Cable run woes!

[Alexbt]

'Lo all. I've been trying very hard to think of a method that will work in this scenario.

We are recording drums in a small room with a baby grand piano, windows, wall and ceiling treatments, and a door.

The idea was to setup my DAW and mixer in the adjacent room, which is smaller, has an upright piano, a smaller window and a door.

The plan is to use 6 mics on the kit. 4 through my Yamaha 10/2 pres, and 2 through my Delta 1010LT's 'pres'.

The problem is running the cables between both rooms and keeping the doors shut. I can't think of any way to do it. The doors have runners on the bottom (that we can't take off, this is a state-owned building), and the windows are too far apart, and this is on the second floor of the building.

In the makeshift control room, I was going to have at least one guitar to play along with the drums, and I wanted my mixer in there.

Is there anything I'm not thinking of that could be a good idea?

[mshilarious]

Acoustic guitar or electric? If it's electric, I wouldn't worry about it, just close the door as much as you can. The bleed from the drums shouldn't be louder than your headphones. The question then is the guitar too loud in the control room? And does the guitarist need to be able to see the drummer?

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Two words:

duct tape.



G.

[Alexbt]

Well, we have two guitarists. They're both going to be available. I don't know if I'll be using both though. One is the lead singer/lead guitarist and the other is the rhythm guitarist.

The rhythm guitarist plays electric on two of the three songs we will be working on first. He plays acoustic on the third, but I intended these tracks to be scratch anyways--something for the drummer to play along with as we won't be using a click track and to make it clear where we are in the song. Electric can be used on all of the tracking if it will make things simpler. And no, he won't need to see him.

My main concern is not being too much of a distraction. These are practice rooms in a music building. The doors do not block much of the sound in the rooms, and I'm worried that an open door to the drum room would be too much. (Not like I expect anyone to really be around after 5PM on Friday afternoons.)

[Alexbt]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Two words:

duct tape.



G.

Mmm, I had that same thought! Only problem is it leaving a residue or taking paint with it as well as me getting in there every few minutes to make adjustments to the mics.

[Dani Pace]

I ran into a similar situation recently, had to run cables through a doorway and couldn't quite close the door. We draped a couple of quilts over the door, letting about 8" lap out past the edge then closed the door as much as we could without crimpimg the cables. It wasn't perfect but it did work surprisingly well, we could still open the door for making adjustments then close it to get (almost) isolation.
PS I forgot the duck tape that night.

[mshilarious]

Originally Posted by Alexbt

Well, we have two guitarists. They're both going to be available. I don't know if I'll be using both though. One is the lead singer/lead guitarist and the other is the rhythm guitarist.

The rhythm guitarist plays electric on two of the three songs we will be working on first. He plays acoustic on the third, but I intended these tracks to be scratch anyways--something for the drummer to play along with as we won't be using a click track and to make it clear where we are in the song. Electric can be used on all of the tracking if it will make things simpler. And no, he won't need to see him.

My main concern is not being too much of a distraction. These are practice rooms in a music building. The doors do not block much of the sound in the rooms, and I'm worried that an open door to the drum room would be too much. (Not like I expect anyone to really be around after 5PM on Friday afternoons.)

Heh. Yeah. Well, when I was in school, the music practice rooms were also blaring with one instrument or another anyway.

If these are scratch tracks, is there a way to DI the guitars? Line out on the amp, maybe? Then they could be in the room with the drummer.

[LemonTree]

get some heavy blankets and pin them to the top of the door frames, even with the doors still partialy open to let your cables pass the sound will be dulled...you could do this on both sides of each door frame

[xstatic]

Being a state owned buliding.... Does it have a drop ceiling by chance? If so you could pop one tile out in each room. You could even buy two of your own tiles and cut the proper sized holes in them to get your cables through. Each time you are in there recording, pull 1 tile from each room out, run your cables, and then put your new tiles in their place to help keep the noise down

[northsiderap]

I've got a hole drilled in the wall... Nothing a little patch of drywall and mud won't fix pretty fast...

[tubesrawsom]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

Two words:

duct tape.



G.

I secong that.