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Challenging Perceptions in Watford with Harman
The BBC Concert Orchestra’s recent MusicLab initiative was targeted at children at secondary school, aged from 12 to 16, in a bid to encourage their music-making activities at home and at school. A series of workshops were held in several schools in the Watford area on the subject of composition, arrangement, and performance, and the entire project culminated in a concert at the Watford Colosseum on the afternoon of October 18th, 2006, in which representatives from the five schools took part as presenters, players, composers or singers. They were accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Robert Zeigler. The event was produced by Peter Hayward, and presented by Radio 1Xtra DJ Iyare.
The BBC Concert Orchestra has been using the Watford Colosseum to rehearse in for some time, and has called on the services of the venue’s house sound engineer, Mick Anthony of Southeastern Audio, to help out with the occasional show they’ve performed there, as Mick designed the venue’s current sound reinforcement system. For this event, the BBC asked Mick to handle the task of miking up the schoolchildren performing in the concert, while they looked after the Concert Orchestra themselves.
The concert was one of the most challenging events to have graced the Watford Colosseum in recent months, featuring not only the full BBC Concert Orchestra, but also a 45-piece school choir, a vocal soloist from the Watford Grammar School for Girls, audio-visual material from DVD and CD, and the 38-piece mixed school instrumental ensemble. The latter consisted of drums, timpani, bongos, congas, xylophone, glockenspiel, metallophone, bass guitar, three electric guitars, eight electronic keyboards, a Kaoss Pad controller, two violins, two flutes, a cello, a trombone, a trumpet, and 12 singers.
The concert was being recorded for archiving and possible future transmission, so it had to sound good both in the hall and on the recording. This was no mean feat, as it involved striking a balance between the singers and the orchestral and electronic instruments of the ensemble, and also between the choir, the CD and DVD audio, the soloist and the Concert Orchestra. Moreover, when Mick came to miking up the performing schoolchildren, they were situated on a small stage to one side of the venue, next to the Concert Orchestra, so there was no physical separation and not enough room to use any kind of baffling. In the end, he used more than 30 channels of open mics on the mixed ensemble to capture all the performers adequately, and decided to opt mainly for directional condenser mics to minimise spill.
The BBC’s mobile recording studio were using some AKG condensers, so Mick decided to use similar mics, and contacted Harman Pro UK, AKG’s UK distributor, for help. Harman Pro UK arranged for him to borrow several models from AKG’s new affordable Perception range of mics, the 100, 200 and 400, to complement Mick’s existing C414s and C451s. Using small stands and as many clip-on mics as he could, he managed to squeeze everything on to the school children’s stage. Harman also supplied an AKG WMS 4000 wireless mic system - Iyare and Robert Ziegler each used an HT4000 handheld mic with a C535 capsule for their introductions and comments during the concert.
“I used the Perceptions on the flutes, the metallic percussion, and the singers, and they sounded great, “ comments Mick Anthony. “I couldn’t believe I was getting such good results from mics costing less than 200 pounds. I also put up a top-of-the-range Perception 400 alongside a Neumann U87 that I was using for the singers, and was amazed at how little difference there was. The Perceptions sounded very uncoloured and natural, and more to the point, there was very little spill, which was really what I needed on this job.”
The concert, in which the BBC Concert Orchestra accompanied the children as they played arrangements of music by Arvo Pärt, Jocelyn Pook, and Icelandic indie band Sigur Ros, as well as their own compositions, was a great success. “They sounded great,” said Mick, “and even though we’d only had one partial run-through in the hall before the concert, the kids played really well - the solo vocalist was particularly good. It all came together on the day.”
16th November 2006
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