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So I have two students making recordings for some upcoming competitions this summer. Neither one has a whole lot of money to rent a large venue, or buy expensive recording equipment. I was wondering what the acceptable standards for making competition recordings today are. Do they need to sound like a professional CD? I think I could make a decent recording of my stendents with an external mic and my minidisc, but I'm worried about the quality. Those of you who might judge these things, do you automatically throw out a person's submission if it is a notch below "professional level" recording quality? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Minidisc recorders have surprisingly decent quality, if you are using a good mic. I have made it past quite a few preliminary rounds with my minidisc recorder.

Nick

anonymous4 wrote:So I have two students making recordings for some upcoming competitions this summer. Neither one has a whole lot of money to rent a large venue, or buy expensive recording equipment. I was wondering what the acceptable standards for making competition recordings today are. Do they need to sound like a professional CD? I think I could make a decent recording of my stendents with an external mic and my minidisc, but I'm worried about the quality. Those of you who might judge these things, do you automatically throw out a person's submission if it is a notch below "professional level" recording quality? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've always had the best luck making recordings on tuba in as "dry" a room as possible and then using a mixer with effects for adding "hall" to the sound (something like a Mackie DFX6). Hopefully someone in town has one you can use, and a small one like the Mackie isn't even terribly expensive (as low as $100 or so on eBay for a decent used one or about $300 new). A large venue can actually produce lesser quality recordings, as "boominess" is often a problem and is extremely difficult to remove from the source recording.

Are these solos with accompaniment, excerpts, or a combination of both? Either way, I think you'll have the best results by recording in a dry room (like a studio office...lots of carpet and soundproofing if possible). Get the highest quality microphone you can and place it quite near the bell to get the cleanest possible sound. You don't want a tremendous amount of valve noise in the source recording, but it's fairly easy to get rid of most of it in post-production.

Good luck to you and your students!

When advising a student on quality of submission tapes, you often have to ask yourself what will other people be sending? Most of the time, it's edited "studio-quality" recordings. Not exactly fair, but it's what happens. My vote - videotaped submissions in the future!

- Pat Stuckemeyer