5.1 Surround Sound - St. Patrick’s Chapel

Planning Stage

The first thing which was on the agenda was to contact a choir and set a date to record, And one of them which responded was St. Patrick’s Chapel that has a choir and an electric organ. What was needed after this would be to get more people to do this project with me so me and 3 others from my college course planned to go there. We then would need to book all the equipment from the college tech base for the date of recording and then go there and get it and place everything that is going to be needed to record in someone’s car so we are able to transport everything there swiftly. The next step is to setup the equipment and record them in between a mass and get ready for the mixing stage of it.

Recording Phase

The address which the recording would be at was

  • 30 Low Craigends, Kilsyth, Glasgow G65 0PF​

We needed to decide on a 5.1 Spatial recording technique so went with the Fukada Tree Technique​ which will use these mics:

  • 3x AKG C414​

  • 2x SE 4400

  • 2x AT2050​

  • 2x NT1​

  • 1x SE Titan

Equipment that I will need to record them will be:

  • Pro Tools ilok Key

  • Audio Interface

  • Laptop

  • 10 mic stands

  • 12 xlr’s

  • Headphones

These are the spot mis from the electric organ:

  • 2x NT1​

  • 1x SE Titan

This is the microphones used for the Fukada Tree:

  • 3x AKG C414​

  • 2x SE 4400

  • 2x AT2050​

Mixing Breakdown

All the eq and compression in this mix and mainly constructive and not creative, the only creative parts of the mix is when I automate the organ slightly to make where the sound source is coming from at different times in the song and I also put Ozone 8 on the organ spot mic because I was able to put a pre-set that someone from Ozone made just to bring the track to life more than the organ had a resonant frequency that was playing from all the other speakers when the organist had played a certain chord so I had to go into all the channels and lower that frequency.

I had made on all tracks a high and low cut so that there is no bleed from other mics because I wouldn’t be able to make sure the listener is able to hear exactly where the sound source is coming from in any direction.

I have used compression on every track but not to be creative with it, I only used it to create a smother atmosphere because sometimes thing sing louder and quieter quickly.