It’s safe to say Viriditas by the medieval Sibil•la Ensemble is our largest production we’ve ever done. When Kristia Michael, founder and soprano of the ensemble (and now also our label manager) proposed the concept of the album to us we were enamoured with it: 12th and 13th-century chants and secular songs from areas that are now Germany, Spain, France and Cyprus, each chant and song a tribute to the power of nature that the Sybils (the female prophetesses from ancient pagan times) embodied. To both our artistic director Maya and myself, that sounded truly amazing. And if you’re an avid reader of our blogs, however infrequent we post on it, you must understand that when we fall in love with a project, we go huge to create something truly unique, and so we did.
The medieval Westerkerk
After a long search for the perfect location, we finally found it: the Westerkerk in the Dutch city of Enkhuizen. This church, dedicated to Saint Gommarus, was built around 1470. As usual, a number of additions were later added, such as the choir screen in 1547 (likely by a student of Raphaël), the pulpit in 1566, the organ in 1549 and the library in the 16th and 17th century. The floor of the church is still completely covered with the original tombstones, more than 1500 of them.
Exterior shot of the beautiful Westerkerk in Enkhuizen.
The Sibil•la Ensemble in the beautiful Westerkerk.
Finding this unique location to record this album in only made things worse for us — we wanted to go even bigger! We shouldn’t just make an album recording here and call it a day, the music, the ensemble, the location is just way too perfect for that. This prompted us to talk with cinematographer Jonas Sacks about possibly making this a video album. Jonas, also director of the NativeDSD platform, was instantly enthused and hired an incredible crew of camera operators and lighting technicians to make this dream a reality. He proposed filming the entire album and make it into a truly cinematic experience.
Cinematographer Jonas Sacks wielding his mighty Sony FX9 6K cinema camera with a legendary Angénieux lens.
If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes story from Jonas and the film crew, be sure to reach out to us! We’d love to do a follow-up too if there’s enough enthusiasm for it.
The setup / the equipment
The evening before the recording, Antal and I went to the church to prepare the entire setup, so as to leave enough time for the film crew to set up in the morning. Another thing is that because of the way we’d be recording this album, with film cameras everywhere, we couldn’t leave too many microphones or dangling cables in the way of the shots, which meant we would have to spend much more time to set everything up in such a way to be as invisible as possible.
Antal and I setting up our main OOA microphone array on a boom stand, so we don’t have to put a big stand in the middle of the ensemble, leaving a big black line through all of the camera shots.
As for the equipment we used, us being TRPTK meant we went all-out as usual. Our main 7.1 OOA microphone array consisted of seven (L-R-C-Ls-Rs-Lb-Rb) Josephson C617 microphones with Microtech Gefell MK221 omnidirectional capsules. The four height microphones used were the DPA 4006A omnidirectional mics. These microphones provide about 99% of the sound, with only here and there some slight help from the close mics.
About these close mics: we mainly used the Ehrlund EHR-M mic for its unbridled transparency and lightning-fast transient response which makes it amazing for plucked instruments and percussion. For the flute we used a DPA 4015A subcardioid microphone, which works amazingly for wind instruments as the musicians can move around a lot whilst still retaining a consistent sound. For Kristia’s vocals we opted to use a Sonodore MPM-91 by Rens Heijnis, a hand-built C12-capsuled microphone with active 60V power supplies and an incredibly clear and transparent sound. All mics were run through the Grace Design m801mk2 preamplifiers for some extremely rich, clean and transparent gain.
The entire recording was done in DSD256 at 11.2MHz 1bit, and then mixed and mastered in PCM 352.8kHz 64bit floating point. The audio for the video has been mixed and mastered exactly the same, but at 384kHz 64bit floating point, to make the conversion to 48, 96 and 192 kHz easier and more sonically transparent.
In between our microphones, preamps and converters, we used Purecable Optimus Link XLR Microphone Edition cabling as well as Grimm Audio TPR (the former for the main channels, the latter for close mics). Pura Power Supplies supplied us with their rack-mounted version of the Dodo linear PSU for our Merging Technologies Hapi MkII, making the converter sound simply astounding.
The Grace Design m801mk2 preamplifiers we used for this recording.
Another shot of the entire setup, with the main OOA mics on the boom stand, and the side, rear and height mics on these large stands off to the side.
Making things even more complicated…
As you know, we prefer circular setups when recording ensembles. This makes it so that you can easily create a perfect balance of instruments, and musicians are always perfectly able to hear and see each other.
The problem we created for this specific album, though, is that there’s no camera shot to be made of musicians’ faces without other musicians’ backs in the same shot. However, Jonas and his crewmate Django came up with an amazing solution: a moveable cinema camera on a stabilized but extremely quickly-rotating head, which was set up right in the middle of the ensemble. Django could then remotely monitor the camera’s feed and move, pan, tilt, zoom and focus with a remote controller.
Camera operator Django de Groot with his ingenious setup with the moving Sony FX9 in the centre of the ensemble.
The remote control setup that was used for the centre camera. This goes way over our audio team’s heads, so if you’re interested in finding out more, let us know and we’ll reach back out to the film crew to write a blog!
It’s been absolutely amazing working with this fantastic ensemble and this unbelievable film crew. The whole process has been such a dream, and now that we’re on the brink of releasing the album we couldn’t be more stoked!
Be sure to pre-order the album this weekend, and get a 25% discount as well as some special goodies we’ll announce soon!
Behind the Scenes: Recording Viriditas
It’s safe to say Viriditas by the medieval Sibil•la Ensemble is our largest production we’ve ever done. When Kristia Michael, founder and soprano of the ensemble (and now also our label manager) proposed the concept of the album to us we were enamoured with it: 12th and 13th-century chants and secular songs from areas that are now Germany, Spain, France and Cyprus, each chant and song a tribute to the power of nature that the Sybils (the female prophetesses from ancient pagan times) embodied. To both our artistic director Maya and myself, that sounded truly amazing. And if you’re an avid reader of our blogs, however infrequent we post on it, you must understand that when we fall in love with a project, we go huge to create something truly unique, and so we did.
The medieval Westerkerk
After a long search for the perfect location, we finally found it: the Westerkerk in the Dutch city of Enkhuizen. This church, dedicated to Saint Gommarus, was built around 1470. As usual, a number of additions were later added, such as the choir screen in 1547 (likely by a student of Raphaël), the pulpit in 1566, the organ in 1549 and the library in the 16th and 17th century. The floor of the church is still completely covered with the original tombstones, more than 1500 of them.
Exterior shot of the beautiful Westerkerk in Enkhuizen.
The Sibil•la Ensemble in the beautiful Westerkerk.
Finding this unique location to record this album in only made things worse for us — we wanted to go even bigger! We shouldn’t just make an album recording here and call it a day, the music, the ensemble, the location is just way too perfect for that. This prompted us to talk with cinematographer Jonas Sacks about possibly making this a video album. Jonas, also director of the NativeDSD platform, was instantly enthused and hired an incredible crew of camera operators and lighting technicians to make this dream a reality. He proposed filming the entire album and make it into a truly cinematic experience.
Cinematographer Jonas Sacks wielding his mighty Sony FX9 6K cinema camera with a legendary Angénieux lens.
If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes story from Jonas and the film crew, be sure to reach out to us! We’d love to do a follow-up too if there’s enough enthusiasm for it.
The setup / the equipment
The evening before the recording, Antal and I went to the church to prepare the entire setup, so as to leave enough time for the film crew to set up in the morning. Another thing is that because of the way we’d be recording this album, with film cameras everywhere, we couldn’t leave too many microphones or dangling cables in the way of the shots, which meant we would have to spend much more time to set everything up in such a way to be as invisible as possible.
Antal and I setting up our main OOA microphone array on a boom stand, so we don’t have to put a big stand in the middle of the ensemble, leaving a big black line through all of the camera shots.
As for the equipment we used, us being TRPTK meant we went all-out as usual. Our main 7.1 OOA microphone array consisted of seven (L-R-C-Ls-Rs-Lb-Rb) Josephson C617 microphones with Microtech Gefell MK221 omnidirectional capsules. The four height microphones used were the DPA 4006A omnidirectional mics. These microphones provide about 99% of the sound, with only here and there some slight help from the close mics.
About these close mics: we mainly used the Ehrlund EHR-M mic for its unbridled transparency and lightning-fast transient response which makes it amazing for plucked instruments and percussion. For the flute we used a DPA 4015A subcardioid microphone, which works amazingly for wind instruments as the musicians can move around a lot whilst still retaining a consistent sound. For Kristia’s vocals we opted to use a Sonodore MPM-91 by Rens Heijnis, a hand-built C12-capsuled microphone with active 60V power supplies and an incredibly clear and transparent sound. All mics were run through the Grace Design m801mk2 preamplifiers for some extremely rich, clean and transparent gain.
The entire recording was done in DSD256 at 11.2MHz 1bit, and then mixed and mastered in PCM 352.8kHz 64bit floating point. The audio for the video has been mixed and mastered exactly the same, but at 384kHz 64bit floating point, to make the conversion to 48, 96 and 192 kHz easier and more sonically transparent.
In between our microphones, preamps and converters, we used Purecable Optimus Link XLR Microphone Edition cabling as well as Grimm Audio TPR (the former for the main channels, the latter for close mics). Pura Power Supplies supplied us with their rack-mounted version of the Dodo linear PSU for our Merging Technologies Hapi MkII, making the converter sound simply astounding.
The Grace Design m801mk2 preamplifiers we used for this recording.
Another shot of the entire setup, with the main OOA mics on the boom stand, and the side, rear and height mics on these large stands off to the side.
Making things even more complicated…
As you know, we prefer circular setups when recording ensembles. This makes it so that you can easily create a perfect balance of instruments, and musicians are always perfectly able to hear and see each other.
The problem we created for this specific album, though, is that there’s no camera shot to be made of musicians’ faces without other musicians’ backs in the same shot. However, Jonas and his crewmate Django came up with an amazing solution: a moveable cinema camera on a stabilized but extremely quickly-rotating head, which was set up right in the middle of the ensemble. Django could then remotely monitor the camera’s feed and move, pan, tilt, zoom and focus with a remote controller.
Camera operator Django de Groot with his ingenious setup with the moving Sony FX9 in the centre of the ensemble.
The remote control setup that was used for the centre camera. This goes way over our audio team’s heads, so if you’re interested in finding out more, let us know and we’ll reach back out to the film crew to write a blog!
It’s been absolutely amazing working with this fantastic ensemble and this unbelievable film crew. The whole process has been such a dream, and now that we’re on the brink of releasing the album we couldn’t be more stoked!
Be sure to pre-order the album this weekend, and get a 25% discount as well as some special goodies we’ll announce soon!