Expectations all round are high and reputations can easily be tainted if the show isn't delivered to a high standard. The student musicians had 80 pages of music to learn and deliver, sight reading the whole show. Lighting was programmed by the other AV tech here and students operated the lighting ques via the pre programed laptop.
With this show we have the rights to record and produce a DVD for non commercial release within the school community so I recorded all 4 shows to my mackbook using a MOTU 896 with a be!@#$%^& ADA 8000 to give 16 channels for recording. Mic placement for the recording was severely limited due to line of sight issues for the audience and the distance between the first row and the band. I had to locate the main stereo pair at the height of the musicians sitting down and about 3 feet behind the conductors head, so I added another two mics about 8 feet either side of center using fig 8 with the null pointing directly at the players because the mics where so close i wanted to capture what was around and not directly in front of the mics. Bass and keys where DI and I had a spot mic on the harp.
After an initial struggle to get the sound stabilized during rehearsals, things settled down and the shows went really well and everyone was pleased with how it all went. I have had a quick listen to the recordings and they seem to be pretty good so i will post a song or two up when I get them finished.
I think these type of shows are one of the few opportunities still available for a recording engineer to record with a live orchestra and I really enjoy this aspect of my job, along with the holidays!
