on location recording - building suggestions and cautions?

jizzleman · Post by **jizzleman** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 7:58 am

hi

i am a engineer/producer, and im currently planning for a project for the next 6 months. the project is a full scale full length record, with a band that i am producing. the album is to be top notch in terms of sonic quality, all in the realm of my concept. but i wish to make absolutely sure, before hand, that my concept will be able to achieve the quality im after.

lets get to the point. my idea is that i want to record the whole band all at once, in a big room. i'm looking for locations to rent out for building a "temp" studio (a recording setup) inside of it, making a comfortable space for everyone to sit at their station and just really get creative with the playing together. my original vision was a large sorta... 4-H building will all wooden floors almost the size of a gym. the idea was to setup shop right in the middle of the big room (almost 20 foot ceilings), and record everything at once. minus terms of setup, and equipment, i have concerns about the building / room and its acoustics. now considering i havent picked or found a location, i guess im looking for cautions or things i should avoid that would end up sounding bad when recording in a location similair to what i have described. i know in paticular one building that i would like to use but was very famous for its large reverb effect it would cause when bands performed (it used to be a place for small scale concerts, fits about 500 people). im worried that even though i would like to capture a natural reverb from the room, i wouldnt want to be confined to something that was so huge that sounded awful.

what sorta of things, in terms of size and materials should i avoid when choosing a building/location for doing this project.

the concept is maybe similair to that of metallica's st. anger where they recorded the entire thing life, only that this band doesnt sound like metallica, but i want to capture the live feel of the band and the natural reverbs because i've grown to hate digital reverb.

thanks for any help and advice offered

jizzleman · Post by **jizzleman** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:52 pm

anyone?

knightfly · Post by **knightfly** » Tue Jan 24, 2006 5:11 pm

My concerns would be that unless you have a large budget, it will probably be nearly impossible to find a space that's both large and still sounds good; your experience with the room you mentioned is a case in point. Most larger rooms aren't designed for their acoustics, they're designed to play basketball in or hold National Guard meetings in, and they sound like CRAP.

To get a large room to sound like a GOOD large room, it takes a LOT of treatments of different kinds; to start from scratch, it would probably cost more to treat such a room than it would to hire a concert hall for the needed time - in fact, that's what I'd start looking for unless you're in the middle of nowhere - I think you'd have a lot better luck with a room that's INTENDED for the purpose... Steve

(A band I had several years ago foolishly agreed to play one of those "battle of the bands" crap gigs, it was actually done in a National Guard Armory - we almost could have played the first 4 bars of one song and left, and just let the ROOM play the rest of the song WITHOUT us...

AVare · Post by **AVare** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 1:32 am

Steve wrote:

we almost could have played the first 4 bars of one song and left, and just let the ROOM play the rest of the song WITHOUT us...

Braggart! Where go get off being get off being lucky in having such acoustically dead armouries? That sounds like the Hamilton armoury with crouds in it.

Andre