The big church, or the medium sized rehearsal space?!

Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 12:59 am

I'm planning to record drum set for a project this week. I have a choice between two rooms. One is a fairly large church sanctuary (see http://fromthemoon.net/images/church1.jpg and http://fromthemoon.net/images/church2.jpg), the other is a medium/small rehearsal space (see http://fromthemoon.net/images/jamroom.gif). The jam room is dry wall with a cement floor currently covered with various rugs.

The church has a very reverby sound. It sounds really great, but I'm worried that in the mix it won't sound tight enough (there are a lot of layered guitar parts going on, so there isn't a lot of room to spare for massive amounts of reverb on the drum parts). I'd like the drums to be powerful, defined, and alive.

The rehearsal space is okay sounding, but not exciting. I've done some recording in it before with decent results, but I'm going for better than decent this time around, so I guess I'd have to make it sound better some how. I can make as much noise as I'd like to in either room... they are both out in the country.

Given the dimensions and surface info in the links above, does anyone have any wisdom to share on which room to go for and how I could go about solving the issues associated with each room?

Thanks so much!

Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 8:37 am

One rash vote for church!

Posted: Mon May 08, 2006 4:07 pm

The church, eh?

I went there today to do some experimentation. It did sound pretty good in there. I'm just a little worried about the wave of echo that bounces off of the back wall (50' away!); I wish I could put a massive absorber on that wall or something. I might have to rely on close mics on each drum to get any kind of focused sound.

I made some recordings during my experiment. I set up a Rode NT1-A condensor about an arm's length away from a floor tom, a snare, and a pair of high-hats. I did the same in the rehearsal room for comparison. The latter definately has some acoustic issues that would need to be solved before doing any kind of serious recording.

To hear, download entire set here: http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest.zip or individually:

http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/tom-church.wav
http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/tom-jam.wav
http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/snare-church.wav
http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/snare-jam.wav
http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/hats-church.wav
http://fromthemoon.net/roomstest/hats-jam.wav

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