How To Ensure A String Quartet Complements Venue Acoustics

How to ensure a wed­ding string quar­tet com­ple­ments the acoustics of your venue

If you’re look­ing into (or have booked) a string quar­tet for your wed­ding day, you can look for­ward to a height­ened atmos­phere of romance and sophis­ti­ca­tion on the day, while most groups offer an exten­sive, ver­sa­tile reper­toire and can play most things from clas­si­cal pieces to pop. 

What’s more, a quar­tet, typ­i­cal­ly com­pris­ing a cel­lo and vio­la along with a cou­ple of vio­lins, pro­duces a rich, lay­ered sound which fills big­ger venues or trav­els out­side nat­u­ral­ly. These musi­cians are also unob­tru­sive, com­pact so take up lit­tle space, and don’t require loud or bulky PA systems. 

If you’re won­der­ing how to get the act to work acousti­cal­ly with your venue, there are a num­ber of strate­gies to consider: 

• Be aware of soft fur­nish­ings: If a room has heavy drapes, thick car­pets and so on, as well as a large num­ber of guests, these will absorb vol­ume. That may may work well for the speech­es, but it can dull the sound of stringed instru­ments. The solu­tion? If you can, get the musi­cians to per­form on a hard, reflec­tive sur­face such as wood, and avoid heav­i­ly car­pet­ed surfaces. 
• Make the most of the char­ac­ter of a room: If your act is play­ing in a big­ger space fea­tur­ing stone walls and high ceil­ings (for exam­ple a state­ly home or his­toric church), their pieces will res­onate to cre­ate a gor­geous sound. But you may also get mud­dy echoes. This means that, rather than being crisp and clear­ly defined, the notes become ​‘cloudy’ or unclear. The effects of this can be mit­i­gat­ed if the musi­cians use mutes to damp­en the sound, or make short­er, clean­ing bow strokes to enhance the clar­i­ty of the notes. 
• Out­door play­ing: Music eas­i­ly drifts away in the breeze if there are no walls to reflect the sound. The answer is to help push the music in the direc­tion of your guests by posi­tion­ing the ensem­ble against a sol­id back­drop, whether that’s a hedge, wall or archway. 
• Smart posi­tion­ing: Locate the quar­tet as close as you can to where every­thing is going on, again so that sound is chan­nelled towards every­one there. A string ensem­ble typ­i­cal­ly needs no more than a space of around 3x2m to sit com­fort­ably with their music stands in place. 
• Sub­tle ampli­fi­ca­tion: Most string groups are com­plete­ly unam­pli­fied. But some espe­cial­ly large out­side areas or huge halls may ben­e­fit from a dis­creet­ly placed mic so that every­one can enjoy every note played. You may want to coor­di­nate this with the venue or your wed­ding DJ if you’re hav­ing one, as well as the quar­tet, to bal­ance sound lev­els perfectly. 
• Con­sid­er a sound check: Ask the group to run through a brief sound test in var­i­ous parts of the venue before your guests arrive. This will also help the musi­cians to select the best pieces for the space and adjust their dynam­ics accordingly. 

A wed­ding string quar­tet with Gecko Live

At Gecko Live, we have many years’ expe­ri­ence of sup­ply­ing delight­ful string quar­tets to wed­dings, where they play a huge array of dif­fer­ent pieces. Check out Opal String Quar­tet, for exam­ple, avail­able across the south of Eng­land and whose reper­toire includes orches­tral arrange­ments of con­tem­po­rary hits. 

We stand out in that our founders are them­selves musi­cal per­form­ers. So we have an excel­lent under­stand­ing of what works best for each type of venue. Plus we’ll always make sure we gain a good under­stand­ing of what you need for your occa­sion before we do any­thing else. 

What’s more, we have total con­fi­dence in the qual­i­ty of each of our acts, all of whom we’ve hand­picked and know to be sea­soned pro­fes­sion­als. Your quar­tet will be pleased to speak to you before your wed­ding, and to dis­cuss the acoustics with you. 

Con­tact us today and tell us a bit about what you have in mind for your big day.