Live Micing a Choir

For all non-guitar instruments; mandolins, synths, kazoos, and anything else musical that doesn't fit elsewhere.

Moderated By: mods

User avatar
Bacchus
Whatever's handiest
Posts: 23430
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:10 am
Location: wandering

Live Micing a Choir

Post by Bacchus »

I meant to ask about this weeks ago, after an event I had at the school.

How do people go about micing a choir for live performance? I've miced them for recording purposes before and it's turned out well, but on this occasion the choir had provided a pair of small diaphragm condenser mics and wanted the sound to be loud out front. They also had fairly loud backing tracks. They also wanted quite a lot of monitoring.

How do you mic a choir with so much live sound reinforcement? I was constantly trying to balance feedback, the backing track, how much I could give them in the monitor etc. It was a nightmare.

It sounded pretty good in the end up (I think, at least people were complimentary) but it was a bit of an ordeal and I felt it could fall apart badly at any point.
Image
User avatar
lorez
.
.
Posts: 9689
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 1:58 pm
Location: Hopelessly Wayward

Post by lorez »

I always doing things like that difficult as well, especially with the balancing of the sound. Found I was always riding the faders and/or the backing track was lower than they wanted. Using just close mics won't isn't feasible. How did you end up placing the mics?
plopswagon wrote:I like teles and strats because they're made out of guitar.
robroe wrote:I dont need a capo. I have the other chords in my tonefingers
User avatar
Bacchus
Whatever's handiest
Posts: 23430
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:10 am
Location: wandering

Post by Bacchus »

About three foot in front of the choir, with the choir fanned around them. Obviously they were behind my main speakers, but that meant pushing more to the monitors, which could cause issues.
Image