Topic: Recording a choir at a camp's main pavilion

[indietaperwloo]

Hey everyone.

I've been going to this church youth conference on Manitoulin Island in Northern Ontario for the past couple years and every year they record an original choral cantata of songs written by a few composers who attend the conference.  There are normally two rigs going...the first rig that sees it's way onto the final CD is this:

Sony single-point stereo mic (probably XY) > Sony MZ-R97 MiniDisc or Sony HiMD

My rig is a little more complex:

R0DE NT4 (choir) 2 x Shure SM57 (Piano/Narrator) > Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro Mixer > HHB CDR830 (2006) Zoom H4 (2007)

The choir is about 150 people on risers plus a dilapidated upright piano for accompaniment.  Some songs are acapella. On occasion a small group performs as well.  During the week, they do dedicated recording sessions with multiple takes to be edited afterwards. On the final night of the Conference, the cantata is performed live.  Depending on who the director is that year, they predominantly use the MiniDisc and Sony mic rig and places it in the aisle near the conductor's podium on a stand about 20 feet back from the choir about 8 feet up from the floor on a boom stand.  This usually produces surprisingly good results.  The MD analog stage is very good but the mic certainly isn't the best I've ever heard - it's bright and the transients are clear and it has a good, warm mid-low response which is important for a choral recording and it doesn't color or saturate at relatively high SPL - choirs can actually be quite loud, especially large ones in a fairly live room made of wood and concrete with no insulation.  But it doesn't really impress...it sounds too bland, too safe.  It's definitely not a pair of MC930's.

Do anyone have any recommendations on how to mike a choir and what mics to use?  Also recorder recommendations would help.  I was thinking of having a pair of MC930's in the front in either XY or ORTF and a pair of omni condensers as overheads on stands behind either side of the choir pointed down on a 45 degree angle about 8 feet up from the middle rows of the choir (kind of like a drum kit overhead configuration, except using omnis instead of cardioids to pick up the characteristics of the room a bit).
Option 1: all 4 choir mics would be run into something like an Edirol R4 (the piano would be picked up by the front mics) and the 4-track recording would be mixed in Pro Tools
Option 2: All 4 choir mics would run into my Mackie 1402 mixer and I'd put something like another stereo pair or a single point stereo mic like an NT4 on the piano either pointed inside the box or pointed close behind the piano.  Or maybe instead of using that piano I'd use a digital piano and run a stereo DI into the board.  The purpose of all this being to center the piano in the stereo image as simply using the front mics will cause the piano to lean to the right as that's where the piano is placed in the room.  As for a recorder, I'd maybe use something like a Tascam HD-P2 or a Fostex FR-2LE at 24/44.1 and just mix all the sources live off the floor to stereo and stop when the director wants a new take and I'd monitor on headphones either straight off the board or through the analog out of the recorder run through the tape in section on the board.

This is an open tape and the dedicated recording sessions will be extremely controlled and will be recorded over multiple takes.  The live session is basically live with an audience of the rest of the conference attendees and support staff.  I'd like to tape that as well but I might stealth that as some of the choir members get pretty freaked out by multiple mics when performing live (remember, these aren't professional musicians) and aren't used to that kind of pressure-cooker environment.  Trouble is in my denomination, men aren't allowed to wear a hat or anything that covers a head during devotional time even if the hat serves a practical purpose (I'm sure not too many people would care but the more conservative bunch would probably throw a fit) so I'd probably get a pair of DPA4061's and twist-tie them onto my glasses or maybe just get a dummy head and put the KE4 hat onto the head.

So, if any of you think these options would work in theory or not, please respond to the thread accordingly.

Thanks!

PS Attached to this thread is a picture of what the room looks like at least at the front.