I recorded Cantus live in concert at Minneapolis's Southern Theater. I used no fewer than 15 mikes and took a direct stereo feed from the electronic keyboard and a mono feed from the bass guitar amplifier. 18 channels were therefore required, but I was only able to record 14 discrete channels. So, as the percussionist would not be playing percussion when he was playing the drums, I could swap the the 4 percussion and spot instrument mikes for the 4 mikes on the drums as required.

I had a mike plot written out for each of the 18 songs, and the stage was covered in spotting tape for both singers and mikes -- instrumentation and vocalist positions were different for every song.

From left to right in this photograph, taken at the Friday afternoon sound check, are: tenors Aaron Humble and Shahzore Shah; basses Tom McNichols and Tim Takach; tenor Eric Hopkins; tenor Michael Jones; and baritones Adam Reinwald and Dashon Burton. Tenor Gary Ruschman is hidden, playing bass guitar on this song.

Looking at the group from the front, you can see the pair of high-voltage omnis I used for distant singer pickup and audience pickup on the tall stands either side of the stage. Arranged in an arc are the 5 vocal mikes: pairs of Neumann M147s and TLM103s, with a central Baby Bottle for the solo. (This has a slightly drier, lighter balance than the Neumanns, so would lift the solo voice out of the mix a little.) Far left- and far right-Neumanns were also used for acoustic guitar and jaw's harp, and mandolin and glockenspiel, respectively. I used a pair of DPA cardioids on the marimba, physically moving them in front the vibes as required. A pair of Shure SM-81 cardioids were used as drum overheads, while I also used a Shure Beta 94 clip-on for the snare and an AKG D-112 for the kick drum, the same as my Attention Screen at Merkin Hall recording (see http://www.stereophile.com/musicrecordings/907att/ ). Final two mikes were two Earthworks omnis, used as spots on accordian, cello, handclaps, woodblocks, bell tree, latin percussion, washboard, and spoons, etc, as required.

The hall seats 200, but some sound reinforcement was necessary. As you can see from the photo, I used a pair of Revel F30s, each driven by a Musical Fidelity monoblock. I fed these a stereo mix of the 5 vocal mikes and the stereo keyboard feed. I panned the image of each mike almost to the same place in the image as the original, so that the stereo stage from the Revels overlapped the real one. This worked very well, even from the sides, increasing the levels of the singers without changing their sonic character. It wasn't quite enough at climaxes, so I also fed the same stereo mix to the FoH sound system (a pair of flying JBLs high above the stage). We only turned these up at climaxes when the drummer was playing hard.

This was great fun, and very different from my usual "purist" procedure.