Located in the heart of St. Henri, Studio Economik has both an equipment sales and rental service as well as sound studios available for rehearsal. With attentive support from Lysandre Duchesne and the help of Andrew Harder (of the sound studio Harder Sound) we managed to find the appropriate microphone and got a really good deal to boot!
The following is how Stacey DeWolfe begins her piece in the Montreal Mirror “Art this week” section: “The World in Six Songs, by Daniel J. Levitin, introduces readers to the benefits of singing together, which, according to Levitin, triggers the body to produce a hormone that creates a sense of well-being similar to that experienced during physical intimacy. By extension, might a large-scale choral project increase understanding and engender community?”
We will be posting resources and references throughout the process (and welcome your input as we compile a working bibliography and references list related to this project).
For now, we want to bring attention to a book that is currently on our reading list: Music and Conflict Transformation: Harmonies and Dissonances in Geopolitics. Edited by Olivier Urbain and published by I.B. Tauris and the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (2008), this interdisciplinary collection of essays includes contributions by musicians and academics organized into four sections: Frameworks, Politics, Healing and Education, and Stories from the Field.
Stacey Ho has posted an article about the project earlier this week based on a conversation we had with her on the phone and her reading of the promotional material distributed through DARE-DARE.
On September 13, we visited Andrew in his sound studio to hear the different microphone tests we made earlier in the week. For us, this was a crash course on the different capabilities and sensitivities to the three set-ups he had tried in Cabot Square. Were we interested in a very focused pick-up of one singer at a time, i.e. a Shotgun, or did we want a microphone that could pick up a variety of situations, such as the XY or MS options? After listening to various clips through the prism of each particular set-up, we chose the MS microphone as it allows for a full stereo pick-up. Singing voices were rich and complex, the traffic’s constant hum was clear but not overpowering, with the birds’ varied songs also a part of the sound textures.
Next step: trying to find the appropriate microphone and kit to rent… 