Using an Auditorium as a live room.

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Roozter

Roozter

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My drummer and I were talking about where we could live track other than his drum room, which is oddly enough well soundproofed to a certain extent, is far too small to get any good sound, especially on drums, which are getting cut all across the Frequency range, especially the mid range. I can get killer acoustic guitar sounds in that room, but the drums just get killed in the mix, and its just a headache.

So he threw the idea out of using his old highschools theatre/audtiorium to record in. I see some upsides to this, but also some downsides. To start I could at least give a little overview of the room. Its got a hardwood stage, concrete walls, the huge curtains which we could keep open or closed, and carpet as well as fabric chairs where the seating is. The room does seem to have some certain level of soundproofing close to the stage where a lot of the lighting is housed. I would guess the room is something like 65-70 feet Length, 45-50 Width, and Height would probably be about 30 feet, possibly taller, its a fairly large room when you pull open the curtain.

While my mouth is watering out the sound this room could produce on record if it turns out correctly, I do have some serious fears about leaving the safety of a soundproofed room, even if it just an undersized basement, and I am concered about how much of a "live" sound this room could give me.

Any thoughts?
 
(A) Bigger is almost universally better.

(B) Well-controlled is almost universally better.

If the room sounds awesome, go for it. It might work well, it might be way too live. Move around some. Try the stage while mic'ing the room, try the room while mic'ing the stage.

But I will tell you this -- A "real room" drum sound is something that you can only ever get in a "real" room... Small rooms won't even get your attention anymore.

Long story short - Bring a snare and a stick, maybe a woodblock to hear the attack better and wander the space looking for "ping" and "flutter" and comb-filtering and what not -- Avoid those spaces. I'd sort of bet you'd eventually want the grand curtain closed at least partially if the room is even reasonably "lively" to the ear (it's going to seem twice as lively to the microphones due to how your brain focuses on sound sources while you're actually in a room).

OBVIOUSLY, make sure the drums are PROPERLY tuned and take incredible care in selection and placement of the close mics, as those are going to be your only real adjustment of proximity. Put a couple overheads in "typical" placement, put a couple "out there - somewhere" also (again, wandering the room to find where "that sound" is).

If you want the "monster" sound, go get it.
 
Man I wholeheartedly agree - go for it.
For example! I have an acoustic band which- in my home pretty well treated/controlled but small recording area- I can get really nice results with a few instruments at a time. But bottom line not so interesting all at once overall due to-- what makes the room controlled also makes it -dry.

So we have these gigs at this local car museum’. Basically a big old high wood warehouse. (curved’ ceiling- is that relevant?) Where we set there’s some open ‘cafe fixtures- overhead and stuff..
All I can say is with the nice bright/diffuse ‘early returns (but 10-20ms minimums!), plus this fine smooth ‘hall return in the distance- it’s a flat out gas to play (and now recorded) in.
We already asked if we can come in after hours but.. Come to think of it I haven’t tried begging yet
 
My main concern right now is just the reverb. My drummer is pushing for this probably because he knows that the drum sound in that room is to die for. Thats all fine and well with me, I want a great drum sound. But then my focus turns to how the cabs are going to sound miced. I think theres only so much gating I can do for that room. My drummer loves live albums, much more than studio albums. But Im the exact opposite, I love studio albums. If I can get a great sound without having that "live album" sound, I would be totally for it. I do like a good amount of reverb on my mixes, and the idea that I could get a great full natural reverb sound is almost too good to pass up. But I have a feeling all that reverb might cause me a headache in the final mixes.
 
Well, you can probably still record the cabs at home right? That way you've got the ambience on the drums to give you the "environment" then you can use close mics in your controlled room on the cabs and add hardware/plugin reverb of choice to the guitar tracks to make them mesh with the drum sound. Or you can still record the cabs in the big room, but rely on the close mic more than any further-back room mics and blend in the room mics to taste.
 
I forgot to mention what our mic setup for drums is. 2 OH's - Top Snare - Bottom Snare - Kick. Im going for the old fashioned approach. So I think If I get the OH's miced right, room noise shouldnt be a huge issue for me. Mo close drum mics, mo problems.
 
Give it a try--but, in my bitter experience, more school auditoriums are hollow echoey boxes than nice sounding rooms.

However, it's always worth being on the lookout (or is it listen out?) for rooms that have a sound you like. More than once I recorded vocals in one particular staircase in our office/studio building. My big regret is not doing a convolution reverb pulse in there!
 
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