Large Room Drum Recording

[big electric cat]

Hi,

I am about to embark of an album length project with my band.

Previously we have tracked drums in a medium sized bar and got results we were pleased with.

However this space is no longer available to us. Instead, I have to opportunity to record in a school hall. It is about 30 meters long, 12 meters wide, and around 4 meters tall.

It has a hard floor and is used for school sports but it also has a stage and is used for concerts and assemblies. It isn't a massively reverberant room and the ceiling is flat and tiled - not arched metal.

Of course, I won't know what the drums will really sound like in there until the day of the session.

The drums will be close mic'd, plus 2 overheads in recorderman position and a stereo room mic.

I often encounter the advice to record drums in a big space with a high ceiling. My question is, do you think this room is fit for the purpose, or is it too big? If it is too big are there any techniques I can employ to make the space work for us?

We also have the option to curtain off the stage with some heavy stage curtains and track on the stage space which would be around 5mx10mx4m.

All advice and opinions are most welcome.

Thanks in advance,

Tony

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Put the drums in the big room and see what they sound like. Then try them on stage.
Does the stage have a curtain? If so you could always close the curtain part way to make a smaller space.

[JWL]

For big rooms, I generally like to put gobos around the drums, to control the amount of "big roominess" in the close mics and overheads. Then, for room mics, you can put those far out into the room to get the bigger roomy sound.

Best of both worlds, but you have to be careful with placement on everything (drums, gobos, mics).

[Fakiekid]

you will have to hear the room and see if it's something you want to embrace into the sound or reduce! Gobos as mentioned are a great way of minimising and directing sound. I would personally have a little play with those if they are available to you.

I think the interesting thing here is setting up different combinations of room mics, I.e a standard pair of XY or ORTF pair about 6-8 feet away and then another set (or mono mic depending on channels etc) as far away as possible (with some tweaks to placement obviously) to see if there is any interesting sounds for breaks, intros etc.

If you have the time, just experiment!