So today on the 26st of August, Apollo Live moved in to their new wedding rehearsal studio in Birmingham city centre at the Oxygen Rooms Recording Studio. Apollo Live has needed a new space like this for a while now, as they needed better facilities to tighten up their show.
The room is very well decorated with laminated floors, also there are some old vintage carpets to give the room a cool edgy vibe. The walls have been sound proofed with red sound barriers, the reason they need these sound barriers is to absorb the sound waves and keep the bleeding noise as minimal as possible, so they don’t disturb other people around the building.
The gear in the room so far has been nothing but top notch, James Burgess, Apollo’s drummer has put his Yamaha custom drum kit in the room, the drum kit has a red paint job, so it really compliments the rest of the room. Next to James, Apollo have set up their recording and mixing desk for their rehearsals, the reason this is set up there because James has a lot of ambient microphones on his drum kit, so to save loads of wires going across the room it’s easy to keep it next to him and in turn this keeps the room neat and tidy. The live audio desk they use is an Allen and Heath Qu-16 Digital Mixer, the reason Apollo have chosen this mixer is because it has enough channels to accommodate the band. This Allen and Heath model has 16 channels which is more than enough for the band.
When it comes to microphones, Apollo have once again made sure they have the best, with the backing band using the industry standard SM57 microphones, this is a great solid microphone for backing vocals as it’s not too harsh on the voice. Vicky the female singer of Apollo Soul uses a Sennheiser EW 100 G4 Wireless Microphone System, this microphone really has a lot of headroom which comes in use when adding gain to the singer’s vocals.
Corey the male singer of the band uses a Shure Beta 58A Handheld Wireless Microphone System, this system features a dynamic microphone that emits a precise, natural sound. This microphone is also great for isolating background noise, which is important for Corey as he is usually standing near to the drum kit during shows.
This is an exciting new chapter for Apollo Soul, the band plan to film a range of live promotional videos in the new studio. The Videos will feature an interesting selection of songs that have been chosen specially by the band members as some of their favourite songs. The first two songs that have been chosen are Michael Jacksons “Dirty Diana” and “This is Me” from the greatest showman soundtrack.