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CoolWebs CoolWebs is offline
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Default Finding Cool Places to Record

As a musician, I've always been particularly inspired to perform in
rooms that have a nice natural ambiance to them. Churches,
auditoriums, stages, warehouses, stairwells, etc... As an amateur
producer, I'd like to try and find cool sounding spaces to record
myself and my friend's bands to see if having a great sounding room
will improve the sound of our crappy instruments and recording gear. I
know we could pay to go to a real studio but I'm looking for places I
can get into for free just for fun and to try and get an inspired
performance with some hint of decent room sound to add character to
these recordings. Any tips? I'm thinking places like school
auditoriums and such. How can we get in when no one is using them???
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John Williamson John Williamson is offline
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Default Finding Cool Places to Record

CoolWebs wrote:
As a musician, I've always been particularly inspired to perform in
rooms that have a nice natural ambiance to them. Churches,
auditoriums, stages, warehouses, stairwells, etc... As an amateur
producer, I'd like to try and find cool sounding spaces to record
myself and my friend's bands to see if having a great sounding room
will improve the sound of our crappy instruments and recording gear. I
know we could pay to go to a real studio but I'm looking for places I
can get into for free just for fun and to try and get an inspired
performance with some hint of decent room sound to add character to
these recordings. Any tips? I'm thinking places like school
auditoriums and such. How can we get in when no one is using them???


For school auditoria, speak to the school secretary or head. For
churches, you need the vicar or equivalent. The schools will normally
charge you for the caretaker's time opening up, locking up and running a
broom and mop over the floor afterwards, the vicar will normally want a
reasonable donation to the church roof fund or some other charity. A
band I know has a deal with a local working mens' club, whereby they
play a few popular numbers for the customers once a month or so, and
they get to use the room free for rehearsals the other weeks. (With
added heckling from the bar, if they spark enough interest.)

I once hired the local town hall (80 feet long, 40 feet wide, and 50
feet tall) for an evening for very little.

First, though, I'd suggest concentrating on making your gear sound good
in a crappy room, then when you *do* use a decent room, you'll be blown
away. Even cheap modern recording gear can, if used correctly, make a
grotty room sound acceptable. Maybe have a chat with a local engineer,
explaining that you'd like him or her to show you how to get the best
out of what you've got. The worst he or she can do is say no, or "Pay me
money". If you've got a local college with a music recording course,
join up. My local college has a couple of very nice studio setups which
students can use for a modest fee if they're not in use for lessons.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.
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Frank Stearns Frank Stearns is offline
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Default Finding Cool Places to Record

flatfish+++ writes:

-snips-

As for High Schools etc, offer to record their Xmas show or something
for free, or discounted in return for them letting you use the
facilities.


If only! Schools in this area have gotten out of hand. Just did a 3 hour session
with choir and orchestra in an admittedly very good high school concert hall. By the
time we'd gotten done with a few hours on either side for set and strike, the bill
was north of US$900 just for the room (non-Union house). Add another $200 to get a
piano tuner in on a Sunday (tuning not provided with the room rental).

Hell, that's way more than I made for tracking!

Similar rooms here are commanding figures close to that. One of the main performance
houses in town (union) gets $3500/day plus a piece of the door. (Will be there in
June.)

Another, smaller hall gets $1200/day. In 2012 a group booked that hall (and me) for
five days. I'll be tracking the dress rehearsal, two performances, and two sessions
afterwords. So that's getting close to $6000, but at least they'll get two shows and
hopefully a CD out of the deal -- maybe even with some live cuts for excitement!

What's the old expression, modified for room rentals? You can have it cheap, with
good sound, at a convenient time. Pick *at most* only two items from that list. g

Frank
Mobile Audio
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Arny Krueger Arny Krueger is offline
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"CoolWebs" wrote in message


As a musician, I've always been particularly inspired to
perform in rooms that have a nice natural ambiance to
them. Churches, auditoriums, stages, warehouses,
stairwells, etc...


John Williamson's comments about learning how to record in bad spaces
brought a smile, because I end up doing most of my work in bad spaces. Every
once in a while I get to record in a good space and remind myself that I
actually know how to record music without close micing. ;-)

There isn't a lot you can do with a really bad room except close mic, mic
the room on separate tracks, and even seriously consider using a little
artificial reverb when leaking a bit of the natural reverb back in doesn't
work out. There is good natural reverb and bad natural reverb. When you are
in the room the reverb probably sounds the best it ever will, which is why I
recommend that you come up with a way to manage it after the fact. The first
hard lesson about live recording is dealing with how much worse things sound
in the cold light of the next morning. ;-)

As far as your options go - first look at what you are recording and try to
determine what sort room you want, live or dead. For example, if you're
doing a voice-over you probably want a really dead room. A small bedroom
with a big bed in it can be good. Family rooms full of overstuffed furniture
can also work and have more open space to work in. I've done well-received
VOs with a Microtrack and the plug-in mics that come with it.

Secondly, you can count on churches, especially older ones to be among the
livest rooms you'll ever find this side of a tiled bathroom. In churches
there is good reverb and bad reverb but there is almost always a ton of
reverb. It is all about congregational singing.

My home church is shaped like a shoe box, has almost no absorption in it of
any kind, limited diffusion, and the reflections are mostly from slab walls
made up of painted cinder block. After struggling here for a decade I would
suggest staying away. OTOH the Catholic church down the street has a domed
cathedral ceiling, lots of curves and angles, padded pews, kneelers, and a
carpeted floor. I haven't had the privilege of working there, but it looks
like a room with a lot of promise. My first shot would be to try to book
some time after the Friday Fish fry when they have the building open anyway,
but there is almost nobody there.

Warehouses can turn out to be remarkably good because they tend towards bare
cinder blockwalls with lots of odd-shaped piles of stuff all over the place.
Unpainted cinder block and split block is good. Painted anything and yards
of drywall are bad. The trick is to find a warehouse that has nobody in it
but you and your people. These days people like to secure warehouses.



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Scott Dorsey Scott Dorsey is offline
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Default Finding Cool Places to Record

CoolWebs wrote:
As a musician, I've always been particularly inspired to perform in
rooms that have a nice natural ambiance to them. Churches,
auditoriums, stages, warehouses, stairwells, etc... As an amateur
producer, I'd like to try and find cool sounding spaces to record
myself and my friend's bands to see if having a great sounding room
will improve the sound of our crappy instruments and recording gear. I
know we could pay to go to a real studio but I'm looking for places I
can get into for free just for fun and to try and get an inspired
performance with some hint of decent room sound to add character to
these recordings. Any tips? I'm thinking places like school
auditoriums and such. How can we get in when no one is using them???


Ask.

For many years, one of my favorite spaces was an auditorium in the physics
department of a local college. I'd call up the department secretary and
book the room, and they were very happy to have someone using it after hours.

Then they renovated it and it has a flutter echo problem now. But that's
another story.

Always ask, the worst anyone can say is no. It worked for Paul Horn in the
Taj Mahal.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."


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chris- chris- is offline
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Default Finding Cool Places to Record

On Apr 20, 4:30*am, CoolWebs wrote:
As a musician, I've always been particularly inspired to perform in
rooms that have a nice natural ambiance to them. Churches,
auditoriums, stages, warehouses, stairwells, etc... As an amateur
producer, I'd like to try and find cool sounding spaces to record
myself and my friend's bands to see if having a great sounding room
will improve the sound of our crappy instruments and recording gear. I
know we could pay to go to a real studio but I'm looking for places I
can get into for free just for fun and to try and get an inspired
performance with some hint of decent room sound to add character to
these recordings. Any tips? I'm thinking places like school
auditoriums and such. How can we get in when no one is using them???


Interesting question, and interesting points made already.

In some situations it might be possible to turn it into an
"educational project" of some sort, and thus get the use of the space
for free or reduced rates. Other options might include doing an
additional recording for charity while you're there, to get the space
for free, or to encourage an owner to allow use of a space that might
otherwise be disallowed.

You might consider making contact with people who are involved in the
running of the space, for example, befriend a teacher at a school, do
something which benefits that teacher, and you might get a space in
the school for free or reduced rates. For example, offer to record the
shool choir for free, in exchange for using the space yourself.

On a slightly different, but related topic, personally, I love unusual
sound juxtapositions. Examples include a busker playing a very
"ethnic" bagpipe which looked as if it had been made out of a piece of
a goat, with a hand-made pipe in the end, playing in an echoey hallway
in an underground train area, near an escalator which was making an
extraordinary and beatiful screaming sound as the metal rubbed against
other metal. It was an amazing sonic environment. Another example is a
helicopter taking off in the evening in London, right next a a mosque
with the call for prayer going out over distorted speakers . . . just
beautiful! Sometime I must investigate portable recording devices that
would do a reasonable job of recording such things!

CM
Why not turn your interest in guitar playing into an additional
income?
flippa.com/133540
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