what suits me best?

E

Elyst

New member
Greetings,

I was going to post this in the mic section but since this questions is a bit more general I decided to include it in the newbie section... you'll also find rather newbish. :(

Here it goes:
I play guitar, keyboard and make some lame attempts to singing.
For recording I have an audio interface (alesis io2 express) where I plug my guitar directly (i think I should use the amp to make the sound a little better, I have a spider IV 15w) and I have a cheap borrowed mic. I try making some musics recording part by part with each instrument but cutting, looping and general audio editing are realy not my thing. I use cubase le5 btw

Every now and then I have some friends coming over to my house so we can do some jams, we use the keyboards automatic drums and each of us plays an instruments and we improvise some lyrics along the way.

So I though to ask some suggestions for an all purpose microphone, that I could use to record my individual instruments and also to record the jams me and my friends sometimes make. But I think that your answer will be that there is no such mic and my only alternative being to buy a set of mics for each purpose...that would turn out a bit expensive.

I also heard about pa's although I don't really know very well what do they do or how they work.

so that's why I chose the newbye section for this thread. Since I don't need advice for a mic but for recording gear.

So I kinda wanted to raise some discussion in this thread, if you were me what option would you take to make the best quality recordings, would you leave things as they are and blame the software or my cutting and editing skills for my bad recordings or buy some new gear, or even consider a new idea I haven't though of?
Let's consider a budget of 139 United States Dollar (USD) (100 euros +/-) but where some savings could be made.

Thank you for reading and hope to ear some opinions soon.
 
For $139 you won't make any huge difference.

On a low budget you may find it easier to record your guitar direct, using either an fx pedal, an out from your amp or record clean and use a VST insert like pod farm. Then get a mic for vocals.

As far as cutting and editing you need to make sure you use a click track, or maybe even a MIDI track of drums just to get things started. Then you can easily cut and past bars without any issues with things lining up.
 
ok... then I'll ask the same thing but forget the bugdet, let's supose I have a geenie that'll give me anything I ask in the snap of a finger (wouldn't that be awesome).

Thanks for the suggestion
keep'em comin'
 
I think that recording a band all at once with mics is a bad idea. I know there are a lot of people that will tell you this is a bad idea but I would record direct into an interface and skip the mic. If your amp has a line out use that, If you have an FX pedal use that. If you have an FX pedal like a Line 6 X3 you could use that for vocals and one guitar the same time. No matter what recording vocals at the same time as the rest of the band will have wayyy too much bleed into the mic. I've done it and it sucks.

FOr drums I'd use something like EZ Drummer. It's a MIDI based program you can use with cubase. The nice thing about that is that it uses the tempo in cubase so that will solve your cut and paste editing problem. AT the vryleast connect your keyboard to cubase and have cubase control the tempo.

So for this scenario you'd need an interface that has enough inputs for the whole band and a midi I/O. SOmething like this M-AUDIO - Fast Track Pro - 4 x 4 Mobile USB Audio/MIDI Interface with Preamps

Then if you get something like EZ drummer that will run about $150.

Then you'll need a vocal mic.

Your looking at minimum $500
 
Well I've also just started out and not the best (not even good) I just bought a pair of behringer c-2 condenser mic's which I use for my acoustic guitar I can't sing at all but I did attempt and they sound pretty good (not my singing though) and they aren't too expensive at all, if you are more bothered about just getting the jam sessions recorded and not mastering them you could just set up the two mics around the room and do it that way.

If however you wanted to record the jam sessions and master them I would recommend jammin' as normal but hook your guitars up via inputs, mic up your keyboard or also use a line out or midi into the computer and then one for vocals.
 
I think you can get good results with a single LDC and some light compression. The trick is finding the right spot to place the mic relative to the other instruments; you'll need to set up the instruments in the room so that the overall mix the mic picks up is balanced. This will require patience and cooperation from each of the musicians. You can add overdubs later, but the initial "live" track has to have balance between each of the instruments as well as balance between each of the individual elements of a drumkit.

You can get a Studio Projects B1 (multipattern LDC) for $100 US. It is a good budget LDC. Despite having better mics, it still gets use in my studio. Two of them puts you overbudget, obviously, but the move to stereo is that easy.
 
You can get away with pretty much any condenser mic. There is a MXL bundle(990/991) that goes for about $170 US.It comes with a large and a small condenser. You could probably capture everithing with a decent mic placement. Try craigslist,I found some decent mics there.
Hope this helps!
J
 
I don't have any FX pedals, and I already have an interface, the alesis io2 express. I think that the interface can only record 2 tracks simultaneously but I don't know hows that done.

I guess I have to stick to the carppy quality recordings we do in our jams then. Actually one of my friends has an mp3 and uses it to record our jams, the final result is fairly good... for an mp3 (the best I've seen on a mp3, mic, cellphone or those lame low wannabe recordings.)
So I though there could be a mic for recording several instruments, but I guess theres not.
 
Well if you read what myself and others have said, putting one or two mics around the room in good positions where they pick up the instruments, guitar, keyboard or vocals etc you will be able to EQ, set effects, compress etc the audio that the mics capture. As for recording two tracks at the same time just connect the two mics together and in your DAW create two new audio tracks and set each one to individual mics
 
wow I dunno what happened, I didn't see all those post behind mine when I was writing it.

Thanks a lot guys that helps a lot. There will be some time before our next jam. Our last recordings by themselves were pretty good, only in some musics the bass scrathced the sound a little but considering I was using an mp3 that was pretty good results.

I'll try following your advices, although I think I'll take a break from recording to get more musical knowledge to improve my songs.
Thanks a lot once again :)
 
Be very patient, and take notes/photos. You'll be glad you did when you need to reproduce a session later and you can't remember which of the seven configurations you tried you liked best.
 
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