Budget Options for Recording Orchestras - Part 1: Fundamentals

Standing in front of an orchestra hearing one's music being played by actual humans for the first time is an incredibly rewarding feeling and can be highly addictive. Personally for me this is one of the reasons that keeps me going at writing music. The payoff feeling of an orchestral session is way higher than what any DAW sample mockup could ever provide.

I was fortunate enough to be working with professional orchestras since a very young age and had the opportunity to gain experience with a lot of different orchestras knowing exactly what to expect from different ensembles. 

In this multi part article I'd like to talk a bit about the different orchestras and locations that I have recorded with and my experiences with them. I'd also like to give you a rough financial overview how to calculate an orchestral recording.

Of course my geographic location of living in Berlin creates a pretty eurocentric view on these things so take my words with a grain of salt. However, I know that many US productions outsource their orchestral recordings more and more to Europe.

First let's talk about fundamentals of hiring an orchestra:

There are three main factors that have a more or less equal influence on how successful a recording will be: 

• The musicians
• The studio
• The engineer

The Musicians

Of course, this seems to be the most obvious factor. The best session players you can get anywhere on the planet for film scoring work are in Los Angeles and London. These two cities each have an incredibly large pool of first rate session players. Of course there are other cities  that have fantastic players as well but there are a few important factors that make a great session player:

Sight reading: This is the most important ability for session players. While there are incredible players everywhere on the planet, not all of them a great sight readers. But particularly for session work where time is money it is incredibly important to have players who can deliver a great result as quickly as possible. There are session players whose sight reading abilites are absolutely insane and who can deliver a perfect take of even incredibly tricky passages in their first attempt.

Ability to play to click: Not all players are accustomed to working with a click track. Covering one or both ears has an influence on how you hear yourself and musicians who are not used to this might feel very uncomfortable in session situations not delivering their best possible performance. But also the pure need to play exactly on the beat is nothing that you can expect with every player as particularly musicians who play in concert orchestras are used to playing slightly behind the beat (and conducting).

Esthetic understanding: Just because you are a great player doesn't mean that you are a great player for film/game scoring. Musicians who come from a strictly classical background might be able to deliver a technically perfect performance and yet lack the sound and esthetics one expects from such music. The most obvious cases are often brass sections that just don't create the "edge" that is often needed for film scoring but always stay in a safe and cultivated sound world. But also the way how to articulate certain lines and rhythms (particularly more off-beat or ostinato driven ones) need a very clear understanding of the esthetics of this genre which not all musicians posess. One of my favourite examples to support this is the Berlin Philharmonic's rendition of the Star Wars Main Theme. While I consider them to be one of the best orchestras in the world for classical literature, this performance of film music remains rather flat and bloodless with quite a few technical flaws. For instance check the part starting at 2:27 which completely lacks any energy and rather feels like a friendly horse ride but not like a space saga.

The general rule of thumb with musicians is that the further east you go in Europe to record the worse the player quality will get. This has nothing to do with them generally being bad players but with socio-economic contexts. In many eastern European countries musicians can't make a living from being musicians alone but rather have several jobs with one being musician. This of course has an influence on how much time they can devote to practicing and keeping up their playing chops. Another limiting factor is that you might get cheaper instruments which in sum will also diminish the musical quality.

The Studio

The space that you record your orchestra in has an enormous influence on the quality of the recording. You can put the best musicians in a horrible studio and the result will be an absolute trainwreck. Essential factors of a studio space are ceiling heighth and reflectivity of the surfaces. So trying to record an orchestra in a space that has low and overly absorbing ceilings will not result in a particularly pleasing result. Of course there are many other factors at play as well and the price tag for great sounding studios is accordingly high but you should definitely make sure to not save money on such an essential factor. Depending on the size of the room (whether it will be small and intimate or big and reverby) you even need to adjust your orchestration accordingly to work best with the room.

The Engineer

The choice and placement of microphones in the room has a tremendous influence on the sound. In fact with microphones just a few centimetres might make a difference on the sound. Just a few weeks ago I joined a session in an eastern European country via source connect for which I had orchestrated. And while it sounded alright in the monitor mics with all mics open during recording we later found out that the essential decca tree signal that makes the fundament of any recording was really problematic. Obviously the right channel was angled in a way that it captured the directional sound projections of the trombones at extreme levels while the trumptes that were basically sitting right next to them were barely audible on the decca signals. With a great engineer such things will not happen and you should pick your engineer wisely. He/she will make sure that every mic is in the sweet spot, chosing the right equipment to capture them. But also he/she will look out for noises or any other issue during the entire recording. Also, with cheaper recording facilities you might also get cheaper equipment like microphones/preamps which will reflect in the sound quality.