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Robin Hood - Michael Kamen ... how was it recorded?

I like music

Senior Member
I hope this is the right section for this question. I want to try to recreate a similar sound (space) with my VIs, because I absolutely LOVE the recording of it. It has a slightly raw sound, and you can really hear the detail of the instruments. The breath, the struggle, the fingers on strings etc. Yet it doesn't sound stifled or too dry.

Can anyone point me to where it was recorded, or any relevant detail?

If you listen to the first 30 seconds, you'll hear what I mean ...

 
One of my favourite score, so beautiful! It's recorded at the Todd-AO scoring stage: https://scoringsessions.com/sessions/21969/
Altiverb has great recordings of these IRs.

This recording sounds like they've used a lot of the close mics.
Ah, the Todd-AO I hear so much about on these forums. I'm going to go find recordings on that site (thanks btw, looks like a cool site) because yeah, the close mic'ing and that hall seem to have created a nice combination.

Of course, the main thing being the music which to me is just insanely good. Absolutely love it.

Thanks @OLB for this!
 
BTW as far as scoring stages go, is this considered small/med/large? I don't have these IRs but will try to go for a similar size with one of my other ones, if I can find the dimensions.
 
BTW as far as scoring stages go, is this considered small/med/large? I don't have these IRs but will try to go for a similar size with one of my other ones, if I can find the dimensions.
It was a very large very reverberant scoring stage that had the acoustics of a concert hall.

This recording seems like there is a lot of close mic going on because it really doesn't sound anything like the Todd AO I remember.

Just to contrast.
This is more the sound of Todd AO.

 
Not even an hour into this thread being created, and can concur with many of the thoughts here.

Like some others here and elsewhere, this score was really one of the first (along with Dennis McCarthy's Generations) to be a wake up call for me regarding film scores- got a few other people turned on to the genre as well because of it, really speaking to it's quality.

Ditto on the close mic thing- could of sworn there was actual footage of (some) of the recording on youtube, where you could actually see the players/studio though the visual quality was less than good- it was a pretty large orchestra and Kamen was somewhere there in studio schmatltzing about some of Costner's lines. It really does sound based on the number of players/relative size of the space that they absolutely close mic'd the shit out of that recording, as you can just hear so much detail in the performances that the scores recorded even fairly dry today sound as though they're basked in tanks of verb. IMO- Kamen when sounding most 'himself' ultimately had the impression of very little to no reverb, or reverb just applied to a soloist/section at any given measure.

Good luck trying to get VI's to sound like that thing- we can get closer than a decade ago, but you are going to run into alot of resistance trying to re-create that overall sense of musicality that's in that recording and some of his others- some here have posted some really good excerpts/examples of 'runs' using Sample Modeling's 'solo and ensemble' strings- maybe that's a start? Whatever used has to be possible of performing dry yet convincing/fluid string runs, and after that I would start to look at naturally dry sounding brass that has fairly wide dynamics. Honestly, not gonna be easy! :)
 
Mixed an ad that was a re-working of the Robin hood theme, recorded in Bratislava.



Think they did an OK job! I have no great insights to add on the mixing front, apart from turn the brass up about 5dB louder than good taste would dictate. Perhaps stick a smidge of Devil-loc on the master (actually that's quite a good plan for life in general). If your samples are dry then a touch of Todd AO impulse verb wouldn't be a bad idea... if your samples are Spitfire then perhaps not!
 
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