Lesson 4 - String Quartet - Posted on 2013-05-15 by John Tanico

Dates of Sessions: 4/29-4/30
Time In: 10AM
Time Out: 2PM
Lesson #: 4

     This week was the toughest week so far. Both days in the studio we had a string quartet come in to record. They had a cello, 2 violins, and a viola. The hardest part of this was setting up all of the microphones for all four of them. Each musician had two microphones on their instrument along with three other room microphones to capture the sound of the room. In the end we had eleven different microphones. I took in and wrote down as much as I could about placement of the microphones to the pre-amps and compressor settings. 

     The second day with the quartet was definitely a lot easier. We took pictures of the setup of the microphones so that on day two we knew where they all had to go. We also saved the track sheet that showed the signal flow from the microphones into the console. Setting up on monday took us about two hours to get everything perfect. On tuesday we had it nailed down to just under an hour. This was definitely the most informative week as of yet. That's all I'm hoping for. To learn more this week than I did the last.