ST. MARY'S SPACE
every day in the studio should be an adventure
St Mary's houses an innovative and versatile open plan recording studio, home to composer and producer Jamie Smith.
Although unconventional, the all-in-one room style of studio (pioneered by Peter Gabriel at Realworld and adopted by Paul Epworth at The Church) has many advantages over very dead 70’s type studios, not least the speed and ease with which we can achieve superb results. Overdubbing can be done in the conventional way, but with excellent communication between performers, producer and engineer the studio comes into its own when musicians play together in this beautiful acoustic.
The bookcases and log wall create a diffuse, spacious sound, while mic choice and placement allow huge flexibility over the amount of ambience on any recording. And we have screens to subdivide the space or build a booth for improved isolation or ‘in a world…’ movie trailer style voice overs.
Our hybrid studio is equipped for stereo, multi-channel and ambisonic recording.
It's easy to get a huge, epic sound here, though the many panels, screens, cupboards and rooms provide plenty of other more intimate acoustic options too. Fabulous Tannoy Berkeley monitors reveal the nuance and depth captured by every microphone in this truly magical and unique acoustic.
Unfortunately the studio is not available for dry hire, but Jamie is always happy to discuss how he might help bring your project to life. Please contact us.
MORE THAN A STUDIO
artist led creative space
A large and welcoming space full of warmth and character, when not in use as a recording studio, the open plan layout lends itself to all kinds of uses. It the past we've hosted workshops, weddings, photo shoots, filming, exhibitions and masterclasses, as well as our popular house concerts - it works wonderfully as an intimate performance space.
15 x 5 meter suspended redwood floor, 8 meter high ceiling, natural light, wood burning stove, shelves of books and curios, painting easel, music and conductor stands, writing desk, 2 sewing machines, games and diversions, props, tricks, instruments and bric-a-brac,
wi-fi, hi-fi, a sound studio, various kinds of lighting, mirror ball.
If you have a project that you feel would be a good fit for St. Mary's Space, we'd love to hear about it.
BOOKING
All bookings are unique: we'd rather price it based on requirements, so please contact us with details of your project so we can arrange a chat and tailor a quote to your requirements.
For artists working here, our Sitooterie accommodation is available at a heavily discounted rate.
Learn more about our accommodation.
All bookings include plenty of tea and coffee.
For your convenience we book by the day. Please remember St. Mary's is also our family home, so we can't have loud noise beyond 7PM unless through special arrangement.
The number of artists the space will accommodate depends on use/equipment/etc
eg 30-50 living statues; 20 tai chi mediators; 10 performance artists; 8 acrobats; 6 contemporary dancers; 2 action painters; solo puppeteer plus 120 medium puppets.
We’re very flexible and will do our best to accommodate your needs, no matter how unusual. As artists ourselves, we are realistic about budgets and would be delighted to discuss your project and find out how we can work with you to make it happen.
STUDIO EQUIPMENT
All the equipment listed below should be available all the time but if there’s something specific you want to use it’s best to check in advance as things need servicing once in awhile.
We suggest musicians bring their own familiar instruments and amplification where possible and use the ones here as backup or alternatives (many of them are rather eccentric!).
All-in-one open plan studio
15m long x 5m wide x 8 meters to apex of ceiling.
Assorted acoustic screens can be assembled into odd looking but spacious vocal booth.
Adjoining vestry can be used as isolation room for very loud/agressive/smelly sound sources.
Microphones
2 x AKG C414 B-TLII
1 x AKG Solid Tube
1 x Audio Technica AT4050
1 x Audio Technica AT3527
2 x Audio Technica AT3528
1 x Audio Technica ATM350 gooseneck SDC
1 x Audio Technica U841A boundary microphone
2 x Core sound Tetramic ambisonic soundfield microphone system
1 x Sontronics Aria valve microphone
2 x Coles 4038
1 x DPA 4061
1 x Oktava MK-012 with omni and cardioid capsules
3 x Shure SM57
1 x AKG D112
1 x AKG D20
2 x LOM Usi Pro miniature omnidirectional microphones
2 x Line audio Omni 1
1 x Reslo ‘Beeb’ ribbon microphone
1 x Reslo RV ribbon microphone
1 x Triton audio FetHead inline mic pre (additional 27dB gain)
1 x pair Roland CM-10 binaural microphone
1 x Sony F99A stereo microphone
1 x stethoscope
2 x bugbrand contact transducer
Other assorted trash and toy mics, accelerometers, contact mics, coil pickups, etc.
The following microphones may be available on request. Please check when booking and give as much notice as possible if required:
2 x Neumann TLM103
4 x Neumann KM 184
2 x Neumann KM 183
2 x Neumann KM86
Hardware
Merging + Anubis monitor controller and cue mix hub
Merging + Hapi audio interface
Focusrite ISA428 mic preamplifier
SSL VHD mic preamplifier
D.A.V. BG 8 mic preamplifier
Phaedrus Phusion multi-head stereo preamplifier and passive equaliser
2 x Roger Mayer 456HD
SSL X-Logic Stereo Buss compressor
2 x SSL XR625 X-Rack Channel EQ
POMPYE compressor limiter
D.A.V BG8 stereo programme equaliser
Audio Kitchen The Big Trees
Phaedrus Shuphler stereo matrix
Akai S2000 sampler
Roland XV-3080 rack synth
Evans Echopet analogue delay
Drawmer DL 241 dual compressor/gate
Monitoring (stereo and surround)
Tannoy Berkeley 15" dual concentric loudspeakers
Quad 405 power amp
Genelec 1029a active nearfield monitors in 5.0
Sennheiser HD 600
Beyerdynamic DT100 Headphones
Sony MDR 7506 Headphones
Various other headphones, monitors and grot boxes
Instruments, Amplifiers and other stuff
Allison Upright Piano
Portable pedal Harmonium
Moog Theremini
Marshall JMP-1 valve rackmount guitar preamp
WEM Dominator bass mkII amplifier
Watkins Clubman valve guitar amplifier
Watkins Westminster valve guitar amplifier
Fender Blues Deluxe amplifier
Hammond Rhythm II electric organ with leslie speaker
Harp from a Collard and Collard baby grand piano
Victorian cowbell percussion thing
Autoharp
Banjolin
Mandolin
Nashville strung guitar
Hofner Congress semi-acoustic roundtop guitar
Yamaha jumbo acoustic guitar
2 x handmade electric guitars
Yamaha electric bass guitar
Premier APK drum set
Otari MX5050 8 track tape recorder
Marmet pram full of percussion, beaters, bullroarer, etc
Many and various stomp boxes including Digitech Whammy, Demeter tremulator, ebow, Zvex Mastotron and many more.
Zoom H6 portable recorder
Zoom H2N portable recorder
Computer
Scan 3XS custom built silent audio PC, Intel i7 8700 3.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, 2 TB SSD storage drives
SSL MadiXtreme 64 I/O
Windows 10 Professional
Reaper DAW
Plugins (many and various including):
Soundtoys; SSL plugin suite; Softube TSAR reverb, Tape, Valley people Dyna-mite; PSP E27, vintage warmer, Fetpressor; Gullfoss EQ; Transatlantic plate; Flux IRCAM verb, Evo channel; Waves Abbey Road plugins and more; Eventide 2016 reverb; H3000 factory; Blackhole; Blue Ripple O3A plugin suite; Dear VR pro; ATK and many other ambisonic tools.
Selection of virtual instruments including: Soniccouture The Hammersmith & Extended piano; East West composers cloud; esoteric softsynth and sample library.
And lots more besides...
Stereo and beyond...
In addition to mono, stereo and 5.1 we can mix into High Order Ambisonics and output to the following speaker layouts: UHJ stereo, 5.1, 7.1, 7.1.2 (Dolby Atmos), 3D7.1, Auro-3D (9.1, 10.1, 11.1 and 13.1), IMAX (5.0, 6.0 and 12.0), Cube, Hexagon, Octagon, Quad, etc.
In addition mixes can be rendered for "binaural" headphone output, and various immersive/head tracked audio for VR such as Quad Binaural, Youtube 360, Facebook 360.
Contact us for more information