Dave Schall Acoustic

05/01/2025

Always pushing the boundaries and raising the bar with the National Arab Orchestra, we deployed a bunch of new tools this past weekend for a phenomenal show at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts in Dearborn. The orchestra was joined by Ameer Dandan as our featured vocalist, the Detroit Youth Choir, and 43 student instrumentalists from local high schools.

I took the brand new Digico Quantum 338 console from THS Audio for its first spin with the NAO, and it did not disappoint! Unlimited flexibility and control, it was never easier for me to lock all of this activity on stage in. I also deployed my recently acquired package of DPA 4099 mics on our string section, resulting in unrivaled clarity, tonal accuracy, isolation, and gain structure for our string section. The whole show was tracked via Waves Soundgrid and Reaper as usual, and the media will be coming soon.

Many, many thanks to my intrepid crew of Toby Philips on monitors and IEMs, Cory Robinson and Robyn Kimmey on filming, Salim Laham for his gorgeous lighting design, the whole Guido Theater stage crew, and the immense help from Olivia Cirisan who shadowed this show with me and stepped right up to the challenge like a boss on stage crew THEN manned our FoH camera!

04/05/2025

Thanks LSO! What a great 25 years! ❤️❤️

For almost every concert in our 25 years, recording engineer Dave Schall has been behind the soundboard, making the recordings that we have sold on CD and now make available digitally. He makes us sound good!

Last night, he stepped in front of our display of concert posters for a quick photo.

If you have a musical event that needs recording, he’s at Dave Schall Acoustic!

04/04/2025

We've enjoyed working with Mark Clague and the Gershwin Initiative since its inception, and each new critical edition they bring about further solidifies the catalog of beloved works by George and Ira. Here's the most recent presentation that we had the privilege of capturing and creating the media for.

THE GERSHWINS AT A TURNING POINT by Andrew S. Kohler, PhD, Alfred and Jane Wolin Managing Editor Welcome to our centennial celebration of George and Ira Gers...

03/30/2025

Today we'd like to highlight a fun and compelling project that we've been a part of in the last few years supporting our dear colleagues of Akropolis Reed Quintet at their annual chamber music institute at Bay View. This is an invaluable opportunity for young composers and emerging young players to immerse themselves in a series of new works side-by-side with ARQ.

Everything that we have seen come out of this has been stellar from top to bottom, and we've been delighted to roll tape and cams for it! Check out the playlist from the 2024 shows and sessions below.

If you are a young composer or wind player and love new music, we highly recommend applying to be a part of this fast-growing new opportunity in the beautiful city of Petoskey up on Lake Michigan!

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

02/24/2025

We had an amazing opportunity to record and film the first full capture of a brand new piece by Michael Daugherty, "Kansas City Confidential," for two saxophones and piano last week. Not only did the ensemble consist of my dear colleagues Tim McAllister and Liz Ames, but the saxophone monolith himself; Brandford Marsalis. It was a fantastic experience, and I'm looking forward to digging into the media this week.
It's not every day you get to work with the people who inspire you to get in to your career, and Branford was a huge motivator for me in the late 80s when I was playing saxophone and starting up the bassoon. To hear his tone up close in person was like being visited by that initial inspiration all over again.

Stay tuned for the release of this exceptional work!

02/11/2025

Enjoy this sweet moment from the DSA Villa Valentine "pine room." Jonathan Hammonds trio of double bass, guitar, and qanun with Firas Zreik and Max Bowen. This was somewhat of an experiment with a large, diffuse bedroom, and the results didn't disappoint. One more great side project of my NAO bretheren.
More videos of this session can be found on Jon's YouTube channel.

Firas Zreik - QanunMax Bowen - GuitarJonathan Hammonds - BassComposition by Oliver NelsonVideo and Audio production by 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...