Dave Schall Acoustic

11/19/2024

We finally received the footage from the National Arab Orchestra two night stand we did at the Al-Majaz Theater in Sharjah, UAE, and here it comes!
Beautifully filmed by the Al-Majaz video team and recorded and mixed by me, I'm really excited to share this experience finally.
Reham, our singer, owned the stage with her deep, elegant voice. It was such an amazing experience doing this whole production.....outdoors, at night, in the middle of a man-made island in a bay in the Persian Gulf, and with my wife and my mother in attendance!

National Arab Orchestra at Al Majaz UAE (Hala Majaz)In Partnership: Al Majaz Amphitheater Featuring: Riham Abdelhakim and Mohanad MachlahDirected ...

11/12/2024

It's been a minute since I've posted anything here because we've been trucking along at top speed! From Ann Arbor to Detroit, Knoxville to Arkansas, it's been quite a ride.

There's too much for me to list here, but I'll try to keep the page more up to date with our goings-on. Here's a few highlight moments:
- Hillberry Festival in October was a blast as usual with THS Audio and the Deadhead Productions crew. I toughed this one out in monitor world, not realizing I had appendicitis the whole time!
I just thought I was tired and sore for overworking.
Needless to say, that set me back quite a bit in time and progress, but thankfully I'm doing ok in the aftermath. Sometimes we need to slow down and listen to our bodies.

- my faithful studio PC got an unexpected massive update when it was the victim of a lightning strike in our neighborhood this summer that fired my motherboard, breaching the surge protection and UPS that controls all my studio power. It is now a 24 core, 128 GB RAM behemoth of processing, and that's allowed me to work faster than I ever imagined.

- I completed a 5 year project for Yizhak Schotten shortly before his passing last month. A culmination of his decades of teaching, I'm relieved that his legacy has finally been made accessible to the world!

- new music galore has crossed my desk, and I will be posting links to some of our favorite released material soon.

- The National Arab Orchestra keeps making huge strides, and this month we reached a milestone of having 60 millon views on a single video, making it possibly the most viewed orchestral video on YouTube.

Keep checking in here for more news, updates, new equipment, exciting new projects we are working on.
Robyn is in the process of updating the website, so there will be more there too!

05/19/2024

Today, we facilitated a Moebius strip of media for the George Shirley Vocal Competition. The end goal....bringing in remote composers and international competitors to Britton Recital Hall to a live panel of judges and live performers with professional audio and video.
Audio from our main room pair of Neumann U87s with two house wireless and two live cameras (panel and performers) were sent out, while the zoom participants were brought into the room on the projection screen and the house PA. There were even pre-recorded videos presented as part of the plan.
A complex web of media and communications.
Pulling this off gives me a true sense of accomplishment, and everyone performed beautifully.

04/19/2024

Honored to record, film, and stream the 90th birthday celebration of Prof. George Shirley today. Happy Birthday, Mr. Shirley!!! We are so lucky to still receive your gifts.

03/27/2024

It's been an extremely exciting collaborating with the UMSMTD Piano Department on the Michigan Recording Project, now leading into the third year. There's so much new repertoire, and all of the students and faculty have brought their best to the table.
All of the recordings are performed on the Britton Recital Hall faculty Steinway D (my favorite piano in the UM inventory), so I've taken extra care to approach the sound with the blending of near, mid, and distant mic configurations to give me the broadest palette of sound to work with and showcase these works with a carefully crafted balance of tone, detail, and dynamics.

This library of pieces can be a real rabbit hole journey.....have a look and take a journey through these rarities.

  Michigan Recording Project The Michigan Recording Project’s objective is to establish an archive containing professionally recorded performances by students, faculty, and guest artists, showcasing worthy but often overlooked repertoire that has not graced the stages of the SMTD in the previous ...

02/21/2024

It's such a joy when the projects we work on make the news! Delighted to have captured the first performances of these rediscovered Gershwin works in almost 100 years! It's always a pleasure to be a part of the Gershwin Initiative team.

For many years, it was thought that much of the orchestration for La, La, Lucille (1919), the first show for which George Gershwin wrote the entire score, ha...