Do you have any time to wander around in the different towns? Prague is absolutely one of my favourite European cities. Did you see the old castle? The museum with all the old swords and knights armour stuff? Just like in the movies.

In Vienna, did you sing in Karlskirche? The surrounding area is quite nice if I remember correctly.

Good luck with all!
Best/Tommy

Back home in Oregon as of yesterday afternoon.

In Vienna we sang in St. Stephens cathedral and a second church in one of the suburbs south of Vienna (the name escapes me at the moment). The kids sounded great in St. Stephens, and the pipe organ is wonderful. Yes, we saw the Prague castle/cathedral on the hill, sang in the St. Nicholas church on the Old Prague Square, and really enjoyed that city. The kids thought they were millionaires with the Czech currency (Look! I have 500 dollar-thingys!) until they saw how much of it was needed to buy a Coke or souvenir.

From there we traveled to Eisenstadt and they performed in the tiny church in the nearby village of Donnerskirchen. Standing ovation and encore, so they were very happy that night!

Finally we went to Saltzburg and took part in the Cantus Music Festival there. Choirs from Austrailia and Canada also performed. Last Sunday the kids sang for the noon Mass in the fabulous Saltzburg Cathedral (the only cathedral I know of that has FIVE, count 'em, five pipe organs). Because of the long audio decay latency in that church I should have some interesting surround sound effects.

We had some great food, decent weather for the most part, and the kids saw an entirely different part of the world we all live in. They wondered: (1) why the food was so different (2) why the toilets and showers and money looked so funny, (3) why they never got ice water unless they asked for it, (4) why the cars going so fast on the Autobahn never got tickets. I personally was surprised that more of the hotels didn't have any sort of Internet access. One hotel in Vienna not only had broadband in every room but air conditioning, however, and one hotel offered Wi-Fi in the lobby. The McDonalds in Saltzburg touted Wi-Fi also (didn't try it, though). The long nonstop flight from Frankfurt home to Oregon was filled to capacity, and it seemed that 10% of the passengers were either infants or toddlers (mental note: pack extra foam earplugs for the next trip).

So now I'm back at my desk with a box full of miniDV tapes and a fistful of Minidiscs (the surround audio). Time to get to work.

Richard,
Would be interested in which minidisc recorders and mics you used, and how you feel about the results.

I bought a couple of Sharp MD-MT15 Minidisc recorders on eBay for about $60 each, and I love them. The audio is very decent, and the recorders don't have any bad manners. You can also adjust the recording level on the fly.

The mics are the modest little Sony MS908C stereo units. Both are shock-mounted to the top of the VX2000, with one facing forward and the other aft. The rear audio goes into the Minidisc recorder, which is neatly velcroed to the back of the huge 960 battery. The whole assembly (including the Canon WD-58 wide-angle lens) is surprisingly well-balanced. At first I thought it would be far too heavy to lug around for two weeks, but you get used to it quickly, and I now have a firm handshake that can rival anyone's.

Since the audio going into the Minidisc recorder is not volume compressed, I had to turn off the AGC audio control on the VX2000 and record the front two channels uncompressed onto the miniDV tape. That way I can apply equal amounts of compression to all 4 channels towards the end of the editing process.

The audio would never be mistaken for something recorded in a studio, but given that this is a documentary with real-world background noise, I think it'll be good enough. Next step, though, assuming that I will do this again, will be to substitute better microphones--probably the Audio Technica stereo units.

Another thing--with so many buttons to push and adjust, the chances of screwing up a shot are about 10x greater. More than once I congratulated myself on a nice shot before realizing that the rear audio recorder was in standby mode (many times), or the mics had not yet been turned on (twice), or the front audio was in AGC mode (once). But hopefully the results will be worth it. The echoes in the Saltzburg Cathedral should be interesting to hear in surround-sound, as should the clip-clops of the horse-drawn carriages as they pass from the front of the shot to the rear.

Oh, another thing: the Saltzburg Cathedral has five pipe organs, with four arranged around the center of the cruciform church shape, and the fifth one in the traditional rear. I mused whether someone ever wrote a composition for five pipe organs, and a musician associated with the church replied that, indeed, one exists on CD for that very church. Too bad they couldn't have recorded THAT in surround sound.

Thanks Richard,
I have not tried a surround sound recording using minidiscs, but I have used them planted near performers such as pianists or a school chorus, then mixed them in with the sound tracks from the on board mics of my VX2000. They stay in sync very well over at least 6 to 10 minutes.

The sound on the VX2000 mics is pretty good given the live venue of a school cafeteria ;-))

I use several Sony MZ-R37's but need to get more compatible mics for them. They do fine but lack the ability to adjust levels on the fly.

Just how young are the kids? I've been on a South England Cathedrals tour with Stavanager Cathedral's Girls Choir a short month ago. Been shooting video all the time but have not had time to look at the footage yet. I used a Sony trv 950 with a Sennheiser 300 mic on the camera.
I wish there was an ND filter on that camera. When you go from a dark catheedral interior to a sunshine scene outdoors the built-in adjustments of the camera just doesn't cope. I have a glass filter for the purpose, but it would have been so much easier to just press a button or something.
Tor