Grammy-winning producer details his techniques and workflows for capturing one of the world’s finest orchestras in exclusive video interview .
Veteran producer and audio engineer Larry Rock has served as Audio Director of the NY Philharmonic since 1997. In the time since, he has distinguished himself as a key architect of the pre-eminent orchestral institution’s sonic identity, producing award-winning work for the NY Philharmonic’s live, broadcast, and recorded performances. Rock’s career history, production philosophy and preferred audio workflows are the subject of a new exclusive interview with Schoeps Microphones, where he details the techniques and equipment he has used to create some of the most celebrated orchestral recordings of the past three decades.
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The NY Philharmonic has played a vibrant role in championing orchestral music of all stripes in the United States since its founding in the late 1800s. A major part of that has been its forward-thinking approach to programming that embraces a wide variety of genres, performers and presentation formats – including free outdoor park concerts, showcase events for up and coming composers and performers, and live orchestration of beloved blockbuster films. Rock’s role in all of this is maintaining an extremely high standard of audio production that translates equally well across live, broadcast and recorded mediums.
“Getting a sound that’s warm and clear, that is not at all harsh on the high end, that’s the objective,” he explains.
Capturing an “embellished sense of reality”, as he describes it, has been a key part of Rock’s success. This has led him to build off of the natural performance energy and individual details audible in the orchestra and utilise his command of recording and production techniques to create something that is an elevated experience for the listener. “There’s a concept of sound, of having the right balance, amount of presence, and a sense of ambience,” he explains. “What is very important [to that] is the off-axis response of microphones, because that’s where you pick up all the subtleties of the ambience of the room.”
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