The First Day

The Geese recorded two songs on the first night we had the run of the gallery, Undiscovered Scotland and God Song.  There was no audience, just the band, Susi Woodmass and me. I set up the mics and grouped the three players in a close semi-circle around them. The space can clearly be heard, as the band played towards the largest part of it, increasing late reflections and exaggerating the reverberation tail.  There is a reasonable stereo image, but the separation is better on the quieter track, God Song, probably due to the mics being allowed to reproduce the detail more easily as the sound pressure lessens. similarly too, the quieter track reveals more detail about the space owing to the decrease in early reflections from percussive sound. Overall, the result is an acceptable record of the songs, but not to broadcast standard, which, for a first crack is not bad going.

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In The Beginning

In The Beginning was the space and the space was called The Faed Gallery.

My friends Susi, Dee and I were at a concert in The gallery about 3 years ago and were all impressed with the acoustics of it. We agreed to investigate further and to this end I enlisted the help of The Geese, a local folk combo comprising Voc/Gtr, Banjo/Voc, Violin/Voc. Over a few cold nights that Autumn we tried recording in a variety of locations around the Gallery, using a simple M/S mic setup. I noticed that, due to the partial baffling of the ceiling, there was distinct graduation to the liveness of the room. Eventually this would result in the group being arranged under the highest point of the ceiling, where there was no baffling  and the bare wood of the underside of the roof was exposed.