Recording Choir Music

[easymike]

Hi People, am new here and this my first posting, i have been have probs with recording of choirs later on mixing them coz of too much spillage in to my mics of the accompaniments, the drums give me hell. I need yo help guyz. PLZ!!!

[brandondrury]

Are you saying that too much drum sound is getting into your choir (which makes sense) or too much choir is getting into your drums (I really doubt it!)?

The first thing I would do is to exhaust all possibilties for isolation (if any). If you can put a divider up between the choir and the drummer, that could help dramatically. Even a divider between the drummer and the choir mic would go a long way to help. If you can increase the distance from the drums to choir, you'll gain something.

If isolation isn't possible, you just have embrace what you've been given. You may have to look at this as more of an orchestra where you use a stereo X/Y to capture the entire group of musicians and then spot mic what you need to enhance. If the drums are way too loud in the choir mic, this tells me there is a problem with the way the musicians sound in the room. If the drums overpower the choir in the room, there is little you can do about that. You are simply capturing the sound bouncing around the walls and you don't have that much control over how you manipulate it.

Brandon

[easymike]

the main problem is that i have a very small recording room which makes it hard to separate the two. and so when ever i try to add reverb on the vocals or eq especially on the bass vocals the bass drum becomes boomy making the music develop some kind of a rumble in short there is too much drum spillage in my vocals

[brandondrury]

You are in a tough spot. In a small room a choir will not compete with a drum kit unless everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs. I don't think there is any good away around it short of tracking the drums and then tracking the choir.

Brandon