Has Nashville seen the last of live orchestra studio recordings?

I know there are just a handful of people that ever do them, but I used to get to do probably 4 or 5 a year. Now we're coming up on the 1 year anniversary of the last one I did, which was back in March of 2008. I'm starting to wonder if it was not only the last one I did but if it was the last one I'll get to do. The market has changed so much in the past year (two, five, ten). Will there be a time when having all the musicians on the floor playing live will come back around? By then, will there be studios left that can accommodate groups that large?

I feel incredibly blessed to have worked with as many large orchestra recordings as I have. Sessions at Oceanway, Masterfonics Tracking Room, Sound Kitchen, Benson. It's really the pinnacle of my career and I enjoy it immensely. I just hope those days aren't gone for good.

Here's a copy of the recording I did in March '08. Sound Kitchen, Big Boy. 49 players, Nashville's finest, all live at the same time. About two hours tracking from start to finish. Mixed the same day. So 7 hours from a pile of charts to a finished mix that was uploaded for the client in Australia to use the very next day.

http://www.3daudioinc.com/clips/0803sydney.mp3

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Permalink Reply by Ian Wolczyk on February 26, 2009 at 2:19pm

Nice work! You don't hear a full drum kit with an orchestra very often.

Sounds great on my computer speakers.

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Permalink Reply by Lynn Fuston on February 26, 2009 at 2:22pm

Sounds great on my computer speakers.

These days that's all that matters. That and on an iPod.

Hopefully it sounded great on a much larger scale as well. It was recorded as the sound track for a fireworks display over the Sydney Harbor, right in front of the Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

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Permalink Reply by Bret Teegarden on February 26, 2009 at 3:09pm

Hey, Lynn, I can relate. Even in my Lari Goss haydays, we never cut everything at once. In fact, I don't think I ever got to do rhythm and orch all together as a lot of you guys did at Benson. After that room closed down there just wasn't a room capable of it. Even the Sound Kitchen room is really pushing it, IMHO. You have to be a magician to get even a small section to sound good in there, so my hat is off to you.

I did get the opportunity to cut 27 pieces about two weeks ago at the Tracking Room. I have to say, the staff and facilities there made it easy. We did 6 fully orchestrated songs and four duets in 2 sessions and put choir on about five numbers in the evening session. It was a lot of work but very invigorating.

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Permalink Reply by Bret Teegarden on February 26, 2009 at 3:44pm

Lynn,

Here is why people are not doing full rhythm and orch these days. As you and I both know, the biggest genre for doing these kinds of session was the church print music industry. Well, this clip is something I finished this morning for a church in Alabama. All but the chior and leader vocals were cut in Nashville. More particularly, the strings were 4 players in a 12x14 carpeted office with a dropped ceiling. The brass consited of 3 players in the same room recorded on a different day. Now I know this is not the same stylistically and I am by no means claiming this sounds as good as what you did, but I wonder who will care or notice...

These guys probably did their whole record of 13 songs for not much more than the Sydney client spent for one day of everybody together on one song. I'll agree that everyone together is way more fun, but I am afraid it has become impractical.

http://tconsol.com/audio/GodHears.mp3 (unmastered)

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Permalink Reply by Lynn Fuston on February 26, 2009 at 8:57pm

Practical, smactical. I'm talking about fun. And it's way more fun to hear everything going down at the same time. From an engineering perspective, it's a dream. (Or a nightmare, depending on how smoothly it goes, technically and performance-wise.) You don't have to imagine what other parts are going to be there that you can't hear yet. It's like seeing the whole big picture at once. Not LIKE, it IS seeing/hearing it all at once. It makes that extra 1 dB of 2.7K on the oboe mic seem a lot less important. Or that 1.5 dB more at 10K on the hihat. On the broad canvas, will it matter if you painted it with the 0 brush or the 00? Not a lot.

I guess I'm just saying that if those days are over, I'll miss them. A lot.

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Permalink Reply by Bret Teegarden on February 26, 2009 at 9:38pm

I couldn't agree more.

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Permalink Reply by Pete Warren on February 26, 2009 at 4:51pm

Wow! Quite beautiful! Wonderful composition and a great recording. Loved the brass parts in particular.

Bret, your also sounds fantastic.

I envy you guys, seriously. I spend all my time working with a "virtual" orchestra. I'd much rather have the real thing any day. Duh.

Let's hope it's just a seasonal thing.

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Permalink Reply by Lynn Fuston on February 26, 2009 at 8:50pm

The client was All State. Yes, the insurance company. It was part of a corporate production staged in Sydney. Producer and arranger was J. Daniel Smith from Dallas, TX. It's an original arrangement of an abridged portion of An American Symphony from the movie Mr. Holland's Opus. The composer is Michael Kamen.