Recording in a church: What should I do?

[tret-lo]

My band has recently been lucky enough to get our hands on a very unique rehearsal space: the choir loft of an old church. The church itself is pretty big, and our space is the 1000 sq. ft. balcony in the back. The balcony is high up yet open, and it looks out over the pews and towards the altar / religious area. (Can you tell I'm not a churchgoing man?)

I was worried that the reverb would be too much, but it is truly perfect. It is the best sounding room I have ever played in, and now I want to record there.

Currently I have my little recording setup (with some Alesis M1 MKII monitors) just sitting on a table. The sound from the monitors echoes everywhere and is very unclear. I would like to have a better place to mix--it doesn't have to be isolated, just a more accurate monitoring environment.

Here are the restrictions:
- Budget ~$500.
- I can't really do anything drastic to the walls, by order of the higher powers (i.e. church pastor / God.)
- The ceilings are vaulted and in some places very high, so I can't really build any walls that reach the ceiling.

Here is a drawing of the space (not to scale).



Any thoughts? My best idea was some kind of freestanding, acoustically treated plywood hut in the corner.

p.s. I have six 4' x 3' panels of sonex acoustic foam that is about 3" thick.

[goldstar]

tret

For your budget, doing enough to isolate for monitoring will be next to impossible, but your "monitoring tent" idea is probably best; try and set the panels (maybe stick the Sonex to some particle board 4x8's with a simple triangle brace to hold them up) up symetrically around you.

If you can set-up your monitoring location as close to the center as you can (so bass buildup from the corners doesn't have as much effect) or get some good closed-ear headphones, get used to how they sound with material you already know and see how mixes translate when you check them somewhere else.

Not much help, I know, but lots of folks would love to have your problem (dealing w/ a great space, I mean).

Frank

[weatherbox]

Wow, lucky break - working in a room like that can be great fun for drums and guitars... get yourself some loooong cables and do some insane room micing.
As for monitoring... your idea of acoustically fencing off an area seems like the best bet to me... build some additional bass absorbant panels if need be. Alternately, how mobile is your setup? Could you track there, and mix in another, acoustically tamer locale?

[surf's up]

yeah im also wondering if you could do the mixing somewhere else. You will still need to be able to monitor at the location though, to check levels, sounds, etc. fortunately, if the space is good, just about anywhere you put the mics things will sound awesome. just multi-mic everything so youll have lots of otpions during mixing. part of me says dont do anything special as far as treatment goes and just lean on your headphones while youre there.

i had the opportunity to record at a church once, it was a more modern gymnasium style thing, but still it had a very nie ambience going. We used several diff. room mics for the drums, had 3 mics on guitar amps (close , medium, and far far away), so just experiment, have fun. and try to leave yourself as many options as possible for the mixdown.

[alexxxchange]

packing blankets are good and cheap.
maybe hang 'em up on some kind of metal frame?