The response to the international spread of Covid-19 has differed from country to country, but large public gatherings have widely been banned. Affecting musicians very seriously this it also has implications in terms of national celebration. Social media have been awash with inspirational videos of Italians singing from balconies and virtual gigs from musicians and singers, while Denmark’s fællessan tradition (literally ‘common-singing’) is as popular now as ever before.
The question is how to celebrate your queen’s birthday when public gatherings cannot take place was picked up by the Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra who wanted to capture more than 100 musicians and singers on video to lead hundreds of thousands of patriots in singing happy 80th birthday to Queen Margarethe. The answer lay extensiviely with Merging Technologies Pyramix recording/editing system.
With audio production for the venture assigned to Daniel Davidsen, three people gathered the video content. This proved to be not only innovative but complex and time consuming. It involved working flat out from 2 April to the morning of 16 April, which was the queen’s actual birthday. The final mix was completed at 7am, the video at 10am, and the production aired at midday. Not content with just singing the traditional Danish Happy Birthday song, three other pieces were added to the programme: ‘The Sun is so Red, Mother’ (Harald Bergstedt/Carl Nielsen), s a dark lullaby; ‘In Denmark I was Born’ (HC Andersen/Henrik Rung), often considered an alternative national anthem; and ‘Papirsklip’ (Kim Larsen).
Davidsen explains that, initially, the Orchestra created a Midi file with click tracks and a tuning tone to give the earphone feed to each musician. Each day, new files would come in from the musicians playing at home and these new tracks would be added to the master listening file. But problems were quick to emerge…
‘It soon emerged that click tracks were unable to replace a conductor, and both rhythmic and dynamic adjustments were used as tools to obtain a more “natural” orchestral sound,’ he says. ‘Each musician produced three full takes that I often edited together. It also emerged that listening to a tuning tone was unable to replace the need to listen to each other and it was often necessary to change pitches. After completing the orchestra part, the singers delivered their files – only a few of the singers were professional.
‘As the editing was completed I imported the video in Pyramix and balanced the sound to fit what happened in the video. I also worked to produce a stereo image and to simulate the reverb of a concert hall and to try to compensate for the rather variable audio quality from the use of cellphones.’
Davidsen has been a Merging customer since his time at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in 2015. He has recorded all of Beethoven’s symphonies in a production that secured the IMCA Award in 2020 in the Symphonic Music category. In his home studio he has a Merging Technolgies Hapi interface and a RoadRack 3U (he has made this noiseless) with a MassCore system and Pyramix 11. His monitoring is with B&W 803 D3 loudspeakers.
The soloist Thomas Buttenschön and some of the singers were recorded with the Hapi and a laptop with Pyramix Native. All other musicians and singers performed alone in their respective homes. The singers were also recorded home, together with family members.
More: www.merging.com
