Earthworks mics record 5,000 people choir performing Zach Sobiech’s ‘Clouds’
Published: WORSHIP
WORLD: A choir of over 5,000 singers recently came together to sing Zach Sobiech’s ‘Clouds’ at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, as a tribute to the singer-songwriter. A matched pair of Earthworks QTC40s was used to record the 5,000-person choir on the first anniversary of the song’s release to benefit the Zach Sobiech Osteosarcoma fund, part of the children’s cancer research fund.
‘Veteran’ producer Karl Demer of Atomic K Records and Productions, a full service audio/video photography production company based in Minneapolis, produced the original version of ‘Clouds’ performed by Zach Sobiech.
‘A year ago I was asked to produce a song for a teenager name Zach Sobiech who had terminal cancer and wrote a song to say goodbye to his family and girlfriend,’ explained Mr Demer. ‘A video was made of his experience recording the song. This video went viral on the internet; the song went to number one on iTunes and Billboard and to this day, has raised nearly 1 million dollars for children's cancer research specifically to find a cure for the type of cancer that took his life.’
Mr Demer was asked by Dan Seeman, KS95 general manager and close friend of Zach Sobiech, to produce a recorded audio track and direct the choir for the one-year anniversary event. ‘They wanted to ask several local choirs to sing the song at the Mall of America rotunda during their annual KS95 for Kids Radiothon sponsoring the children's cancer research fund,’ said Mr Demer. ‘They were hoping to get up to 1,000 singers. Day seven of promotion for the event, we had to stop registering singers at 3,600 due to the capacity of the venue! The Mall of America estimates the number in attendance singing at 5,000 people.
‘I was doing pre-production research as to how I should go about recording 5,000 singers on four levels in a full circle with reflective surfaces everywhere,’ furthered Mr Demer. ‘Earthworks mics kept coming up in my searches for realistic symphonic recordings from a stereo pair, so I reached out to Earthworks through their website and told them of my challenge. Later the next day, to my surprise, Craig Breckenridge responded with a very detailed description of how he suggested I go about placing mics for the recording. He apologised for the delay in response but wanted to get the input from his whole team at Earthworks!
‘I was blown away by such personal service despite never meeting Craig. I had never experienced such great personal service from a company that I had never done business with before. The fact that they collaborated as a team to help me find the correct solution for my recording dilemma shows their true passion for audio excellence.’
For the event, Mr Demer ran the matched pair of QTC40s through Midas preamps and recorded directly off the preamps to his Macbook Pro running Cubase.
Though familiar with Earthworks mics, this was the first time Mr Demer had an opportunity to use them. ‘The QTC40s responded with superior clarity and frequency response. Basically what I heard with my headphones off is what I heard with my headphones on while soloing the QTC40s. The benefit of this stereo pair was that they gave me a beautiful true stereo image of 360 degrees on the x-axis and nearly 180 on the y-axis.