Miking Live Orchestra w/woodwind, brass, perc

[sccrthlt]

So my high school is putting on our annual play this spring. We got the rights to do the musical Sweeney Todd. In addition to the singers we have an 30 piece orchestra including brass and woodwind sections. Also there is a percussion section. The whole orchestra and percussion will be down in the pit in front of the stage. The pit is open with tile floors and sheet rock walls. The pit is about 2m sunken down in relation to the audience floor and then there is another meter extending beyond the floor so the audience would have to come to the wall to look over. There is 3m of wall in the back of the pit extending to the stage floor. The pit is roughly: 5m x 15m. The output speakers for the whole show is closer to the audience than the pit so feedback hopefully wont be as bad. We use 2 rows of 4 overhead mics on stage when they sing in a chorus form. The strings are most definitely going to be an a semi circle but the woodwinds and brass are questionable.

I need suggestions on miking the orchestra, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Also seating arrangement suggestions would be very helpful too.

From all I have read on the internet, which is mostly about studio recording orchestra which isn't helpful, says that the XY pair with stereo is a good choice for studio. I don't know if in a live situation this will work considering we have singers, brass, woodwinds, and percussion to deal with also. We don't have a lot of money to spend because we just bought a really nice new light board. I'm thinking probably at the most $2,000. Probably less than that. We don't have any mics in our inventory that we could use.

Will solely the XY pair give me clarity of the string with all the woodwind and brass or do I need to sit the woodwinds and brass away from the strings and mic them seperately. If I was to do that how would I mic them with the little money we have? Then how do we mic a percussion section that includes a wide variety of instruments? Will using the XY pair be hard to isolate just the strings and move the other instruments and singers out of the mix? I'm guessing the orchestra will consist of 15-20 players so it isn't too big. The two main problems I have is the cost and getting clarity out of the instruments especially because there is going to be so much noise with all of the percussion, brass, woodwinds, strings, and singers combined. Thanks!

[DaveySimps]

What is the size of the theatre itself? Is there a balcony. You may not even have to mic the pit at all. I have designed many shows in which we had less than 5 inputs from the pit. Many pits can function on their own with out reinforcement. I typically have a DI box on the keyboard, mainly so we have an input we can send to the monitors on stage, then I go from there. The musical director and I listen to the pit and discuss what is not cutting through as we would like it to. Sometimes we just have to add a mic or two, especially for strings. Rarely have we had to mic percussion. It is different for every space and every show.

If it were me, based on the info and budget you provided, I would buy a DI or two (if you are using keyboards), a couple of small diaphragm condenser mics (great for strings), a couple of dynamic mics, and some stands. This will give you some mics to have in stock to use as you see fit. If you are only using hanging mics for the actors, I would say your money may be better spent on wireless mic systems.

~Dave

[sccrthlt]

Thanks for the reply. Now that you say that it's going to make my life a lot easier. Thanks! Also, the vocals each have their own wireless mics. 20 in total.

[DuckJordan]

have you heard an orchestra play in your pit? We have done several musicals where an orchestra was needed. when our actors tried to just project there voices over the sound of the orchestra, they couldn't even be heard in the front row. My suggestion would be try it without microing anything in the pit and see if you have enough volume.

[sccrthlt]

Haha. God point. I haven't heard the orchestra play in the pit. I was just assuming.

[Lightguy48]

I agree, I've done theatres up to 800-900 seats and had no issues with the orchestra being heard, although certain amount depends on the proscenium design, ours was angled to provide good reflection from the pit area.

We only ran 1 mic in the pit, off the piano which fed the on stage monitors for the performers.

Sometimes less is more...

[DuckJordan]

well our pit actually just goes straight up same with the proscenium they just placed our cealing to angle up in about a 20* fashion to let the actors be heard better but it also coincidentaly helped produce a better sound from the pit. i have also found that the closer you place the more bass sounding instruments to the audience the better that they "feel" the bass which i feel results in a better show... maybe its just me but that is how i feel.