series, although I think the longest is around 500mm - but this could fit nicely on a standard small base stand. the blue line capsules are reasonably small and sound nice.

 

The other option would be home-build. I made some a year or two ago using sennheiser mke-2's - they have a fairly long cable. you can feed this down microbore central heating tubing which is quite thin, but strong. plumbers have fittings to convert this to large size tube which I used at the bottom. I sprayed the whole tube beige to match the capsule. You have to build a small power supply that can put 9v onto the hot conductor and then add a blocking capacitor to the audio feed to the mixer (or as I did, buy a cheap mic from cpc, throw away the mic element and use the power supply built into the XLR that runs from phantom).

 

obviously mke-2's are omnis, but there are many similar miniature mics that have cardioid pick up patterns that would do the job. I'm assuming the choir aren't arranged in traditional SATB layout, which normally means 4 mics only required. If they are gospel style - then grouping similar range voices would probably work best, if they'll let you.

 

One thing that works well is also to run l-c-r rather than straight stereo if your sound system can do it, and you have a centre cluster. run the music l and r only, and put the vocals centre only. this lets them cut through better and the audience can hear them better as they appear to come from different locations.

[Matt]

I mic'd up a choir at my church with some ck91's and the vr91 extension tubes for the se300b's as overheads, I put them quite high, about 1-2ft above the choir at the front pointing towards the back at a shallow angle so they wernt poitning directly at the wall, and then at the front used 2 more without the extension tubes on smaller stands, thoughit wasnt such a big congreagation (about 200) and I thought it worked out well with our setup, though we did hire in the mics so I could prove a point to the church that they needed new gear...

[Solstace]

Cheers for the feedback guys!

 

I was doing monitor mixing with the church yesterday evening... We've managed to get the mic's in a bit closer to the choir members. They're not the most "tech-friendly" bunch and it took a bit of gentle persuasion before they'd let me move the stands... In the end we managed a 6dB boost from the usual levels given by the "default" desk settings. All in all, a worthwhile exercise! :P

 

I also instructed the (inexperienced) FOH operator to use one of our Lexicon multi-FX units on the choir, with a little "chorus" mixed in. End result? One smooth communion service and a choir that even I could hear from the monitor position *UNDER* the organ! :)

 

We're continuing our experiments with the AKG C3000's as we have access to them (and our DM and Accountant/Treasurer are familiar with the range). So far, all's well.

 

Now - anyone willing to donate a couple of thousand pairs of socks for the organ?! :blink: