The photos on this post were taken at The Folk of Gloucester in a beautiful space we've been using to record as The Ominous Folk. I love this building - it's where we do the Gloucester steampunk events and there are increasing numbers of folk events, too. It's an honour and a joy to be able to do things there.
Between these two photos, you can see the space we were using, which is part of a much bigger room. We did our usual thing of coming in and singing to the space to find out how it works, listening to how sound behaves. From that, we were able to quickly make some decisions about where to put the people, and the recording device. Working with the space is, I think, a very important bardic skill.
The third of the room nearest the window quickly checked out as having the best sound. Then came the surprise. I assumed that singing to the fairly flat wall (the one behind me in the top photo) would be ideal, but on testing, it turned out to be more effective singing to the wall behind Keith in the bottom photo. Always best to test things! The way sound behaves in a space can be really unpredictable, with both the shape of the space and the materials in it impacting on the sound.
We had to be really careful with the floor so as not to have any sound from people moving. This was not a quiet floor! We also had to keep out from under the beam, which also impacted on the sound. It was just about possible to do that with four of us in a row and a little bit squeezy with five of us, when Keith sang in on a track.
We had terrific support from the team at The Folk, and it's apparent that this process of being in the building to record has changed our relationship with the space. And so it is that more plotting is under way! It's also really good recording with someone who entirely understands what we're doing and who is, therefore, able to work with us easily on capturing the music in exactly the right way. I'm very glad we've not gone a more conventional route with this, because this whole process has become something really interesting in its own right.
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