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This is my least favorite (and too often disappointing) thing about buying CDs of tuba solo music:

So Joe Shmo (my favorite tubist of all time) has finally recorded the Sonata in Q-flat minor (my favorite solo piece for the tuba) and released it. I run out and pick up a copy right away, run home and rip the plastic off of it and hit play...

Yuck.

It sounds like the piano was recorded via telephone 30 years ago, and the tuba lacks all of the sound characteristics that I listen for and love. I can hear the flapping of lips because they put the mic right above the bell and so close that the room has no chance to react to the sound. I can hear the valves moving. There is no warmth to it. That $10,000+ horn on the recording sounds more like a didgeridoo (sp) than a tuba. And when they play together you can't hear anything but the mid-range frequency of the tuba (very dull by itself) and the high-range frequency of the piano. My gut is to check to liner notes to find that it was recorded in the 60's and just released on CD - but this is not the case. Recorded at XYZ university two months ago.

Now I don't mind the incidental sounds that come along with tuba performance, like breating sounds. Those sounds can actually give the recording a more live and present feeling. Anybody who has heard Georg Solti grunting his way through Tchaikovsky's 4th knows what I mean. But when the music is recorded in such a way as to rob the tuba of what it really sounds like "out in the hall" it is very much like having your mother-in-law stay for an extra week AND having to listen to her chewing on an especially tough and rubbery piece of leftover potroast.

And so I ask you all:

1. Thoughts on microphone placement and the tuba (and piano)?
2. Optimal acoustics for recording such music - what hall is too large and too small?
3. Mixing the instruments - I know the tuba can take over mid and low frequencies given a quiet piano texture, but where do you draw the line between record it raw and burn, and tweaking sonically the mix between the instruments to give best advantage to every instrument?

There are recordings out there of tuba solo that sound REALLY good, but it seems to me in this day and age that there are just too many crappy recordings still coming out.

Obviously - IMHO!

In the deep past when I was in the TubaMeisters, we recorded ourselves twice. The first recording was done in a small, dead "studio" by a professional recording engineer. He placed the microphones high in the room and we sat around them. The result was utterly dead, lifeless, and it just sounded terrible. Adding reverb during mix-down did not help.

What we learned: Tuba sound depends on the room to achieve it's characteristic timbre. This cannot be simulated effectively, though some of the digital reverb I've heard comes close.

A while later, we recorded a cassette to sell at gigs, and this time we took a different strategy. We recorded in a high-school auditorium. The engineer used three microphones. Two were mounted on 12-foot stands and pointed at the quartet, perhaps 20 feet in front of the group and separated by about 12 feet. The third was right in the middle, pointed to the back of the hall. That third mike was used to mix in room effects to help balance out the primary mikes, if the sound was too present. The engineer was the same, the microphones were the same, the equipment was the same, and musicians were the same. But the result was dramatically different.

I'm not sure I agree with Joe that the piano lid should be closed. I think that muffles the sound of the piano and I don't like any loss of clarity. But Joe recommends that because of an important point: The piano is the accompanying instrument, and pianos are LOUD. You don't want the pianist to be playing at the bottom of his dynamic range, or the playing will suffer. The solution? Move the piano away from the tuba, and mike each separately.

Thus, bigger rooms are better, and the room effects are part of the recording.

Note that a recording for an audition has a different purpose than a recording for sale. An audition recording should be an accurate display of the player's ability, while the recording for sale should be a realization of the player's artistic objectives. Those two purposes overlap considerably, but not completely. Thus, a little more room effect in the recording for sale seems more appropriate to me than in the audition recording, especially if it is added digitally. And I have no problem with editing to correct errors in a recording for sale, but it would be unethical in an audition recording.

Rick "who thinks recorded tuba is a big challenge and not just because of mike placement and room problems" Denney

There is absolutely no way to keep the sound from a tuba from bleeding into the piano microphone because it is a loud, low, omnidirectional instrument. Because the players need to be fairly close together, the sound that both microphones record is going to have a wavelength about equal to the distance the microphones are apart and that's when you get horrible phase cancellations that give the instruments a hollow sound. Most recording engineers place the tuba mic practically inside the tuba and likewise with the piano to avoid the bleed so balance can be adjusted and clams removed after the fact, but then the tone quality is crap. What's more important, balance or tone?

A single stereo pair of mics about 10 feet from the instruments usually sounds fine and is very simple. I normally use a pair of 1" diaphragm condenser mics about 7 inches apart and angled away from each other about 100 degrees. It is still possible to edit clams with a stereo mic setup, it's just difficult. If the recording lacks sparkle or warmth, Ive found that a "sonic maximizer" really works well. Also, as much as I hate to say it, for that really slick prefessional sound you have to add compression. ALL the pro's do it; that's why it sounds professional!

If you really want the best reproduction of the original performance, record it binaurally with tiny microphones placed in a listeners ears. When heard through good headphones, the reproduction is 3 dimensional and basically perfect. It sounds ok through speakers but the 3D effect only works with headphones. It's fun and really creepy!

-Eric

Good mics, clean recording gear, and a nice-sounding room will sound good. Put the mics where you'd stand if you could during a performance (hopefully, yes, about ten feet away, like people are saying).

That's about it. Too many sound engineers are too focused on the engineering tricks & toys and forget how to just listen to the real thing.

Years ago, a brass band I played in recorded an LP in a church with a beautiful acoustic, it sounded wonderful. For 3 nights in a freezing winter we put down our tracks.

When the album came out, it sounded like it had been done in a broom cupboard!

We could have sat for those 3 cold nights in a nice warm studio and got a better sound. The mics were all too close and the mixing was unbalanced, and yet these were supposed to be a prof. band recording company.

CB