CE The Temple Church 16.ii.Xl

[Simon]

Thanks for the elucidation Draco - I wasn't sure quite which of the multitude of comments you were referring to! :)

Simon

[Frobenius]

Thank you for that. Having been in your industry and understanding the politics, I am not surprised that you have confirmed what I had guessed to be your background. As for engineers and producers being "scathing " about their colleagues ,although my experience was outside the Beeb it was commonplace in the industry. Usually it was insecurity on their part or just plain old sour grapes. And I never met a producer/ director/ engineer who didn't think their own "ears" were the best even when they changed with age.

[Magnificat]

A couple of years ago CE was broadcast live on Sundays. On the day of the broadcast from St Albans I attended the morning service and on my way out through the Nave it had already been set up for the broadcast of Evensong later.

I counted fourteen microphones on and around the choir stalls and the Nave sanctuary yet the broadcast sound seemed distant when I listened on radio that afternoon.

The congregation would have occupied the front rows of the Nave in front of the choir. Wouldn't a tall pole with two microphones one for each side of the choir placed behind the last row of the congregation have captured the sound they heard better?

One other microphone for the readers of the lessons at the Lectern and one at the Pulpit for the sermon would seem to me to have been sufficient.

Does it have to be more complicated? Perhaps you experts can enlighten me.

VCC

[Frobenius]

A sensible observation if I may say.
Well fourteen mics seems quite normal as I recall from my day there. Some were closer to the choir than the others and some were spares as there is only one "take" on these services. There might have been 2 for the sermon and 2 at the pulpit. This would give a spare and a choice of distance from the orator. Another 2 would have been for the organ and another 2 for the general ambience of St Albans. The point is that most were not turned on after a choice had been made. I remember the set up was completed just before the rehearsal and there was just once listen of each piece of music. By the end of that piece copious notes were made. Others have commented on the brevity of this weeks Intriot. Imagine how quickly that had to be done and it was the opening of the broadcast. There was also mics for the solos should they be needed and one which just acted as a spare and communication in rehearsal to the music director in the van. You see I paid attention that day!

As for setting up the microphones where you suggest I agree it sounds like a good placement. However consider this: Microphones do not work to the same laws as the human ear. The sound to a microphone is exaggerated in distance compared with the ear as you get further away. Therefore to compensate this, microphones have to placed nearer than you might expect. That is just in terms of volume. There is also the problem that higher and lower frequencies have a different relationship in terms of distance.

I note you were looking at the microphone set up before rehearsal and things might have changed before transmission.

So in conclusion I suppose the answer is yes it does have to be more complicated. BTW just broadcasting the mics used on the website might well work for the interweb but would sound completley different different on FM/DAB/ FREEVIEW/" HD " ( which Yorks_Bass is quite correct in noting that it it is not HD but just a marketing name ).

[Magnificat]

Thanks for this - very interesting.

VCC

[Laurence Target]

I worshipped at the church, and have heard it broadcast this afternoon. The problems with both were caused by the BBC, placing the choir very oddly, not in the stalls, but in the round church instead of the chancel, which sounded odd there, and muddled in the broadcast. The building has a distinctive sound, but the engineers don't seem even to have tried to capture it, instead wanting to make the organ sound as if it weren't there, but somewhere else altogether.

'Raucous' certainly isn't fair. The pieces can stand the full treatment, and the Parry needs it.

[DracoM]

I've heard other foundations talk about this kind of interference by BBC in their normal layout. Why? Is the roundness of the Temple a particular problem? And cathedrals have spoken about the engineers insisting that the choir sings elsewhere than their stalls. Why?

Having listened to it again this afternoon, I have to say very, very reluctantly my guess would be that James Vivian will not be all that happy with what he hears.

[decantor]

I had no idea that choirs were moved around their building at the BBC's behest. Since it is likely to affect the way they hear themselves and each other, it seems an unnecessary call on their professionalism during the pressure of a live broadcast; it reflects badly on the Beeb's engineering skills, and reduces the 'live' experience of R3 listeners in making no attempt to reproduce the local acoustic.

I too listened again off air today. It shaded my view of the choir's performance. The men, though never allowed into the foreground, were pretty darn good. The front row were hugely committed but did seem to work over-hard to achieve their highest notes - are they being taught something of the Tolzer method whilst also retaining a measure of the trad Anglican sound? The treble soloist sang nervelessly and musically for almost five minutes, and deserves his pat on the back. I did enjoy this service more the second time around, but Draco is surely right to suggest that James Vivian may well feel betrayed. I have a contact in USA, vastly experienced in Anglican liturgical singing, who regards the Temple's latest CD as one of the best he has heard in recent years: that was not what we heard in CE.

This thread has also introduced some discussion of members' RX equipment. I do not understand that. I have some Sony FM apparatus that I was given as a retirement present. At a volume setting of 14/30, it gives me acceptable reception of solo recitals, of chamber and symphonic music, of jazz and the spoken word - all irrespective of live or studio. For CE I need to wind up to at least 18/30, sometimes 20/30. There is a deficiency in both quantity and quality, and I see no reason to spare the sensibilities of those responsible, especially if a choir's reputation suffers in consequence.

[pole_2_pole]

I've heard other foundations talk about this kind of interference by BBC in their normal layout.

Moving around the building for various reasons is not that uncommon. We can all be certain that different parts of a building have a different acoustic which may work better for one service than another or for a recording or broadcast; may also be a case of logistics. I know that Winchester broadcast in the nave as the acoustic is richer than the quire... Likewise Portsmouth.

[DracoM]

Thinking back over this thread, I am a bit bothered.

I tried to put myself in the shoes / ears of a DoM faced with what he / she might consider an on-air unsatisfactory outcome of a service he/she had taken some trouble to arrange. Some things you can control in terms of repertoire, singing, voluntary etc. But how that service is engineered / appears on domestic radio kit is probably more often than not outside most DoMs' technical reach and actually, they have no time to spend on it, so force majeure leave it to the professionals. If the visiting team of engineers is good, then that's terrific, but supposing it isn't, or you don't quite have a working relationship with that team, then you have absolutely nowhere to go.

You can hardly ask for a small announcement before the Sunday repeat to mitigate criticism, and you just have to fume and get on.

BUT what then struck me was that if it is a bit of a lottery about whether you as DoM can have confidence in the sound team and that it has real in-depth knowledge of repertoire, or on-site acoustic, then how serendipitous does it all become, and how depressing it must be when you hear results that disappoint through things beyind your control? That's possibly your reputation on the line, isn't it? Maybe the tiniest dent in the relationship between DoM and his / her choir?

This was particularly occasioned for me by one or two posters actually at the Temple Church service who recorded upthread their dismay at the discrepancy between what was heard in the service and what listeners at home would have heard. And this is not the first time such comments have been made - I seem to recall the recent KCC CE for example which felt to some to be very odd in terms of balance, or further back, an Eton Choral course tx a couple of years ago, and off and on more or less every third or so week we get grumbles of a similar kind.

Now, maybe some buildings are indeed particularly tricky to rig, some repertoires trickier to mike, maybe some sound teams are more proficient, but for some DoMs it must be enough of a lottery to make them wish they hadn't bothered, and to have your precious choir ill-served in a 'showcase' on national radio must be pretty heart-breaking.

I wonder how the BBC ensure uniform standards - are uniform standards possible? Perish the thought, but do budgetary considerations ever come into this? I wonder whether there is a standard de-brief between DoMs / producers / the BBC Religious dept on the outcomes that might get noted as findings and then get passed on to a sound team for their / or another team's visit next CE in that foundation??

Can anyone help on that?

[Magnificat]

[QUOTE. I have a contact in USA, vastly experienced in Anglican liturgical singing, who regards the Temple's latest CD as one of the best he has heard in recent years: that was not what we heard in CE.

Recordings are, of course, heavily tidied up editing out the sharp and flat singing and only using the best takes etc.

Live performance,such as CE, is the best wy to judge the real competence of any choir in my opinion even the professionals.

[DracoM]

Erm.........not sure that was the point I was trying to make. Still, that's my fault.

[Magnificat]

My point was in answer to decantor #54

[decantor]

Recordings are, of course, heavily tidied up editing out the sharp and flat singing and only using the best takes etc.

Live performance,such as CE, is the best wy to judge the real competence of any choir in my opinion even the professionals.

Agreed, of course, about CD recordings. But the thrust of much of this thread is that we dare not judge a choir even by its live performances if the engineering is not to be trusted. And it does seem that the CE broadcasts are especially badly served in this regard: there are no such problems in the RAH, Wigmore Hall, and so on. Cathedrals and colleges may not be easy to wire for sound, but we are surely dealt too many sow's ears - and that's worrying Draco too.

[ardcarp]

I know almost nothing about the technical side of sound engineering. I wonder if we ought to be dissing Aunty quite so much, though. I imagine CE live broadcasts are quite expensive to produce, and I'd rather have them warts-and-all than
not-at-all. I hear Aunty is whetting her knife quite vigorously at the moment.