Improving poor church choir recordings

Hi! I have some stereo choir recordings from my church that were recorded while the choir sang with an organ, and the organ overwhelms the singers to the point that it takes a while to even notice that the choir is singing when they come in after the intro measures. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can either bring the organ music down or enhance the voices so we can use these recordings to lead hymns in our virtual church environment? Any advice would be appreciated!

:frowning: There’s not much you can do. You can try reducing the low frequencies with the Graphic Equalizer Effect but it probably still won’t be useful.

The microphone(s) need to be closer to the choir. Maybe MUCH closer, to the point where you need more mics so you pick-up the singers evenly without over-emphasizing the singers closest to the mics.

Even without the organ, usually the natural reverb that sounds great coming from all directions live sounds unnatural when played-back from a speaker… So you need to get closer to get more direct sound and less reflected sound.

Any advice would be appreciated!

Not in post production. You can’t “clean that up.”

Where was the microphone? Somebody in one of the seats of the congregation? This doesn’t feel right. The organ should not mop the floor with the choir. The singers could just go home.

I’d go to a lot of trouble to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

Koz

Thanks for the input. I’m trying to use recordings made before I got here. New recordings (and mic placement) are great. My pastor just wants to use some hymns that we haven’t sung in a while, so I’m trying to clean up recordings. Was hoping that someone had a trick or two, but in some ways its comforting to know that such work in postproduction is hard for everyone. :wink: