# Contemporary film scoring: mic positions?



## mwarsell (Mar 26, 2016)

Taking Spitfire for an example, how much would you use the decca Tree, Close or Outriggers? Or ambient mics?

In what kind of proportions?

Obv depends on genre..but..


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## kunst91 (Mar 26, 2016)

Generally with spitfire stuff I keep the tree mics on pretty much always, then I'll use the ambients and outriggers if I want more, well, ambience. Close I throw in if I want a line to come out or if I have a rhythmic part that needs some extra bite or attack. 

Sometimes if I really want a distant sound I'll use the outriggers instead of the trees. 

But it's all personal preference, mix and match until you have a sound that you want. And don't forget you can use CC's to ride the faders up and down!


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## afterlight82 (Mar 26, 2016)

Easiest way to start to learn how to massage these things is to finish a sequence, then print all the mic tracks to audio. The following isn't a manual for how to mix, but it's a starting point from which you can work.

Start by solo-ing the strings, just the tree - get the internal balance right here, then group them.
Then solo just the string close mics, get the internal balance working amongst those. Work quickly - don't obsess - you want a good solid low end and a pleasing balance between the sections. Then do the same for just the outrigger mics, bearing in mind that violin 2, viola will often be a touch quieter than v1 and cello in the outriggers since they are physically further from them, you don't need to pull them up too much to compensate as these are "width" mics. Then do the same for the ambient/room mics. You should have four groups now - string tree, string close, string amb, string outrigger.

Solo the tree, and pull up the close mics until you start to feel that they have the right amount of "presence", bearing in mind the strings are at the front and you do want to feel some definition. I then sometimes mute the close, sometimes not. Then bring the ambient mics up unto the tree (or tree + close) and hear how the perceived depth changes. Then lastly, bring up the outriggers into the tree (or the remainder) and hear how the width changes. Buss all of these once happy to a "string buss".

Then mute the strings, and do the same for the woods...get the four groups...then balance those four groups (tree, amb, close, outrigger), in the knowledge that these guys are a bit further away. We'll deal with solos in a second. Balance them based on the tree, but with the other mics set to give you the slightly distant perspective, but not ridiculously so (people often make woods way too wet, thinking they are "way further away" when they're only a few feet behind the strings). Buss all of these to a "woods buss".

Same for brass, balance the instruments internally for each set of mics, then balance the mic groups so they give you a pleasing sense of width and distance. You often want a good bit of outrigger and ambient on the brass, more so than on the woods I find, but that's my taste. (you will actually find the O+A mics are wonderful on their own for brass for some applications, but some tree usually helps, and a tiny bit of close depending). Buss all of these to a brass group.

Same for perc. Internal balance (can be tricky if the parts are sparse, but try and get them to make sense so the timps are nice against the bass drum, snares make sense against the bass drum).

Generally speaking for all sections I work up, setting a bass level, and then working up the instrument ranges to balance them in... the risk being if you start high you can often leave yourself nowhere to go with the bass!

Then adjust for an overall level between the orchestra families, in the knowledge they are internally balanced at a good starting point.

Since you have not done any automation or linked any tracks, what you can now do is go through the piece and find where you need to help something - a flute solo, you might want to gently push all four flute tracks, or if you want more definition alone, just the flute spot. You can do overall rides on the groups to gently push something through (I tend to try and avoid overall rides on the stem masters), always pulling back to your "basic" mix.

If you are mixing with synths you will often need a touch more close and a touch less ambient, but that depends on how present/bright/attacking the synth patches are and what they are doing. As it is also all printed in audio you should be careful to go through and edit as needed - this is often more important than balance because it alters perceived balance in places - you often need to drag short strings a little earlier than the beat such that the "speak" of the note is on the beat - because the player, in reality, starts moving the bow across the string a fraction before the beat. Line up transients to tighten things up. Loosen them to humanize. Solo lines often help being pulled 5-10ms ahead of where the sample would be if quantized, since soloists naturally tend to "lead" that section of the music, and accompanists naturally listen.

If you need more reverb, do it as sends from the subgroups first and buss it into your master groups so you still have a nice stem print should you need it. Put an EQ before the reverb and gently roll off the highs and maybe high pass it before it hits the reverb to cut the "mud" out - especially on brass, experiment to taste, with spitfire I find you can turn the early reflections off on something like the Lexicon verbs as you're really seeking a bit of extra "tail" and fairy dust. The Lex 480 is still pretty magic for this, the Bricasti even better depending on what sound you want. EQ and compress when you need to, not as a default. You can gently compress on a stem level if you want to bring up the overall loudness, and then depending on where you are sending the mix, comp/limit on the 2 buss - I usually shave off a couple dB of a medium loud to very loud track with a limiter (fave is now Flux Elixir for me, as you can limit in stages kind of like the old Waves limiter trick of chaining multiple instances together - I'll set to as many stages as I'm taking off dB off the top.)

That's a basic way of mixing just about anything orchestral, certainly a starter. If you need references for how a section balances internally, seek out good recordings to ref to on your monitoring system - pieces for strings only, for example, film cues where it is just strings for a moment or brass for a moment, or certain classical recordings.

I will always generally push epic percussion and synth stuff a notch higher than I might first think; if you want something to sound big it has to sound big against something that our mind tells is big already. If a synth is buried in an orchestral part, it won't sound big because our ear is accustomed to a symphony orchestra being a "big" sound. Same (very much so) with percussion, which you can make bigger by using less high velocities but more volume against the orch. Listen to how this is achieved in film scores you like or recordings you like, you will often find the perc is pushed.

BUT NB: mixers don't follow this as a formula at all and it's not the bible, it's just a really good way to learn the relationships and what you can "do" with the mic options. There are no rules, and only your ears can tell you what works.

And whilst you can make something sound loud by squashing the sh*t out of it in a pseudo-mastering process, try to get everything nicely balanced first. If you compress the dynamic range of a bad mix, you're ending up with loud sh*t, if you compress the dynamic range of a good mix, you'll highlight what is good about it.


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## afterlight82 (Mar 26, 2016)

a quick aside - the first part of this process is really a good learning exercise when you have split mic libraries. Balancing the close mics of violin 1/violin 2/vla/cello/bass...this especially is a really good way to figure it out, since the room relationship is less coloring to our ears and you can really focus on the relationships and clarity, and getting enough low end. (so many demos are low/low mid shy).

Once you do that, you move on to the tree and so on in the same way. You'll end up eq'ing less because often the strings sound harsh because people don't have enough cello and bass or viola (especially viola...). The damage EQ does to phase relationships is worth avoiding if you can _possibly_ do it with the microphones. You can come back and tweak any level you like once you get the basic picture.

The other thing to bear in mind is it's not always the case, but generally speaking for a lot of music - the brass will balance internally if you solo them, as will the strings as will the woods...and even the perc. In fact, if you are conducting an orchestra in a well orchestrated piece of classical music, you'll often find internal balances that make sense - just listen to a rehearsal of a great orchestra if they do any sections where they just have the woods play or something like that - doesn't happen that often but when it does, you realize that the (imaginary) "woodwind" buss of lots of the classical repertoire balances "internally".

If you take that as a starting point, then if you want to push something, you're pushing it from a sensible place - if you throw the faders up and just try to jockey them you're making it so much harder! So much of mixing is about organization - both in terms of stems, labelling etc. but also just in basic terms of frequency and dynamics. That's not to say a mix which is wild and fun can't be right and or interesting...


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