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I walked into a building a friend of mine owns and it's huge - large concrete building which used to house a custom wood mill and shop. The large center room is at least 4 stories high and about a basketball court's width. The concrete interior creates an amazing decay which preserves all of the low end of a sound set off inside it.

I'm thinking of worldizing with my pair of Genelec speakers and making some great effects but I don't know where to start - it's like getting to a music or movie store and suddenly forgetting all of those movies you told yourself you would buy.

I'm going to bring along some transient material but does anyone have any suggestions or even want to send me a sound of theirs for me to play back and re-record inside the space?

Let me know!

Thanks -

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I've got some stuff I'd love to have run though there. what kind of mic rig are you bringing? also, for how long do you have access to the space? – Rene Aug 11 2011 at 14:16

6 Answers

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First thing I would do is create an impulse response. That way you'll always have access to that location through Altiverb, TLSpace, etc. (Or at least a pretty close facsimile to that space).

After that, it's anything goes. Drop some metal, squeak some hinges, pop some balloons, scream your lungs out.

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Thanks - the IR was definitely not on my radar. I think that's a great idea. I haven't done much in the way of creating those but I think I do have the equipment necessary to do it. How about I record one and send it to you for critique to see if I did it correctly? I'm not sure if I have the technique down good enough. – Utopia Aug 11 2011 at 0:19
@Utopia, I'd be happy to check out the IR and give you my feedback. How do you plan on capturing it? Sine wave (and length of time) or transient? Thanks for the offer - – Jay Jennings♦ Aug 11 2011 at 19:32
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You could play with a feedback loop. Maybe a reversed feedback loop, play with downward expansion.

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Good idea. Never tried downward expansion on effects like that. – Utopia Aug 11 2011 at 0:20
at that scale some pretty interesting FL-based effects should be possible.. ? – georgi Aug 11 2011 at 12:11
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Check out the last question / soundcloud file here. That should give you some inspiration.

EDIT

Just had a thought as I was drifting off to sleep. How can you take advantage of the height of the space? Not sure if you can get up to the top, or how good a result you'd even get, but what about unfurling a really long piece of fabric, shaking waves into it, dropping it into a pile, etc.? Dry, wet, different fabrics (try the discount bin at the local fabric store.)

Could be really cool, or it could sound like really bad foley, not sure.

This also makes me think: giant slinky.

Ok, brain expunged, sleep now.

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GIANT SLINKY! GIANT SLINKY! – Jay Jennings♦ Aug 11 2011 at 6:41
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Play with what Richard King did - play with an outboard LFO hooked up to a PA system (e.g. your Genelecs) and record it interacting with the space (in Richard King's case it was a sound stage on the Warners lot). That's how they created some of that money LFE goodness for Inception.

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You may need something with a better sub driver though... If its Genelecs in the range of the 8040 series it probably won't be enough juice. – Stavrosound Aug 10 2011 at 20:50
Thanks Stav! Great ideas. – Utopia Aug 11 2011 at 0:20
@Stavrosound, if I remember correctly, Richard King was using that technique in a row of set houses at WB - an active space with lots of loose floorboards, thin walls and rattly windows. It's possible he also did it on a real soundstage but I can't imagine he'd get much interaction out of it. Mostly a reverberant low freq rumble and that's about it. – Jay Jennings♦ Aug 11 2011 at 8:12
You might be right. I based my comment off of a Soundworks video I watched and it looked like a soundstage interior to me by the aesthetic and sheer size, but that may not be the case. I have a feeling the LFE sweeps/tones is all they were after in this (such as the sounds used for the kick and dropping into the dream). – Stavrosound Aug 11 2011 at 19:06
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Capture the impulse response from different locations within the space, vary the mic and the loudspeaker position. There is no single IR for any room.

I like placing the mic and speaker in different corners as well as in the middle of the room away from all the surfaces.

Try and borrow 2 really tall lighting stands so that you can vary the positions as much as possible, such as loudspeaker reflecting off floor and mic in air and vice versa.

You can have a lot of fun, and you will have plenty of options to play around with once you import the files into the convolution reverb.

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Hey! If you do happen to do some IRs in that building, would you mind selling the IRs ?

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