Recording the Wren Organ

On Sunday evening, Beckie Davy (organ) and Wendell Banyay (trumpet) recorded several pieces together.  We knew our biggest challenge of the night was going to be establishing a decent balance.  The trumpet is thunderous compared to the organ, even with all stops in gear.  Luckily, I’d run into Wendell the week before at the final concert of yearly Sacred Music Summer Conference (hosted by the Center for Sacred Music at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk) and was able to give him a heads up that I’d probably have him playing backwards – away from the microphones.  Thankfully, he’s made some recordings before and knows what it’s like to have the trumpet stick out of a mix; he was fully prepared to try whatever it would take to get the balance.

After testing the balance with Wendell playing backwards, we still weren’t quite satisfied.  In order to further tame the trumpet, we borrowed some of the long, soft cushions from the front of the church and layed them over a music stand and pew.  Wendell played into the cushions, which helped to tame the immediate reflections and make the trumpet sound just a little smaller and more controlled.  I guess you could say our problem was answered by prayer!

Think about your music collection.  Provided you’ve lived a few decades, you probably have a mix of cassettes, CDs, and mp3s – perhaps some vinyl records or an old 8-track.  Go grab a few cassettes, a few CDs, and a few LPs if you have them.  Pop them in and play about a minute of each.  Listen to the background noise and you’ll quickly notice a difference: the cassettes are lacking the pops and crackles of the LPs, and the CDs are lacking ”tape hiss”.

Constant noise that is unrelated to the music is the noise floor, and we most commonly hear it as HISS.  Each element of the recording contributes its own little bit of noise – and it can all add up pretty quickly if you’re not careful!

Did you know the Chapel has its own noise floor (even when you’re not recording!)?  There are two main sources of noise inside the Chapel.  The first is the HVAC system.  The HVAC blower contributes as much as 10db of constant noise and masks over some of the fine detail of the organ.  When you turn the HVAC system off, you might notice a second noise – the blower of the organ.  The Wren Organ has both the original handpump and a motor.  As with all organs, you have to have something pumping air in order to produce sound.  We considered using the handpump but that idea was quickly nixed because of the laborious nature of pumping and unwelcome squeels of the old wood and metal.  (And I doubt John Watson would appreciate us spraying WD-40 all over this historic instrument!)

Another source of ambient noise comes from outside the chapel.  The crickets mentioned in a previous post contribute to the noise floor, and passing cars on Jamestown Road can momentarily contribute their own noise.

Electronics contribute noise to the signal.  Different microphones have different levels of self-noise, and the microphones I tested for this project had advertised self-noise levels ranging from 12db to 22db.  Preamps contribute noise, and when I first began expirementing with recordings I thought that hiss was just a constant part of recording classical.  However, after using my first “high-end” preamp, I learned that well-designed preamps can amplify a signal without perceptably imparting their own hiss.  Preamps like the Grace are called “transparent”, which may help give you a visual analogy to aural noise.  The “noise floor” is like the layer of dirt and grime on a window — you can see things through a dirty window, but you can see things much clearer through a clean window.  And when you have a really clean window, it’s almost like there is nothing between you and the world.

Other real-life examples of noise floors:

- If you’re in a cafe trying to listen to the open mic performer but everyone around you is chatting – that’s the noise floor preventing you from enjoying the music
- If you’re on a train or a plane and the hum of the engine puts you to sleep – that’s the noise floor helping you sleep.
- If you’re having a hard time studying because your room is too quiet – that’s the lack of noise floor allowing you to hear the voices in your head!
- If your house is quiet and you can finally rest because the kids are gone – that’s because the noise floor is at summer camp!
- If you’re at a rock concert and can’t hear the person next to your – that’s because the noise floor is dangerously high.

Last night we had a pleasant surprise.  After finishing early recording with Tom Marshall, cellist Hannah Griffioen swung by the Wren Chapel to play three movements of Bach’s Cello Suite #1.  The cello sounded gorgeous, and I was reminded of how important the Chapel itself is to the overall sound of the instrument and the recording.  Yesterday was our last night of tracking until August 9th when Beckie Davy returns to Williamsburg.  So tonight we’ll be celebrating a little with some fresh vegetables and a pool party.

I’ll be using the interlude to work on some recordings for the Williamsburg celtic-folk duo So Lach and catch up on research regarding the influence of liberal theory on pro-slavery and anti-slavery arguments.  I’ll also get a chance to mix down some previews and write about the technical aspects of the recording.

Photo by Robin Desantis.

Today will hopefully be our last day of tracking until August 9th.  I say hopefully because we’ve been having scattered thunderstorms.  Too much rain and racket may make it impossible to record.  And wet roads can amplify the tires of passing cars, making some location difficult to record at even after when the rain is done.  The Wren building isn’t next to any roads (though loud engines can sometimes be heard), so hopefully we won’t have that problem.

I received an email from Louise Kale, director of William and Mary’s Historic Campus, regarding the royal seal mounted on the balcony in the Wren Chapel:

“The royal arms of Kings George I and II (reigned from 1714 to 1760) is an antique purchased in New York and believed to be from a church in Suffolk, England. The placement of these arms on the gallery railing in front of the organ reflects a characteristic use of the royal arms in later Renaissance English churches by Wren and his associates. The coat of arms is made of an unidentified hardwood, painted and gilded. The chain around the unicorn´s neck is formed of lead.

When the chapel was reopened in 1931 after being restored, there was a large clock where the arms are now placed. I don’t know when the substitution was made, but I suspect it was soon after the restoration.”

“Performers who regard musical instruments as fundamentally, even exclusively, useful for facilitating performances—and come by their ideas regarding the repair and restoration of them accordingly—are apt to be surprised to see what shapes these issues take from other perspectives. The museum conservator, for example, may well regard an instrument more as a repository of information about the past—materials used and technologies employed—than a vehicle for present-day gratification. The scholars represented in Organ Restoration Reconsidered repeatedly examine the tensions between these positions, carefully turning them around like diamond cutters looking for every possible angle. Though no gem emerges, this book will nonetheless sharpen the perception of anyone for whom the ‘restoration’ of a musical instrument is an unambiguous undertaking with obvious methods and goals.” – Lawrence Archbold on Organ Restoration Reconsidered; Proceedings of a Colloquium

The entire review can be read here.  The book can be purchased on Amazon.

Sometimes a session is wraught with technical difficulties; sometimes with performance difficulties;  sometimes with interpersonal conflict.  And sometimes… it’s cicadas.

Last week the bugs were relatively quiet – just a general buzz coming from the east side of the Wren.  Tonight though, right about 8:40/8:45, the crickets and cicadas chimed in at full force from the west side.  We finished out at 9:30, and I’m in the process of uploading the audio to review how offensive the steady drone is.  Might be tolerable, might not be.

This isn’t the first recording I’ve seen ambushed by insects.  In July 2007, I was in Italy visiting soundSCAPE – then  known as the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival.  (This year’s festival is happening RIGHT NOW in Pavia.  Check out the concert schedule.)   The final concert of new compositions was held in a small hall seating about 40 and went for about two hours.  The windows were all wide open to allow air to circulate and mostly performance and recording conditions were pretty good.  But… for about 15-20 minutes right at sundown, the insects were roaring.  Anything below mezzo-forte was practically drowned out by the noise.  At the end of the concert, the musicians decided to rerecord the piece that was most adversely affected – undoubtedly appeciated by the composer.

I’ve gone ahead and bumped tomorrow’s session up a half-hour, and we might have to adjust next week’s sessions as well.  Hopefully this will help.