An Interview With Film Mixer Dennis Sands

Recording music for film is an expertise unto itself. There are only a handful of engineers that do it regularly because large scoring dates are becoming scarcer these days, and most composers will only trust their recordings to someone with a lot of experience.

Dennis Sands has been recording orchestras for films for more than 30 years and has a sterling reputation for getting the best and most accurate sound possible. Here's a great interview with him where he discusses some of the scoring stages in Hollywood, how he got started, his gear and how he uses it.

By the way, in the video he talks about a "Decca Tree" as his room mics. This is standard operating procedure for many orchestral mixers and it consists of 3 Neumann M50's suspended above the conductors head like in the picture. You can read more about a Decca Tree here or see the Recording Engineer's Handbook for more detail.

----------------------------------

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Don't forget to check out my Music 3.0 blog for tips and tricks on navigating social media and the new music business.