"Iain Churches" wrote in message
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"Keith G" wrote in message
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"Iain Churches" wrote in message

On a recording of Piae Cantiones [1], the ensemble
complained that they were unable to perform their best
because of insufficient (natural) reverberation in the
location that had been chosen. Recording continued
the following day in a different location with a more
ideal acoustic.



Interesting. There's a track on the Hector Zazou Chansons Des Mers
Froides
album where the song was supposed to be sung in a church in some remote
place but the weather was so bad they couldn't escape the howling wind
noise, so they decamped to a cellar/storeroom in their hotel which had a
suitable acoustic! There's also a track with wind noise in the
background - I don't know if it's the same one recorded in both locations
and stitched or summat.

Church locations are fraught with problems - aeroplane noise, traffic etc
We had to temporarily stop a session at Petersham Church when a huge
flock of sparrows landed outside a window:-)


:-)

And they can be quite 'vocal' can't they? We get a flock of them in the
hedge at the edge of the garden and they are a noisy little bunch which
wouldn't do any recording session any good! In fact, I occasionally get
birdsong creeping into my own recordings, along with the odd car going past!






[1] A collection of late medieval songs in Latin
compiled by a Finnish cleric and first published in
1582. The music is interesting in that some of it
has no time signature, and in some parts no bar
lines or key signatures either.


Like Tuvan throat singing? :-)

:-) Well not quite.

Wiki has the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piae_Cantiones



Interesting but looks a bit like the songs would be far to dry for me -
along the lines of the stuff attributed to Hildegard of Bingen. I have a
record of this sort of thing here but it doesn't often see the light of day!