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This month, we turn our attention to different methods of recording brass and woodwinds. We spoke with five top engineers — Michael Bishop, Al Schmitt, Richard King, Eric Schilling and Lolly Lewis — who cover a broad stylistic spectrum to glean some specific tips and techniques to make your recordings sound as good as they can be. MICHAEL BISHOP As one of the principal engineers for the Ohio-based Telarc label — known far and wide for the excellence of its recordings — Grammy Award-winning Michael Bishop gets a chance to work with a wide variety of artists in many genres. His credits include many CDs with horn and woodwind sections and/or soloists, including numerous discs with the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the Empire Brass ensemble, the late sax great Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, the Memphis Horns and others. He spoke first of his experience with the Lenox, Mass.-based Empire Brass quintet. “Fortunately, for engineers, a brass ensemble is going to have a natural blend among themselves, because they are used to coming up with that in a live situation. As an engineer, I want to take advantage of that skill that they have, because, in a sense, I could never mix them the way they're going to mix themselves. They're accustomed to playing to the house. “I've done many records with the Empire Brass quintet, and that has varied from a straight brass quintet to a brass quintet with percussion, brass quintet with rhythm section, with synths, with orchestra; all sorts of things. The one thing that doesn't really change over all those situations is what I do with the quintet. We work in an acoustic environment that's suited to the music, and which can contain the sound of a brass quintet, which can be quite loud. You don't want too bright a room; you don't want slap. You want a good, warm sound. The room needs to be able to support French horn and tuba without becoming muddy, and that can be difficult. And if it's too bright, the trumpets become overbearing. Trumpets cut through everything like a laser! “With an ensemble like this, I'll usually set up an RPG [diffuser] wall behind them in a big semi-circle, eight to 10 feet tall. The group is in a semi-circle, too, so they can have some eye contact. I'll turn the French horn slightly around backward so I'm getting a bit more of the direct sound of the bell rather than indirect; that works better and makes it sound a little more punchy. And I'm typically miking with just a stereo pair over the group. Traditionally, I've used a pair of Sennheiser MKH20s, typically anywhere between 12 to 24 inches apart and a good 15 to 20 feet from the group. The height will vary, but it will usually be around eight feet off of the floor. Lately, though, I've been using the Neumann KU 100 binaural head with very good results. In the past, I was never really one to subscribe to binaural recording. I thought it was interesting but never very practical, since most people will be hearing it over loudspeakers, not headphones. But one of the features of the KU 100 is that it's loudspeaker-compatible.

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