How is the Monitor Mix set for Orchestral Players?

Look up some videos of orchestral performances – including those that are recorded and released – and you'll find that orchestral players usually aren't using monitoring at all. Most musicians in that tradition spend their careers in an entirely acoustic world: a great ensemble playing in a great-sounding room or hall for a respectful audience. Quite different from rock, RnB, and hip hop careers!

Even in a studio environment, it's not uncommon for orchestral musicians to have no electronic monitoring at all. Here's a clip I found of a session at AIR studios with a quick Google search. You'll notice that the conductor is wearing cans, but the players aren't. They're just listening to each other and following the conductor's time.

When I've produced studio sessions with orchestral musicians overdubbing, I always take extra care to make sure they have as much control of their listening environment as possible. It's very easy for inexperienced songwriters, producers, and engineers to frustrate experienced orchestral musicians, who are used to working on a very high level of musical command. The more you can learn about their world and perspective, the easier it will be to work with them when the time comes!

proggermusic said:

Even in a studio environment, it's not uncommon for orchestral musicians to have no electronic monitoring at all. Here's a clip I found of a session at AIR studios with a quick Google search.

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Thanks for the video, very nice! Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of context for that conversation (I wasn't there from the beginning) but what you are saying makes total sense.

Something interesting - while watching your link, YouTube recommended this other video - also from Air Studios and this time with @christianhenson himself in the control room back in 2016!!

I believe this one is specifically showing the overdubbing session and they might have mentioned the cue mix level around 8:55 but not completely sure. There seems to be quite a few retakes, many seemingly to do with smeared note attacks (or perhaps accents?) at the start of various cues.

What's unexpected to me is that in a standard concert hall the conductor would be spotting that and stopping the orchestra but here he seems to have a different job. Unless the string players are accustomed to this kind process or are mostly session players, I wonder how unusual this workflow might feel to them. This video is over 2 hours long and I type this while watching it, but maybe they'll play the actual cue mix itself. I'll have to restart and watch from the beginning when I can focus on this and pay attention to those details.

In the Air video, not all the instruments seem to be present at the recording – it's hard to see but it looks as though it's strings only – and they are playing to a click (I scrolled through bits of it and CH or the engineer next to him mentions the click at some point, so I'm guessing they are overdubbing to a click and/or scratch track), so they are going to have to use headphones to avoid that leaking through into the string mics.

There's apparently an ambulance siren at the start of one cue - I wouldn't expect the conductor to notice that, not least because they've got headphones on as well. And if you're conducting, noticing that the strings are slightly out of sync with a clarinet or harp on the recording is not going to be an easy job.

gamma-ut said:

I'm guessing they are overdubbing to a click and/or scratch track

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Yes, I think so too, there's also brass at 46:40 and woodwinds around 50:00 so I'm guessing the soundtrack for this particular video is the full mix. Not a cue mix.

EDIT: Christian is the composer, so now I understand the thing between him in the room and the conductor.