[Dixielandjazz] Sound in Churches

[Steve Barbone]

"Bill Allen" <ballen at deltapathology.com> wrote
 
> People designing large public buildings - such as churches - actually design
> them PURPOSEFULLY to be "dead". They figure on deadening the building so you
> can't hear money dropping in the offering plate, babies crying, coughing,
> and just put a mike in front of everything you're SUPPOSED to hear. I've had
> architechts look at me in disbelief when i tell them that the area around
> the choir should be LIVE - lined with hard reflective surfaces, hard floor
> as opposed to carpet, no drapery, etc. They wonder why i just don't get more
> microphones.

>From our band experience (we do a lot of Church Gigs) that seems to be true
in the newer churches. We sometimes have to mike the band in them.

But the older churches? Wow, most have great acoustics. In fact some are too
live and the sound is similar to that of playing in a bathroom.

Like 300 year old,  Old Pine Street Church in Philly, beautiful acoustics,
no need to mike the band.

And St. Peter's in Rome? Many who visit it test the acoustics by whispering
a few words in one corner that a friend will hear 300 feet away in another
corner. Worked for me in 1962 when my wife clearly heard a whispered "I Love
You" at the other end of the Basilica.

I guess times have changed. There is so much ambient noise around us these
days that amplification becomes more necessary. Larry's points about Lincoln
at Gettysburg are well taken.

Too much ambient noise, roads, planes, etc. to speak without mikes today,
even to a crowd of 200 people. And without those "repeaters" in Lincoln's
audience, even with low ambient noise levels, given his speaking voice, I
doubt that more than a couple of hundred people heard his speech directly
from his lips.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone