Avant-Jazz sounds even better through the mics than in the room!

Last weekend, I had the chance to help out Martin Ruch with a recording in the Kammermusiksaal at Hamburg’s infamous Elbphilharmonie. While I haven’t had the chance to work in the main hall (which some musicians claim has too diffuse a sound to properly hear themselves), the sound on stage in the Kammermusiksaal was truly lovely. From here, we captured the sound of a concert kindly hosted by the Jazz Federation Hamburg from two incredibly talented Polish pianists, Vladislav Sendecki and Dominick Wania, who played a set of piano duos on two Steinway D pianos.

In this case, playing the pianos back-to-back without their lids on provides a beautiful visual effect and allows the musicians to better hear each other, and allows a lot of options for microphone placement, but adds to the diffuse sound of the room, as opposed to directing the sound towards the audience (the hall walls with carved wood-panelling in the shape of waves, reducing direct reflections).

After a little conversation, Martin decided that the best option for the situation would (especially given that we didn’t know the intended outcome – a classical style, more distant recording, or a jazz style, closer recording), we recorded the instruments and total picture from a few different perspectives, that leave the option to mix, match, and change focus, so to say. These included ORTF pairs close to the hammers of each piano, a ribbon Blumlein pair between the two pianos, another pair of microphones raised well above the pianos to capture the full stage image, an omni-directional microphone over each piano, and then two extra pairs of microphones to capture ambient sound, adding options for mixing in more room in a stereo recording, with a view to the current state of digital audio – adding sources for a Dolby Atmos mix. We then recorded redundantly on to two computers simultaneously.

Woo! The reality of modern recording is not always what is taught at school!

From outside of the hall, Martin and I monitored the microphone inputs and set gain. What a sound, and what a pleasure! These two pianists are real firecrackers!
As a bonus, the somewhat overly-ambient sound that I’d heard in the auditorium from the audience gallery was very well tempered with the closer mics, leading to a recording that, I hate to say it, sounds even better than the audience experience was.

Thanks again to Martin and Jazz Federation for having me along for the ride!