any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Get that song on tape! Errr... disk?
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s_mcsleazy
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any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by s_mcsleazy » Sun Dec 26, 2021 12:35 pm

in the past, we've tried the protools style of recording where everyone comes in, does the parts and leaves. but that really doesn't work well for us, we never sound right. we were thinking of trying to come up with a way we can still record to a computer BUT do it live. anyone got any tips for this style of recording? what gear would work?
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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by JSett » Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:20 pm

s_mcsleazy wrote:
Sun Dec 26, 2021 12:35 pm
in the past, we've tried the protools style of recording where everyone comes in, does the parts and leaves. but that really doesn't work well for us, we never sound right. we were thinking of trying to come up with a way we can still record to a computer BUT do it live. anyone got any tips for this style of recording? what gear would work?
I recorded my last band this way every single time. It always came out pretty well, but with obvious limitations.

The key things are to use as many tight pattern mics as possible and to use gobos, furniture, pillows, etc as well as positioning to your advantage. Minimal condenser mics.

Point amps away from drums and each other, keep volumes as low as possible
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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by marqueemoon » Sun Dec 26, 2021 3:29 pm

Do what you can to control guitar volume and bleed. Take the bass direct if possible.

A mono drum overhead or X/Y is going to work best for avoiding phase cancellation.

How much you want to physically isolate amps, etc… depends how much you want to fuss with it. My favorite trick is to lock the booms of mic stands so they’re horizontal, then drape heavy blankets over them.

Definitely listen back to your takes in mono and make sure your sounds are basically working while tracking. If you’re planning on using as many of the live instruments as possible in your final mix make sure the sounds are working together.

As far as gear goes just use what you have as much as possible. If you’re going to invest in something I’d say a headphone distribution amp if you don’t already have one.

My main piece of advice there is if recording yourself try to keep the focus on getting the best performances possible.

Oh, and leave yourself tons of headroom, especially with drums.

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by Larry Mal » Sun Dec 26, 2021 4:36 pm

Sure, you'll want to try and get some separation still, though.

You can build yourself some gobos for the drums:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... -sandstone

You can make things like this for the guitar and bass amps:

https://www.amazon.com/TroyStudio-Porta ... 0630&psc=1

The microphone will sit in that and face the speaker.

Deaden the bad room sound with some bass traps and acoustic panels:

https://bettersoundproofing.com/diy-acoustic-panels/


And you can buy isolation boxes for the vocal mics, also:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... 5HEALw_wcB

And as has been mentioned, take the bass direct.

Get the kick drum mic in the drum, inside an isolation box, then put a blanket over that.

It's very possible to do this well, but it's a lot of work and money.

The simple fact is that it's not easy to capture sound well in a room that wasn't designed for that express purpose.
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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by øøøøøøø » Sun Dec 26, 2021 5:37 pm

This is a thing I do quite a bit of. Some thoughts in random order:
  • More important than anything technical is the conceptual approach--being okay with sounding how you actually sound. You won't get away with a lot of editing.
  • This is a situation in which it really pays to have an objective set of ears--a producer, or an engineer who's empowered to give feedback on performances and takes. You will think you're capable of judging which are the takes as they're going down as a band, and you'll almost certainly be wrong.
  • A big part of the "mix" will happen as you're playing, and will be controlled by the members of the band. If your ensemble blend is super weird and there's not a lot of listening going on across the group, it might be more difficult to overcome this later than you're used to. This is also where the objective producer's ear is huge... anything like this can be broached by a neutral party, completely outside of any band politics that might exist
  • Rather counterintuitively, you'll probably get the best results setting up relatively tightly. A beginner's mistake is to try and "reduce bleed" by moving things far apart. Usually, this only serves to make the bleed more-problematic (by moving it further off-axis from the mics, and increasing time delays). It's generally a more successful course to keep things close together and add gobos between
  • More important than the amount of bleed is what the bleed sounds like. Is bleed from another mic in phase with that source's own signal? Can you flip that without causing another, worse phase problem? Can you move the mic/source to correct? How is the mic's off-axis character coloring the bleed?
  • In my experience, one of the biggest distinctions between a cheap mic and a nice mic tends to be the off-axis behavior. Spill into the back of a U47, U87, KM84, etc. tends to sound attenuated, but fairly normal (which is what you want). Spill into the back of a cheap condenser is often more challenging. Spill into even a nice moving-coil dynamic can be a little problematic (this is why I've fallen out of love with the MD421 on toms, but I digress...)
  • You'll be recording the room as much as you're recording the band... you're recording a "band in a room." Good-sounding rooms for this kind of thing are generally built-for-purpose. If you don't have access to a room whose acoustic characteristic is beneficial, the safest way is almost always to go super-super-dead on everything... lots of gobos and moving blankets (in an adapted space, you can almost never get it dead enough). If you have access to a great room and mic locker, you can explore using the room sound to your advantage.
  • The quieter you play, the less-problematic a bunch of the above-mentioned things tend to become.
  • I'll just reiterate one more time... a person who's an expert in juggling the complex interactions between a bunch of open mics, who is solely focused on paying attention to that, and who has access to a room that's designed to accommodate live tracking sessions, will massively improve your results. If you can't afford that or don't have access to it, just do your best and go into it with an attitude of embracing whatever happens (or of being willing to try again)

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by MayTheFuzzBeWithYou » Mon Dec 27, 2021 3:06 am

We did the pre-production for our second album in our rehearsal room. It‘s a rather big and dry sounding room. We turned all the cabs to the walls and put foam around them to isolate them the best we could. Putting acrylic glass walls around the drums and recorded everything with the digital mixing console - yielding so great results that we already thought about doing more recordings there.
But this is only one approach. We had a sound engineer with us who knows what she‘s doing and always giving us a great sound when playing live!

Ah. I almost forgot about it... but my old band‘s drummer (who is also a sound engineer himself) had this book from the german sound engineer Moses Schneider „the alternative workbook“ in which he explains a lot about setup/sound/recording and making the most out of your room! Available as an ebook too (with 30min of audio examples) - this might be of interest!
https://www.mosesschneider.com/home-c1gl2

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by NBarnes21 » Fri Jan 07, 2022 11:58 am

this might be helpful, I know vance has a pretty standard way of doing this, and he's one of my favorite "rock guys"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ni8Lh0v9bc0
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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by stevejamsecono » Fri Jan 21, 2022 4:35 am

Less conceptual perhaps than what's being laid down here, but my old trio did this with a Zoom H4N. Close mics from the two XLR ins on the bass and guitar cabs, stereo mics placed in the room near the drums. We overdubbed vocals later. The results were surprisingly good albiet in a very 'punk' recording style.
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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by noisepunk » Wed Jan 26, 2022 4:19 am

just a boring practical consideration, but i know it can be expensive to get an interface with enough inputs, and enough decent inputs–you can chain interfaces together on a mac and i'm sure you could on a PC too, so if you don't have access to something with 8 XLR inputs (or whatever) but can borrow an extra 2-4 input interface (or two) that might be a way to still be able to mic of everything that you want to.

there's an equipment library in town–i think i remember being severely underwhelmed by what they have, but it's worth looking anyway. maybe they just have that extra mic stand you need or something.

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by øøøøøøø » Wed Jan 26, 2022 9:43 am

Multiple ADCs/interfaces brings the disk for clocking issues, it must be said.

Take great care to make sure all is configured right, especially if recording yourself. Nothing worse than noticing clicks and pops later due to clock drift

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by noisepunk » Thu Jan 27, 2022 4:05 pm

oh, absolutely. although maybe there's new aesthetic ground to be covered there :P

i've yet to have issues with this, but i've also only used like-brand interfaces to do it.

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Re: any tips for live recording (the whole band in one room) on a budget?

Post by øøøøøøø » Thu Jan 27, 2022 4:31 pm

Just for clarity (for anyone reading along), even multiples of the exact same interface will cause issues unless the clocks are configured properly. Sometimes this requires a BNC wordclock cable, sometimes it can be done via ADAT lightpipe or something else, but one device always has to be set as the master clock, and the others have to be set to follow that clock.

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