The crisis in Argentina in 2001 left a few positive consequences. For example, the drastic depreciation of the local currency against the dollar (in a few days it went from having a parity of one to one of three to one) allowed local entrepreneurs to offer a series of complex and high-level services abroad at very competitive prices. Among these services are all those related to the audiovisual world, so That Buenos Aires was during the last years one of the regional meccas for the filming of video clips, the realization of advertisements and television productions, always relying on two values: the aforementioned affordable cost, on the one hand, and the fact that local production companies had invested in the best state-of-the-art equipment during the boom times.
The production of musicals in studio, a complex and expensive task (particularly if you want there to be a participating audience), falls within the generals of this law and is a new business that small companies in the sector are beginning to exploit in Argentina. We will not talk here about large recitals of pop stars that bring 50,000 people to a stadium, but about small events with a moderate audience (up to 500 people). For now, there is a tendency to rescue and recycle old theaters and cinemas of Greater Buenos Aires, taking advantage of their particular good acoustic level and their characteristics of size, height and capacity, to transform them into auditoriums that serve these purposes.
This is the case of the Alianza Auditorium, located in the town of Caseros (less than ten minutes from the city of Buenos Aires), with capacity for 350 people and which is used both for recitals and for the recording of shows with audience and even for the creation of live video clips.
Let it be heard well
Sergio Lucero, responsible for the place, explains that "there are several points that must be taken into account when thinking about a space to use as a studio for the recording of a musical". These variables range from the size of the stage (in the case of the Alianza Auditorium it is 9 by 5 meters) to whether you have all the papers in order, such as the specific municipal permits that enable meetings of this type, passing, of course, by the sound, lighting and amenities for the artists (most count, for example, with dressing rooms –some even offer individual dressing rooms for each of the members of the group-, minibar or wi-fi Internet connection).
"When recording live with an audience, a double job is done: on the one hand, the specific corrections that the sound engineer must make for those who are listening in the place, and on the other, all the task that is developed to take the signal in the best way," explains Lucero, for whom there are three key points to achieve the best result: "take the signal of each instrument in the most separate way possible, aim to get the highest signal and get it to come out very clean".
When you talk about taking each instrument separately, that includes each of the seven or eight battery bodies individually. Auditorio Alianza has Shure microphones and uses different models to capture different sounds: the SM58 for voices (specially designed to accentuate the warmth and clarity of the voices, both leaders and choirs), the SM57 for equipment (gets the most out of bass and guitar amplifiers, bronzes, harmonica, sax, drums and conga), the Beta98 D/S for toms and drums, the Beta52 for drum bass drum, electric bass and acoustic bass, and the SM81 for acoustic guitar, acoustic bass, strings, piano, plates and orchestra (also applies to choral singing groups and is ideal for live sound). "We try to make sure that no other signals are filtered through a specific channel," Lucero adds.
