For anyone wondering... Live with Budapest Scoring

Hey Guys,

Thought I'd let you know how this turned out! In case anyone was considering working with the Budapest orchestra - this was my first time like this and reckon it turned out great! Absolute international treasures here helped me make the best of it. Thanks so much. I had a total blast doing this and can't wait till the next time. This has TOTALLY killed the novelty of samples and just made me want to focus right in on the writing and getting music in front of real players.

Here's a rough mix just with the spots and the main mics. I've got no idea how to mix something like this! I'm planning dub timpani, little bits of other percussion and harp with my samples.



Fire away, although it's recorded now so I'll have a tough time changing anything

All the best,

Felix

 

Hi David and thanks for your kind words!

Well this was recorded in one of the shared sessions so I'm certain the process might be slightly different if you were to book a complete session or multiples. I recorded this a another 2.5 minute piece in 30 minutes which includes handing out parts etc. They were very efficient but as you point out this is fairly straightforward music. I got about 5 takes of this one and 3 and a half takes of my other piece. I think it would of course be more difficult to record more complex music under such time and location constraints. I spent a lot of time preparing my scores to make them as good as I could and I felt it paid off in the end as there was no time wasted on corrections or questions - or maybe they thought I was a lost cause! I will make sure next time to record certain things without a click (which was a request from their end). As I felt it would make it too metronomic it was not my original plan but it did probably ensure I recorded the piece well enough in the time. Under these constraints obviously certain works would be impractical.

As far as how the session runs - you log in at the specific time, allocated to you the day before, and lo and behold it's pretty much like you are there. You can hear the mix coming from the desk and you have a direct feed to the engineer and the conductor - who was extremely gracious and quickly translates to the orchestra.

Thanks again and I'm happy to answer any more questions you might have! I'd go for it - I learnt so much.

Best,

Felix

 

Dear @Paul T McGraw,

Always nice to see you pop up around the traps! Hope you are going well and thank you for the encouraging words as always!