You can, but the list of Hollywood rooms that will physically hold a six to eight piece brass section is short, and it gets shorter every year. Live horns need a room with high ceilings, hard surfaces you can tame, and enough isolation that a trumpet at 130 dB SPL does not leak into the vocal suite next door. Most rooms in Hollywood proper are now vocal and overdub spaces. The few large tracking rooms left on Sunset Boulevard book months ahead and price for film sessions. Here is what the room needs, how you mic and seat the section, and what travels back to Burbank.
Why is a live horn section hard to book in Hollywood now?
Square footage. A brass section needs a big live room, and big live rooms are the most expensive floor in any building, so many have been split into vocal booths and production suites that earn more per hour. Hollywood is a district of the city of Los Angeles, not a separate city (Hollywood), and its studio cluster along Sunset still holds a handful of large rooms, but they run film and television dates that book far in advance. For a pop horn section on a normal budget, the calendar is the first wall you hit, before the money.
What does the room actually need?
Volume and height. Brass throws a lot of energy forward and it needs cubic feet to bloom before it reaches a microphone, so a ceiling near 18 to 20 feet changes the sound more than any preamp. A low ceiling makes a section sound boxy and no EQ moves fix it after. The room also needs variable acoustics, drapes or gobos you can pull across reflective walls, so the same space works for a tight funk section and an open cinematic swell. Isolation matters because a horn section at full level will print into every open microphone in the building.
How do you mic a loud brass section?
Close mics take the abuse, so ribbons do the work. A Royer R-121 sits a foot off each trumpet bell, slightly off axis so the blast does not overload it, and its figure-8 pattern nulls the player sitting beside it. Trombones get the same treatment lower down, and a baritone sax or a tuba gets a large ribbon or a dynamic. The reason ribbons win here is level: a trumpet bell can pass 130 dB SPL up close, and a ribbon takes it without the harsh top a bright condenser adds (Sound On Sound on recording brass).
Over the top, a room pair catches the section as one instrument. Spaced omnis or a coincident pair at eight to ten feet gives the body and the blend, and the close ribbons give the definition to push a line forward in the mix. Condensers work farther back, where the section level has dropped enough that their detail helps instead of tearing.
How do you seat the section?
In an arc on a low riser, players facing in, so each one hears the others acoustically and the room pair sees them as a single wall of sound. That seating also controls spill: with figure-8 close mics angled so their nulls point at the neighbor, the trumpet microphone rejects the trombone next to it. Everyone gets a headphone mix and one click, with a bar of count-in, and a sightline to a screen if the horns are hitting to picture. Get the arc and the levels right and a six-piece section tracks a three-minute song in a morning.
What about parking and load-in on Sunset?
Plan it, because Sunset has almost no casual loading. Brass players arrive with hard cases, and a baritone sax or a tuba case is the size of a small suitcase, so book a structure or a load zone and set the call time before the US-101 clogs, which on a weekday means arriving by nine or waiting until ten. From the Sunset cluster back to a Burbank room is about 8 to 10 miles on the US-101 to the CA-134, 15 to 25 minutes off peak, which is why the players track in Hollywood and the rest happens in Burbank.
What comes back to Burbank?
The edit and the balance. In the Burbank room I comp between section takes, fix a fluffed entrance by flying in a clean one, tune sparingly because brass tuning artifacts show fast, and set the close ribbons against the room pair so the section sits as one body and not six separate lines. This is the same split I use on strings, tracked live where the room is big enough and finished where the tools are, which I wrote up in tracking a string section without a scoring stage. Credits for the records behind this are at /credits.
Could you record the horns in the Valley instead?
For a smaller section, yes. A two to four piece can track in a good Valley live room, and I have covered where those rooms are in tracking drums between NoHo and Van Nuys. For a full section with a big cinematic bloom you need the cubic feet, so the room choice becomes an arrangement decision made before the first horn is written: a tight four-piece for a Valley room, or a full section that has to find the ceiling height.
Frequently asked
How many rooms in Hollywood can record a full horn section live? Very few. A six to eight piece brass section needs a live room with high ceilings and real isolation, and most surviving Hollywood rooms are vocal and overdub suites. The large tracking rooms left on Sunset book far ahead and price for film work.
What microphones handle a loud brass section? Ribbon mics such as the Royer R-121 sit close on trumpets and trombones because a trumpet bell can pass 130 dB SPL, and a room pair catches the section as one body. Condensers work farther back where the level has dropped.
How far is Hollywood from a Burbank mix room? About 8 to 10 miles, 15 to 25 minutes on the US-101 to the CA-134 outside rush hour. The players track in Hollywood and the edit and mix happen in Burbank.
If you have a horn arrangement to track
Send the arrangement and the section size, and say whether it hits to picture. What comes back is a plain plan: how many cubic feet the sound needs, whether a Valley room fits or the section wants a large Hollywood floor, and how the day should run so the horns are tracked by lunch. Background and contact at /about.