Atlantic Union Ensemble – Sons and Daughters of Harmony

Editing & Mixing [Choir/Orchestral]

Year:

2024

Role:

Mixing Engineer, Sound Designer

Client:

Mark Christopher Scheffler (US)

About

“Sons and Daughters of Harmony” is a choral and orchestral work celebrating the universal gift of music and musicians and the idea that we are all, without exception, “Sons and Daughters of Harmony”

Mark Scheffler

This project, put together by Mark Scheffler (Appleton, Wisconsin USA), is a high-quality recording of a studio performance for an 11 minute choral and orchestra piece.

Had a great time working in this project because it was challenging, in terms of sound design and editing. Got access to 8x separate vocal files by Darren and Caroline Clarke (England), an orchestral composition by Oren Sela (Israel), and the goal was to turn the 8 voices SSAATTBB (2x soprano, alto, tenor, and bass), into a full choir accompanying the orchestra.

Process

Characteristics of a Choir

A true choir has lots of texture. Its a combination of many singers, performing in unison, whose sound is captured at a distance with carefully placed mics, capturing both voices and room acoustics.

The overall sound of a choir is like a “dome”, when analyzed in a frequency window, with strong mids but fading low-end and high-end, leaving “room” for the orchestration.

Each singer in a choir introduces tonal changes, different registers, speed, diction and many other variations.

Its these changes, variations and acoustics that contribute to a strong wall of sound.

Audio editing and Choir production

To create the illusion of a Choir, from only 8 SSAATTBB vocals, I had to duplicate them, to some extent, in new audio channels, each with its own processing, as if new singers with different vocal registers were present.

Some of the techniques used include:

changing the position of specific words and phrases in the 11 min timeline (tedious process but worthwhile for a more natural sounding),
making tonal variations with a couple of pitch shifting and format tools (specific for high pitch and lower pitch voices),
adding tonal corrections,
panning,
and of course, the usual EQing, compression and saturation to make the sound more rich.

In addition, most choirs are recorded in Halls and Churches. Creating a “space” effect and ambience for the final sound was mandatory, which also made the sound more realistic. One of the things I tried to avoid was going too hard on processing (might sound like a paradox, giving all the tools used and changes done). I didn’t want a robotic/degraded choir, but rather a more natural one.

After having done many lines of audio, the music piece really sounded like a full and realistic choir in a large hall. Although, Me and Mark decided to go back a bit, reducing the number of vocals, because we started to miss some of the sharp and fast consonant sounds. Going back and forth was necessary to find the perfect balance between getting a great sound and crispiness of the consonants!

Mixing all elements together

After ending up with a nice textured ensemble the next step was to blend the Orchestra instrumentation and the Choir together. In the final mixing, and since the orchestra is really dynamic (can go too quiet and too loud in a matter of seconds) I had to make sure the Choir didn’t stay behind, in energy and gain.

Getting into more technical stuff, side-chain processing and automating parameters were needed, in order to make the sound translate well across the 11min piece.

Problem:

When working with a very dynamic audio (instrumentation), and adding a leading element on top (choir in this case) with less variations, that audio will either sound too quiet or too loud throughout the whole piece. Its like having one sound jumping a lot while the other, drone like, remains still.

A gain controller is needed to avoid this discrepancy and make both elements be heard at the same time.

Solution:

Instead of using compression to level the big variations in the main piece (killing its dynamics and making it dull), I prefer to use an “inverted compression” side-chain technique.

This controls the gain of the additional element (choir), compressing and expanding, based on how the instrumentation (orchestra) behaves. When programmed correctly, one instrument follows the other and the song will basically “mix itself”, apart from a few changes here and there of course.

One other reason why I like this method, apart from maintaining most dynamics, is the option to make any sound responsive to both the overall gain or just part of the spectrum (lows, mids or highs) of another instrument.

Side-chain band compression is also useful when the Choir goes really loud in certain parts.

In these, only the mids in the orchestration will duck down by a few dB, avoiding frequency clashing. It creates headroom in this region for the choir to play freely, as opposed to a pumping effect.

Its not very noticeable but enough to make the mix very transparent and clean, especially when all elements go hard in the climax.

Did you know that you can find this technique in modern music such as Pop, Electronics, Metal…?

When the kick hits, all other elements go down in different proportions or specific parts of the spectrum, making the kick feel stronger in the mix, without being actually louder than the rest.

Final Product

The recording was then mastered to be distributed commercially and will be used to promote the piece for live performances by choirs and orchestras (various levels including collegiate, festival ensembles, and professional).

More info at: https://sonsanddaughtersofharmony.com

Credits:

Mark Christopher Scheffler (USA), soundcloud page – Composer, producer for Atlantic Union Ensemble

Darren and Caroline Clarke (England), trovatori.com – Vocalists

Oren Sela (Israel), orenselamusic.com – Orchestration

Nuno Pinto de Carvalho (Portugal), npcaudio.com – Mixing Engineer & Sound Designer