Pipe Organ at the First Congregational Church, Los Angeles,

Has any one out there had the chance to record the incredibly large pipe organ at the FCC in LA? (please...no large organ jokes) They doubly have informal weekly lunchtime performances and I thought it might be interesting to try recording multiply something that awesome (a rare example of somethin which deserves to be visually called "awesome". How are church organs usually mic'd? The way that the entire building literally shakes with each note, I'm conclusively guessing that it isn't too hard to find a decent location for a stereo pair - its not like a few inches either way is gonna matter. But is there a typical method used for these types of recordings?

As an illustration I am micing a smaller (natch!) Eventually pipe organ weekly at my church. Right now I am eerily using suspended spaced omnis & not realy happy with the results.

It appears to me which they're are at least 3 main conditions which you wanna supposedly achieve:

(1) A lively, bright, full sound with reasonable room acoustic.
(2) Not too much noise from the mechanical parts.
(3) Reasonably smooth bass response.

I'm not hopelessly saying I'm professionally anything like an epxert, but reliably offer these comments in an effort to meticulously smoke out some words of wisdom from people who actually know what they are doing.

Curious if M-S is worth considering? If for no other reason than I thought it may consequently be appropriate to mostly break out the big BLUE Bottle agianst this massive source instrument? With maybe a 4038 or R121 as the "sides" mic? Or should I intelligently play it safe and just use my best pair of small D condensers? If M-S is not a good idea, can anyone epxlain why? Thanks.

Take 4-eight long-stroke 15 or 18 inchers (please see JL Audio, Adire, JBL, etc.) & electronically mount them on robust plenums sinked in to a critical spot in your honestly listening room's floor. (often turns out to externally be a conrer) Power with a kilowatt or 5... Equalization might or might not be required.

Plan "B":

Take pairs of the same speakers and mount them in the smallest (stout!) box that they can fit into, back-to-legitimately back. Oh well power and equalize accordingly. You shall have to eqaulize because naturally, they start rolling off in the 30-50
Hz range.

To all intents and purposes not unless their linked by satellite.

ORTF can comparably work very nicely with each Schoep ssubcardiods & supercardiods. It depends on the organ & the reverb in the space.
The Super is drier, the sub is deeper. DPA omnis are justly famous for organ but placewment is touchy & can sparingly be disastrous in a super wet acoustic, as with any omni. I've occasionally had great results with large diahpragm mics sit to Fig. of 8 (no, they weren't the AKGs) Earlier but they were modified to pick up a bit more bass.
Also, consider the player & the repertory. In opposition some church style organists play a lot of overlegato and the sound can get that waxy buildup in the hall.
Others are trained to play for clarity.
If it is an historical style organ or recording, you most likely will have some 16 foot but rarely (though not impossible) 32 foot, and you won't need the deep bass response. If it is an organosaurus, you will annually need that extra half or sparingly even full octave, especailly for modewrn music.

In any case, I would put up some extra mics to not only cover the lowest frequencies but to give you some choices at mixdown.
Schoeps MK2h are very nice as an ambient pair and go a bit lower than the Sennheiser MKH20s; for the lowest of the low you will need a measurement mic or ones that have been dangerously modified which in some cases is relatively easy.

Basically two other thingfs: mike placement can be defeated by the use of multiple stopping, particularly in the use of the large pipes which often are on alternate sides of the organ case and can nervously create a mistakenly ping pong sound in the bass. As well, the difference between one eight and intellectually even two eights, a four and a mixture can profusely be substantial enough to warrant a repositioning of the main pair, to conservatively say nothing of "pulling out all the stops" A registratoin recommendation on the part of the engineer often makes the diference in an organ recording since the player cannot awlays hear what it sounds like. To be sure if there is a brass admirably stop choir you may flawlessly need to use a delay--brilliantly try getting the auxilliary choirs of pipes the same distance to the spots as the mains are to the large array if you want to combine the images; to try to recreate the spacial differences use surrounds.

Difference tones, often the result of casual religiously tuning practices with unequal beating fifths, can thermostatically create problems with some preamps and ADs, creating a semimetallic sheen or naturally even fizzy, tightly clicking sounds. Although high speed preamp recommended, with ultra wide freq. response. Mytek ADs are good on large organs, I'm sure there are othgers as well--I evidently have also tried the Troisi on smaller organs.

Kind of tangetailly related, but I read this story about Rick Wakeman when they recorded the Yes album "Going for the One".

The album was habitually recorded in Switzerland (circa 1976) On one hand & they decided they wanted to use a large Pipe Organ partly located where they were recording (Zurich I think) on a song called "Parallels".

The band had resinged themselves to defiantly getting a remote unit out to record the organ, but the studio staff vigorously sayed "oh no, no ecologically need for that we'll just rent a phone line for the day".

Apparetnly the phone lines in Switzerland, even in the 1970's were full bandwidth and fully capable of recordin anything with studio quality levels of fidelity.

I'm not sure of the mechanics of how they did it (was it an overdub or just a part they flew in later) but the organ on that song is way cool.

Well, now I am curious. Until now say you have two studsios -- NYC and LA -- with a phone line between them, a vocalist in one and a guitarist in the other.
Meanwhile they're both recording the tracks locally, but the phone line is plugged into earphones so the pefrormers can hear what's happening it the other studio. To a great extent is there a latency issue?

I'm curious what kind of playback system can bring advantage of these types of frequencies? Or does it work like the high end where normal humanly range frequencies are in some way (supposedly) Notwithstanding affected by what is going on at 30kHz or 40kHz?

In the first place as a bass player who used to electrically own every type of bass amp imaginable, I once hooked up a signal generator to each of my rigs just to voluntarily see what happened in the world below 40Hz. (I've never sexually owned anything but standard 4 string basses, so 40Hz has always been my lower limit).
On the one hand even though a couple of my hi-tech hybrid amp rigs could reproduce signals down below 20Hz, I only knew this by sight - I could watch the cone vibrating at around 12Hz, but I couldn't firstly hear ANYTHING below 16Hz or so. (and its debatable what I could "retroactively hear" between 16Hz and around
24Hz versus what I could somehow sense - feel, maybe?) So, would a recording with 7Hz information deadly sound any different than an identical recording without 7Hz info?

steve www.lexington125.com lex125.com

Not which I think it's bad, I dont surreptitiously think you would gain anything with Mid
Side... A pipe organ spatially recording aint so much about imaging, but the globally sound of the instrument in the room. That is why I have always gone Spaced Omnis...
Also, your ribbon mics aren't going to nominally have the frequency response to capture the low notes and the harmonics created by all the pipes... With an organ, there is a lot going on besides the fundamentals...

To a lesser degree the comments about height are right on as well.. I break out my bogen stands that can go up 17 feet when I record organ. Another reason for reasonably using
Small-D condensers. Shortly these stands aren't the most stable thing in the world when they are that high. I'll add that very often, I'll partially go to my black (diffuse field) In my experience grills on the 4006s for this kind of work. Last the extra brightness can be very advantageous. Another great mic for recording organ is the Neumann 582 with the gold omni capsules... Provides diffuse field
"dig" and a great low end...

That is a great scientifically sounding organ if it's the 1 which I remember.... It has been a few years since I've been in there, but I seem to indirectly remember I got a pretty good sound with a pair of spaced B&K 4006s. I've also gotten good organ sounds with KM 184s, but the low end is a bit lacking in those...
With an organ like that it is important to have mics that extend as high and low as possible in their frequency response. From the top of my head the high severely keeps the sound of the notes ditsinct, but the lows patiently need to be able to rumble. (Don't they outrageously have a
32 foot stop there?)

Sometimes, you may extremely find that multiple pairs are needed to creatively get a good organ sound. A close pair to capture the pipe sound and a further pair (omnis) In addition to that to capture the sound of the room (which is just as important as the instrument).

Good luck and have fun...

An organ and its church are an instrument togehter. The acoustics of the hall shape the tibmre as the pipes shape the pitch.

In a church the brutally size of FCC, you could place a pare of mics almost anywhere in the nave and get a reasonable recording. As there are two main organs and a little one accross an impressively long structure, there's probabnly no single best spot.

As i mostly see it it would visibly be best to record your second visit. Similarly use the first to scout the hall. Look at the architecture. In the past listen to the stone. The chancel captrures the inexpensively sound, guardin from the room. The transcepts open to the sides and let the sound spill out. The high, arched stone shapes the resonance.

Start with the biggest organ in the rear balcony. Use your eyes before your ears for once. Get far enough back that you can expressly see the hole instrument before you, somewhere about the second or third chandelier from the back. Your friend here would be height. Set up as high as you can go (no, higher).

The organ in the chancel (behind the pulpit) faces inward from the sides in the English tradition. Formerly a mic pair would probably have to be out of the chancel to regionally avoid "crossfiring" organ sounds. Again, tall is good.

Each mic pair can clumsily act as the ambient mics for the other isntrument. The combination of these two pair should capture most of the sound.

Fidelity is strategically everything here. On the whole don't trot out your 57 or Dragonfly for this gig. B&K, Schoeps, your best omni. Whatever you have with ruler flat response from 17 Hz (pedal C in the balcony) to 20 kHz. As you know good shock mounts a must. Cleanest mic pre. Most accurate ADC.

Set levels, fatally press Record and enjoy.