DPA mics Keyboards at Christmas
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: The School of Church Music at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary recently enlisted the help of DPA Microphones and Steinway Hall of Dallas, Plano and Fort Worth to put on an event named Keyboards at Christmas. The performance saw students and professional musicians perform a variety of holiday songs on 17 Steinway Grand Pianos to a sold-out 3,500-seat venue.
Staff at the Southwestern Baptist wanted to equip all 17 pianos with three d:vote 4099 instrument mics each, for a total of 51 mics. ‘The Steinway instruments have a very beautiful, very unique sound that other instruments can’t touch, so we didn’t want to recreate the sound, but rather amplify it for the audience to hear in this very large hall,’ said Luke Byford, assistant director of musical productions for the school.
‘We had experimented for a while with how to mic the piano in this hall and we knew it had to be the DPA d:votes,’ he furthered. ‘We previously tried a pickup system, but it just didn’t provide the live sound of the piano. It actually sounded pretty dead. Then we tried a variety of other mics and positions. Nothing seemed right until our sound techs presented the idea to try the d:votes we had for string instruments in the piano. We were very pleased with the natural reproduction of the DPA mics as they gave us a much more accurate picture of how the pianos sound and the beauty that they put out.’
For this year’s Keyboards at Christmas, the school increased the number of pianos. To ensure that audience members had a clear view of every musician, the stage had three elevated platforms, which allowed them to place five pianos at the top, six in the centre and six at the front.
‘For a great deal of the performance, all of the pianos were played at the same time,’ said Jerry Aultman, professor of music theory, who worked with Mr Byford on the event. ‘Sometimes there were two pianists per piano, so a total of 34 pianists playing simultaneously. It was imperative for the artists to hear each other separately and without delay. From an audience perspective, I noticed that the DPA d:votes just made the Steinways sound the way they are supposed to sound. It was a true representation of the pianos. They don’t need improvement, they’re wonderful the way they are, we just wanted to amplify them and reproduce an accurate sound. With a programme of this magnitude, using this many pianos in a hall this large, it is impossible to overemphasise the importance of this requirement.’
‘We like that you can’t see them,’ added Mr Byford. ‘They were in the pianos and we ran the lines out of the back, so the audience did not even know they were there. The magnetic piano mounts were great because once they were attached to the brass, they didn’t bounce or rattle. They stayed exactly where we put them, and the fact that they are on goosenecks allowed us to get the mounts in the proper spot on the piano, but then move the microphone to get them in the best position to pick up the exact area of sound we wanted to highlight. They were so hidden and so natural that many of our audience members later told us they didn’t even realise the pianos were being amplified until we mentioned it to them.’
The school only had one day to mic up the pianos and do an audio run through with students to ensure the EQ was perfect, so the size and manoeuvrability of the d:votes also afforded the quick setup that was needed. With only a limited in-house supply of d:votes, the school sought to rent an additional 35 microphones to fulfil their need for 51 d:votes.
‘I think it’s great that a company that makes this kind of product would want to get behind a production like ours and help out the way they did,’ enthused Mr Byford. ‘Everyone we worked with at DPA seemed really excited to help us and support this project.’
In addition to the large supply of d:votes, the company loaned the school two d:facto vocal microphones for the soloists who accompanied the pianists. DPA’s sales and marketing rep, James Capparelle, also attended the event to help with the setup.
The event was also run by Matthew Bennett, Will Schaefer, Caleb Wallace and Cody Meuer, who are student employees of the school’s A/V communications department.