For the past three years, New York University and ASCAP have hosted the Buddy Baker Film Scoring Workshops as part of the NYU Film Scoring Program under director Dr. Ron Sadoff. This year, “The 2003 NYU/ASCAP Film Scoring Workshop in Memory of Buddy Baker” hosted 22 participating composers who recorded their scores using numerous Neumann microphones.
Sadoff and the veteran independent engineer, Jim Anderson—recently appointed to professor of NYU’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music—depended on three Neumann M 150 Tube microphones in a Decca Tree configuration to capture the 20-piece orchestra, which included members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Additional Neumann spotting microphones supported the M 150s.
“When you’re doing that kind of work, the M 150 is the gold standard,” SAID Anderson, a Grammy winner who worked for NPR during the ’70s. “That’s certainly what you start with. I always find that when you’re looking for that beautiful bottom-end orchestral bloom, that’s the microphone to use.
“The M 150 gives you that beautiful spread and the bottom end that the orchestra just sits right on top of,” Anderson continued, noting that additional Neumann microphones were used as spotting mics to help bring out certain sections of the orchestra. “We had U 87s and TLM 170s, as well. The 170s were on the cellos and the piano, and the U 87s were on the woodwinds, flutes and clarinets.”
The nine-day workshop featured Terminator 3 composer Marco Beltrami and X-Files composer Mark Snow. Sessions addressed click tracks and free-timing, orchestration techniques and conducting.
For more information on the mics, visit www.neumannusa.com.
