Truro Cathedral Webcast evensong

[Guest]

Dear All, if you pop along to Truro Cathedral's website you'll find their first and possibly the world's first cathedral evensong webcast. Chris Gray includes a short written introduction to the choir's philosophy on and approach to the webcast. Music is Stopford Truro Canticles, The Twelve, Sanders (set 1 I think) responses, Orb and Sceptre. Somebody clever might add the link...?!?

[bach736]

You can access it here, track by track.

http://www.trurocathedral.org.uk/music/downloads/Cathedralwebcast.htm

[Keraulophone]

Draco,

LJB beat me to it (unusually).

I mentioned a few weeks ago that this was in the offing, but didn't want to post here until it was all up and working. I just want to emphasise that this was a regular Tuesday CE, the only concession to the occasion being the choice of Philip Stopford's canticles, which were written for the choir this year. A visitor to a weekday service at Truro really can find Poulenc's Mass in G or 'Rejoice in the Lamb' on the menu.

Should this first webcast prove popular, it may convince the D & C to install the equipment permanently with a view to more regular webcasting of services.

[DracoM]

Splendid!! Fresh sound, genuine can/dec separation. Boys in fine rich voice, and well supported by men. Terrific discipline in psalms - no hiding place either when miking is that close - but beautifully placed miking.

The Stopford canticles was brilliant in that acoustic, and those crisp, dancing rhythms seemed pretty well smack together. And id those guys work their socks off in the Walton! Good solos, that fiendish treble duet too!

Rollicking Walton voluntary as well. Hate the piece, but loved the playing!

It was very nice to eavesdrop, it felt like a real service, and we were part of it.
Tell the D&C it's a seriouisly good experiment. Sound engineers have done a fantastic job - far, far better than anything we'd hear from there on CE, IMO.

Here's to the enxt.

[mercia]

I'm not sure I quite understand this from the website

The Organist and Director of Music at Truro Cathedral is Christopher Gray . He is assisted by Luke Bond , who is Assistant Director of Music.
This team of three is responsible for making music happen at the cathedral.

[DracoM]

Yes, odd indeed.

Actually, marginally odder, or it may just be me, when I clicked on one of the recorded clips of choir singing, could get no response at all.

Anyone help?

[bach736]

I should think there was a reference to the organ scholar here at one point which, for some reason, has been lost.

All the tracks seem to be ok now. There is a 15 second wait for the anthem if you missed the introductory announcement .

[DracoM]

No, I meant on 'The Choir' sidebar. Clicked to listen to them singing 'Versa est in Luctum' and instantly everything got frozen, I had to shut down my comnputer and re-start!

[decantor]

No, I meant on 'The Choir' sidebar. Clicked to listen to them singing 'Versa est in Luctum' and instantly everything got frozen, I had to shut down my comnputer and re-start!

Draco, I seem to recall the same happened to me yonks ago - a year or two, probably. That offer of Versa est has been on the page since they finished building the cathedral - or its website at least.

But the new webcast is a splendid innovation - easy navigation, fine sound, and real presence. And the inaugural evensong is a real cracker that shows off the choir and organ to fine effect. I feel I should visit every day so that the D&C can see from the 'hits' how popular their initiative is! (I won't, of course - hopefully there'll be no need for such cheating. Hopefully.)

[Keraulophone]

No, I meant on 'The Choir' sidebar.

Just checked, and each track worked ok. Yes, these are ageing a bit - the treble soloist in The Silver Swan left five years ago!

Draco, I'm surprised you prefer the webcast balance to the R3 one. Maybe a combination of the two would be ideal?

[DracoM]

Maybe it's to do with Quick Time components interacting badly with IE or whatever.

Right: webcast sound. Ref: R3 sound: it always surprises me that listening to material via webcast [ NCO, St John's, St T NYC, Truro] there is a sharpness and immediacy that I often find more exciting than the R3 engineers make CE into here a sort of neurotic playing safe with faders / cap-offs etc seem to be the order of the day. How many times do posters on this mb discuss the R3 engineering from the various CE locations, and not to its advantage? Almost every other week, I'd say.

And if you have a choir with strong personality in a big acoustic then there is a real problem that careful on-site evaluation can sort, but blow-in engineering teams rarely do. No doubt plenty of expertise, but they simply do not have the time between arrival / set-up, to test, to tx. Webcasts can spend much more time tinkering and tweaking to get the best out of site properties before going live at all, and there are always a number of test recordings to assess optimum positions for mics in relation to choir strengths, acoustic etc.

[Keraulophone]

I gave up using IE and have since been much happier with Firefox; more stuff seems to work as it should, not to mention Ff's easy customisation.

The greater immediacy of the webcast sound may have something to do with economics, in that installed sound systems rely on fewer microphones placed at an ideal distance from the sound sources pre-selected by the DoM. Permanent mics need to be visually discrete; they can be hidden, or lowered from their hiding place (as in NCO chapel?). By contrast, the BBC engineer has a vast array of equipment at his disposal (I've never seen the female variety do a CE), and there are usually at least six mics for the choir, a mic per soloist, speaking priest and reader, as well as organ mics. It's then not surprising that he goes off to his mixing console in the van for a bit of twiddling and sliding.

Truro has been very fortunate to have had the same engineer from BBC Bristol in attendance for nearly all its CE broadcasts within the last 15 years or so, indeed Stephen Shipley specifically asks for him. I never cease to be amazed how brilliantly this sonic genius achieves a judicious blend of all the elements needed for a recorded sound picture. In my opinion, it is a preferable balance to actually being in the building, though of course the impact is reduced. I mentioned recorded balance, because what can be heard on the CD direct from the van is hugely preferable to what is heard on air, mainly due to the dreaded limiters at the transmitters.

The final microphone configuration for webcasts from Truro will need to balance choir and organ successfully, and achieve presence and immediacy within the glowing acoustic which the architect Pearson bequeathed. This will be a difficult task on a shoestring budget and with available expertise, should the project go ahead.

[DracoM]

But given 'The Twelve' is not all that straightforward a mix at all, they seemd to do pretty well, didn't you think?

[Keraulophone]

Not really, no..! It depends how 'pretty' you mean... and despite using at least six microphones for this first attempt.

However, since this was Truro's first go at webcasting, I don't think this is the point at which I ought to criticise a venture that in so many respects was a great success.

[DracoM]

I am surprised and rather saddened by your reaction to this venture. Personaly, I was delighted to hear Truro. My standards are obviouisly not up to much.