Advice appreciated: Large undertaking "reamping" in church space, pontificating ok!

[manymanyhaha]

So there is this gorgeous sounding old abandoned church around the corner from my house in New Orleans that after much legwork and searching, I have finally found the owners and they are going to let me use it during downtime (owners are just now trying to reinvent it as a performance space). It's a traditional church design with a long nave down the center with side aisles. It really sounds gorgeous.

I have 30 recorded songs that I have been tinkering with for awhile and I am going to take the individual tracks and reamp them with PA into the space and re-record them.

I was thinking I'd try this technique with Little Blondies as the omnis and a Cascade X-15L as the blumlein. That would mean I'd have the PA where the drums are going to be located when recording those. I'm going to re-amp the bass since I have the bass direct. And I think I might try to run the guitar tracks into a clean amp into guitar speakers since all the guitar tracks I recorded from the amp direct out in addition to miking (though I do not like the miked tracks).

And because I do not like the miked tracks, I am thinking of re-close-miking the guitars and bass.

I have a pair of Firestudio Tubes but am considering getting six nice preamps (four for the space recording, two for the close-miking).

Please, if anyone has any advice, I'd really appreciate it. Feel free to pontificate if you must!

Also, I am trying to spend the proverbial "as little money as possible". FYI.

[aj633]

If you're just going to use the stuff this once, buy the best gear you can afford used and sell it when you're done. If you buy the right deal, you can actually make money. Do you have a quality PA that's going to make this worthwhile?

[manymanyhaha]

Originally Posted by aj633

If you're just going to use the stuff this once, buy the best gear you can afford used and sell it when you're done. If you buy the right deal, you can actually make money. Do you have a quality PA that's going to make this worthwhile?

I was thinking of getting a pair of QSC k12's. Heard a qsc k10 in the space last night and it sounded very good.

[drbob1]

I do like the idea of using real spaces as reverb, and it's the same basic idea as the original reverb tanks studios used to use, so it's not a stupid idea. To my thought the areas that problems may develop are:

1. The music reproduction system is critical, higher quality at lower volume would be better than vice versa. The K112 is a good speaker, I almost wonder if a set of studio monitor speakers might be better?

2. Since sound radiates from real instruments (especially drums) in 360 degrees on the horizontal and 180 degrees vertically and speakers radiate over maybe 60 degrees each way, the sound may be significantly different than the sound of real instruments in the same space. On the plus side, using the same space for all instruments should glue things together.

3. I really wouldn't bother close micing anything again, the whole point of that is to minimize room effects. For example sticking a 57 on a guitar cab, right on the grill isn't going to get much value from the church. Reamping and using an LDC or ribbon and getting some of the space in there DOES make sense. Not sure I'd bother with the bass if you're happy with the basic sound.

4. If I were doing the project, I'd LOVE to be able to redo the drums and vocals in the real space, but that's me...

[aj633]

I'm with drbob. Any way you could just redo the drums and then re-amp the guitars separately? You could use 57s on the snare, toms, and inside kick, an RE20 outside the kick, then put a couple OHs and room mics. Would save you having to buy a PA. And if you buy quality stuff used, you should have no problem reselling for a similar price. Just have to be patient and know what to get. What's your budget?

[joeq]

I did something similar to this in an outdoor field.

I found that reamping each instrument's reverb individually created too many tracks - each of which had the equivalent of a 'generation' of noise. Granted there are crickets and stuff outside, but every space has its room tone and that will build up.

So instead, I ended up doing a 'master verb' pass with everything in it in proportion. I made individual passes only for a few key instruments.


When I did the master verb, I still made many takes with different proportions to cover my bases. I used only one of these takes, but I wanted to make sure I had some choices later so I just kept running variations.

my advice would be to have the song close to mixed first, so you can get a rough idea of the proportions for the sends into the 'master verb'

I see no harm in reamping guitars or basses in the space. I think a bit of the room will creep into even close mics (figure-8?) maybe in a cool way, if not, you still have the DI and the old track, so all you lose is the time it takes to try it.

1. The music reproduction system is critical, higher quality at lower volume would be better than vice versa.

IMO this is style-dependent. Is it a mellow folk-rock group or a metal band blasting away? Are you striving for realism, or just looking for some BIG verb? Maybe you just need it loud...they don't call it 'exciting the room' for nothing.

[manymanyhaha]

I have not developed a budget per se, but I am unestablished and have been experimenting towards finished products for a bit of time now so I'm trying not to lose too much more money than I already have! The idea of things I might be able to sell and break even was a good one.

As was the idea of using studio monitors. I have been thinking of upgrading recently and for some reason the Sonodyne 100ak's have caught my eye. I have the Focal CMS 40's which I like though I'm not sure 4" speakers are going to accomplish what I want.

I am going to close mike the guitars and bass with ribbons and sdc's I think. The drums are a drum machine though I guess I could close mike the PA for the drums. I've been trying to mix what I have for awhile and it just has not been working so I figure if I were doing this anyway, why not close mike the direct sounds and see if I can come up with something I like better?

My girlfriend calls it "ethereal rock". I think the production could use more ethereal, thus me finding one of the best spaces I've ever heard to try this with.

Thanks for all this advice, it's good stuff to chew on!