View Full Version : Weird Place to Play
Greetings,
In my temporary job (still looking for a "real" one after being "downsized"), I work in an underground garage and lets just say that I am not busy and paid fairly for that ;-)...SO I've been bringing one of my mandos to work...When we are slow (which is to says ALWAYS) I will stroll out of my booth and strum and MAN does that stuff sound cool...The natural reverb is AWESOME. I play a lot of solo type stuff and it really makes it fat..I will record there...somehow...Just wondering if anyone else plays in odd places and the results they've found...I also did whip out my mando on a flight and strummed a few chords lightly just to say that I had played at 30,000 feet...
Ken Sager
Apr-05-2005, 5:00pm
I've been spending a week a month in St. Paul, Minnesota. I always take a mando with me, and I always stay at the same hotel, in the same room. Well in this room is a cavernous bathroom with an enormous glassed in shower. I found through trial and error that the best acoustics are in the bathroom facing the open shower door. Usually the adjacent rooms are empty, but on my last trip someone at breakfast thanked me for the beautiful shaving music.
'nuff said,
Ken
Daniel Nestlerode
Apr-05-2005, 5:07pm
I played a gig in a bank once. Yes in a bank (Bank of the West in Sebastopol CA). http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif The acoustics were great for recording, the room was completely dead: thick pile carpet, oddly angled walls, high ceiling.
I've played in an airport terminal once, but never on the plane.
I've played in the front seat of a moving car once. Driving home with a friend from the airport, she said, "Play something for me."
Best,
Daniel
Flowerpot
Apr-05-2005, 5:14pm
I love our bathroom at home for playing anything. We have a large Santa Fe style house, with high ceilings, plaster over drywall, tile everywhere, and you can find lots of natural reverb most everywhere (much to my dismay when the two-year-olds are having screaming matches). But the master bathroom is the best, with lots of angled walls, mirrors, glassed in shower, huge tub, and such. All the odd and random sonic reflections make a cascade of reverb that's fantastic to hear. If only I could find a waterproof mandolin to play in the whirlpool tub, I'd never come out.
By the way, I've played in the car many times, and it always sounds rotten to me. Something about the standing waves and the frequencies that get accentuated or cancelled; it makes the mandolin sound like junk. Maybe I need a bigger car.
I was playing an old beater I found at an antique shop while in Hungary last week. Lousy reverb in that country, but the goulash ain't half bad.
Patrick Gunning
Apr-05-2005, 6:40pm
The stairwells at the Tacoma Sheraton (Wintergrass) are great, you get 2 mando players in one of the stair corners, you can play as quiet as you like and still hear every note as loud as from a full PA. A friend of mine named Robin and did a total improv jam in there for like an hour and a half while we were there.
A.N. Orange
Apr-05-2005, 10:56pm
If any of y'all live in or make it to Fort Worth, Texas, check out the sculpture outside the Museum of Modern Art. It's a COR-TEN steel sculpture almost 70 feet tall with a diameter of 15 feet or so. Talk about wierd acoustics!
mandroid
Apr-05-2005, 11:54pm
A playing of 'eight miles high' (byrds) would be appropriate, at #42,240'... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif
mando_pete
Apr-07-2005, 10:51pm
Our garage is an atypical three car garage in that it is two wide but one side is double deep. We used to keep our boat in the deep side and park my wifes car in the garage in front of the boat and my car next to hers until we got a dock at a lake.
One night, I just had a compulsion to go play in the boat in the garage. I was sitting two feet from the roof in the back of the boat and was about 30 feet deep in the garage and WHAM. It knocked me over how good it sounded.
Unfortunately our boat is now docked at a lake during the summer, so I need to find an excuse to buy another boat to keep in the garage during the summer. MAS has become BAS for me, and my wife will never go for that ! !
I've tried standing in the back of the garage, but it isn't the same #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif
-- pete
Chip Booth
Apr-10-2005, 11:28pm
I find those places with big cool acoustics are fun to play live in, but often are pretty terrible to record in. For example, my band plays regularly at a gallery with nice hardwood floors and everyone loves hearing us there since the natural acoustics are so good. We tried to record there recently and it was a total disaster, far too ambient and wierd sounding.
mandroid
Apr-10-2005, 11:51pm
the catacombs under the basilica of the vatican looked like it had interesting reverb.
GMatt
Apr-12-2005, 10:37pm
I removed all the furniture from my bedroom. The wood floor picked up insane reverb. Best place to play ever.
Dan Adams
Apr-12-2005, 11:41pm
Bathrooms, Stairwells. But the rotunda at the State Capitol. Of course the sound gets lost in the vast expanse of government.
Can you play Non-partisan? Dan
Furnman
Apr-12-2005, 11:50pm
I find those places with big cool acoustics are fun to play live in, but often are pretty terrible to record in...we tried to record there recently and it was a total disaster, far too ambient and wierd sounding.
You mean like "Into The Cauldron"? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Don't flame me on this (I happen to love Chris and Mike), but the "tile bathroom" effect throughout the recording has the unfortunate effect of limiting my spins of it. I know what they were after, but... wish it was more front-and-center.
I agree Furnman. They shouldn't have used that effect in every song. Especially for the more bluegrassy songs like Hey Ho! and Fisher's Hornpipe.
Ken Sager
Apr-15-2005, 4:12pm
They produced a master for that album by playing the mix inside some chapel through Genelec speakers into Neumann mics. That was the sound they were going for...
futrconslr
Apr-18-2005, 1:08pm
The playing rooms at Shopry Mills sound like that. When I did alot of home recording, I would record vocals in the bathroom as well as acoustic instruments. Better acousticly.
I read a Van Halen interview where Eddie swore he learned to play in the bathroom for that very reason.
Go figure.
You noticed that about playing in the car too, Flowerpot? Why's it sound so twangy and particularly annoying in there?
Plamen Ivanov
Apr-18-2005, 3:18pm
Hello!
I have played in the cave of Nerja (near Malaga, Spain) and the experience was really, really great. I will never forget it!!!
Bathrooms and toillets have a cool acoustic too. That`s the place, where we usually make small rehearsal before going on stage.
Good luck!
Plamen
Wow! that looks so cool. Was this a ticketed show? or just for fun? Looks very inspiring....
Jim Hilburn
Apr-18-2005, 7:08pm
While at Mandofest, we stayed in the Marriot Spring Hill. During some down time, I went down to the pool for some hot tubbing, and the pool room had the most outragious 5 second reverb I've ever heard. So I of course went right up for a mandolin. I tried to interest some of the others in trying it, but never got any takers.
a hot tub and mando...wow...the only problem is we need to invent a water proof mando...but that room sounds cool...I've always wondered what it would sound like in my gym's sauna...but fear the humidity...and playing it with nearly naked people who are trying to unwind...
slewis
Apr-19-2005, 12:20am
Hey, if you ever play in your vehicle (right handed), try holding the headstock against the center of your drivers' side window and putting some (not a lot) of pressure on it toward the window.... I accidentally did this and it sounds like a separate speaker, to a degree! It's like the glass becomes a diaphragm that resonates with the vibrations of the instrument. Very cool! Give it a try and report back so I know it wasn't just me!
Plamen Ivanov
Apr-19-2005, 1:46am
Hello bjc,
Yes, it was a ticketed show for the tourists in that resort - mostly Germans and Britains. There are a few tousand seats in front of the stage, which are situated step-wise. The cave is 6 km. long! The stage is near to the entrance. I met a German family after the concert, which was wondering how to obtain harp strings. The wife was playing harp, but she had problems with finding strings, so I introduced her to our harpist and the problem was solved. The concert itself was amazing. The audience enjoyed our performance a lot. But the acoustic - WOW!!! It was cold and humid, but we didn`t experience great problems with the instruments. Of course, we were there few hours earlier, so the instruments can get acclimatized. I keep excellent memories...
Good luck!
Plamen