Recording Medulla

Medulla is an intergenerational opera-adaptation of the album by Bjork.

Ninety young singers from 12 to 18 years and five soloist of +50 were set in a white square to be accompanied by one percussionist and pre-recorded electronic music.

Tree child-singers and the five soloists needed headset microphones for live amplification and on the percussion there were 2 overhead microphones (sdc) and 2 beyerdynamic M88;  One on the bass drum and one on a floor tom.  This Dynamic Microphone works very well on both instruments for the amplification.  For the Recording I found the sound of the floor tom missing the attack and I think a MD421 on top might be better.  Around the stage were placed 10 sdc microphones to send to the in ear monitors of the conductor and the percussionist.  For the live recording we added 2 more Neumann KM150 hypercardioides and 2 Sennheiser MKH416 shotgun microphones.

Stereo Mix

All sdc were mixed trough a multiband dynamic processor to reduce proximity effect and contact noises on the floor.  These microphones captured the children's choir, the soloists and the percussion and a lot of the room's ambiance.  No additional reverb was needed on this part.
The soloist had their own wireless microphones for amplification and these were send to a separate reverb to match with the other voices.  On the percussion  I added a short and clear reverb, the live electronics had no reverb .

There is a lot of dynamic in this piece and so I used a limiter on the master bus and a parallel compression bus.