Orchestral Placement

[Simon Godden]

I'm not sure if a lot of people will agree with the chart that I am
presenting here, because it's very basic.  What I've done is set a few
panning levels to all the instruments of the orchestra, and given an
idea on how to create depth with the equipment that you have.

Now then, we all know that it is not just the amount of reverb that
gives a sample it's depth.  There's a whole load of other things to
consider, if you want to create the impression that some samples are
nearer to the listener than others.  For example, early reflections. 
Early reflections are the first evidence of reverb (I'm using the word
'reverb' in its loose sense here) and it usually first affects
instruments at the back of the orchestra because they are nearer the
back walls, whereas any voice that sits in the middle of the orchestra
has to pass through a series of heads, music stands, chairs, other
instruments etc, so their early reflections are not as noticeable. 
There is also such a thing called pre-delay.  Pre-delay is the amount of
time it takes before there is any evidence of a reverberation (early
reflections).  Therefore, musicians at the front of the orchestra will
have a longer pre-delay than those at the back because the actual
soundwave that issues from the instrument will reach the listener's ear
uninterrupted by reverberation for a longer period of time.  Then, there
is the release trails (or maybe it's tails) themselves (the ACTUAL
reverb).  The trails are the amount of time it takes for the echo to
stop AFTER the actual noise from the instrument has ceased to sound. 
And finally after all that, there is something about high frequencies or
something, but by the time I get to that bit, my brain has started to
dissolve into the same sort of compound one finds in a trifle.

Now all this is extremely complicated and it takes a magician to work it
out so accurately that a full mix will sound in three dimensions
exactly as if the orchestra are correctly placed.  Some of us (and I'm
not one of them) can afford software that will provide the algorithms
necessary for you to create such depth in your music.  All you are
required to do is 'draw' in where each of the instrumentalists are
situated on a nice convenient 3D diagram on your monitor and hey presto,
instant orchestral depth.  The software (called "Altiverb") costs about
a thousand dollars (I'm not exaggerating, it really is about a thousand
dollars).  It also has recorded the impulse responses of certain famous
auditoriums like the Sydney Opera House for instance, and the
Concertbouw in Holland, so maybe it is actually worth a thousand
dollars.

So, how does one try and create a bit of depth to their orchestral music
without either spending the equivalent of a reliable second hand car or
growing a bushy grey moustache and messy grey hair to match, and
standing at a blackboard with a piece of chalk and a German accent. 
Easy!  All you do is just make the ACTUAL reverb time a little longer
the further you go back.  It isn't by any means perfect, but at least it
will prevent your music from sounding like all the musicians are
standing in a bloody, great long line.  Also, as far as panning is
concerned, you should only really extend each side to about halfway
across the actual maximum parameter.  Otherwise it will sound as if you
are standing in the middle of the orchestra, and some instruments will
actually sound as if they are sitting behind you.

So, rather than you having to work it all out, I have taken time out of
my composition/notation activities to draw a nice easy chart from you to
work on.  I can't post it here because Ning are behaving rather
illogically at the moment, so I've attached the file to the reply that
I'm going to write after this long-winded discussion.

I therefore hope most sincerely that it works for you as well as it works for me.

Cheers,

Simon

[phil Kelly]

Simon Godden said:

Thanks Phil.

However, in a recording setup, aren't several 'sweetner' mikes used to bolster prominent solos to counter this. I'm not familiar with the recording set-up at all.



This is exactly right for a live acoustic orchestra setup. However, for recording purposes,
placement is in the hands of the mixer in order to get the best stereo imaging, and
( as I mentioned earlier ), the higher pitched instruments tend to help achieve this goal.

Sorry to seem somewhat vague . What I was trying to say was in a live orchestral recording , usually a binaural mike suspended above the ensemble ( seated in more or less traditional fashion ) is the sole recording source. In a film recording situation, the orchestra may be seated as best suits the particular stage in use and ALL sections are
miked separately ( as well as some more distant overhead mikes on the strings . In this situation , the engineer may ( or may not ) create his desired stereo image in the way I described. ( On a side point: in general , film music is not generally as close miked as pop music dates )

[Simon Godden]

Thanks Chris,

I've downloaded your chart. Is there the weeniest possibility, you could fill in the bottom part with your parameters?

The reason I ask, is that after all the experimenting with EQs, ParaEQs, C4s and Limiters etc, one's ears become saturated, and it not usually until the next day that I can truly assess the results of my work.

By adhering to your numbers, I'm confident my rendering could improve a touch (or at least not sound 'dreadful', 'woeful' or 'evident that I have not a clue'.

Cheers,

Simon

Chris Alpiar said:

Hey Simon, just listened to this, and I have to say you have really grown with the tools you have available. Congratulations on some good new level for your music writing palette. I would say what you are doing with the reverb still needs a little tweaking but overall it sounds so much better than the last versions of stuff I heard from you. The main issues I am hearing in your mix is it sounds like it has been recorded on cassette tape and then played back in a stereo that has the highs and lows boosted too much. So you get a lot of mud in the trumpets/high woodwinds/ high percussion and you dont hear the mid-lows or the mids very well at all in balance. There are tricks to pulling seperation from groups and a bit of it in places might be the orchestration but mostly I think it can be fixed with recording techniques that I cannot give masterful advice about - but I know its involving different compressors for each section and a lot of EQ work. The other thing that sticks out to me is the percussion really sounds bleh bleh bleh in general. The toms and the snares and the cymbals all sound like something from an early 80s midi module. I dont know what to suggest other than some other sounds. But overall I think this is some of your best rendering yet. It allowed me to enjoy your writing rather than being distracted with the sounds/lack of. If you are interested here is the chart I use when I am doing an orchestral chart. Its partially from the VSL stuff but I added and moved stuff and I have pen'ed in all the reverb types, positions and percentages, but here is the template I start with (I have a stack printed in a box in my room)

orchestra_seating.pdf

[Simon Godden]

James, I just had the KVR newsletter. VSL have just released MIR.

James Semple said:

Hi Simon,

Nice article and a good subject to discuss.

Unfortunately, even Altiverb doesn't work quite as easily as you might imagine. Most people using it don't use the stage placement feature. Honestly there still isn't an easy way to do this that doesn't require a fair amount of fiddling around with levels, reverb settings and EQ. I haven't had a chance to check out MIR from VSL yet but that promises to make life incredibly easy for people trying to do this.

Also while some of the ERs are coming from the back wall (which would probably give the strings a pre-delay of around 40-50ms) we are also getting early reflections from both the side walls and the floor which arrive a lot earlier. So what does this mean? Well either you can use two different ERs for the strings or you can just do it by ear which I think it still what most of us do.

At the moment algorithmic reverb (I assume meaning 'with the properties of Al Gore') is coming back into popularity again and convolutions seem to be getting less popular.

... and while Altiverb may seem a tad expensive, remember that a Bricasti M7 is around 3 times that price.

[James Semple]

Simon, I just ordered 2 Bricastis ... and I'm not joking!

[Chris Alpiar]

M7s? Can you buy me a couple too? :D

James Semple said:

Simon, I just ordered 2 Bricastis ... and I'm not joking!

[James Semple]

Ok Chris but you gotta buy the drinks!

[Simon Godden]

If you've just spent £7000 on reverb hardware, I am really looking forward to seeing your studio later this month..... bloody hell!!!

James Semple said:

Simon, I just ordered 2 Bricastis ... and I'm not joking!

[Simon Godden]

Chris, you have the ears of a.... er.... someone who's got really good ears anyway.

I have a tendency to raise the low and high frequencies and bring down the mids on master eq, and I'm beginning to think that that is my biggest downfall. Also, the reason the percussion sounds like it does is because I have been knowingly using percussion from a trapset (drumkit).

Paul Gilreath (who wrote "A MIDI Guide to Orchestration" says that anybody who uses trapset percussion samples instead of orchestral ones is naive, but I don't really think that that is fair. I actually prefer the dynamism of the drumkit, and I really like to employ the 'ride cymbal' (which doesn't exist in an orchestra) and I find the snare has more body.

But thanks for your vote of confidence, I promise that my sound will improve still further, especially after meeting James at his studio in a couple of weeks.

Chris Alpiar said:

M7s? Can you buy me a couple too? :D

James Semple said:

Simon, I just ordered 2 Bricastis ... and I'm not joking!