Recording attempt today

Seeker of Rock

Seeker of Rock

The One and Only
I've been playing with this church jazz band once a week for shits and giggles. They don't usually play at services or anything, just special events: Jazzy, dixieland, and blues originals with "inspirational" lyrics mostly and they're not really fanatic about the religious side of things which is good because neither am I. The jazz and dixielandish styles are new to me and makes it fun.

We are recording a few of the songs today. A few of them are not open to new experiences, so instead of coming to my home studio tracking/mixing room to track things out a few people at a time, we decided to record live so the ones with no studio experience feel comfortable. Since my personal setup is all hard-racked and not very mobile, we are tracking to a Boss BR1600 with a soundcraft submixer (for the drums). I set up the gobos, mics and levels last night and we'll start around noon. The church has pretty decent acoustics, but no isolation whatsoever and I only have four gobos. This should be interesting.

Has anyone here recorded multitracks live in a room with a lot of reflection? How did it turn out? I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of track bleed but will do my best to get as much isolation as I can. It should be a fun learning experience for me, too, since I'm doing the all of the "engineering." If it's not too embarrassing, I'll post some clips in the next couple of weeks.
 
Oh yeah, the instruments are: Trumpet, vocals, electric piano, drums, bass, guitar, banjo. I'm thinking to put the trumpet in one of the side rooms because it is LOUD and the sound really spreads inside the main room. Most gobos are going around the kit to (try) and isolate the drums.
 
Seeker of Rock said:
Has anyone here recorded multitracks live in a room with a lot of reflection? How did it turn out? I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of track bleed but will do my best to get as much isolation as I can.
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All the time. They turn out somewhere between meh and terrible. You'll need to be extra sensitive about mic placement and positioning the musicians.

Keep the mics pointed away from everything else. This means moving people around into places they might not find natural. I've had people resist moving from their usual spot and it destroyed the recording. I had a guy who refused to track vocals separately and refused to stand anywhere but in front of his amp. Then he talked s--- about my recording because the guitar was overpowering the mix but still refused to redo the vocals which would have fixed the problem. If you have some cooperation, it shouldn't be a problem.

Other than that, the room may very well be your doom. I'm not saying the recording won't sound fine, but no one will compliment you on the recording.
 
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It was a lot better than I would have thought, but took a lot of prep beforehand. Half of the people have never tracked, so when they couldn't see each other they had trouble adjusting. Not a bad day, though, and we got four songs recorded. We're going to finish tracking next Saturday.
 
Yes and I brought a reflection filter. Look into something like the SE REflextion filter,Soundkitz AE-F,or something like even the Aurelex Mudgaurd might help. SE makes filters that help with instrument recording and so does Soundkitz. I have had good results with mine as far as removing reflections and junk but instruments I haven't gone further than just my friend doing guitars so I don't know about drums that's usually either pre recorded or added in later.
 
Kaidee said:
Yes and I brought a reflection filter. Look into something like the SE REflextion filter,Soundkitz AE-F,or something like even the Aurelex Mudgaurd might help. SE makes filters that help with instrument recording and so does Soundkitz. I have had good results with mine as far as removing reflections and junk but instruments I haven't gone further than just my friend doing guitars so I don't know about drums that's usually either pre recorded or added in later.
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Rock on, dude. I'm rocking some OC703 on my gobos so I'm doing solid on my treatment, though I wish I had more of it (them [gobos]).
 
I track very large rooms all the time. They're a lot more forgiving than you'd think. There's crosstalk in the mics but it's always managable and the leakge can be your friend.
 
You worry too much about gobo's and such. Record people in a way they are used to play, don't force them into things they are not happy with. I've recorded tons of jazz bands and the biggest problem is the upright bass. I've started a thread about the subject at gearslutz and learned a lot. Bassplayers came by and talked about their experiences with recording studio's. One of them talked about playing separated from his fellow musicians in a booth. He said: 'when hell freezes over, I won't play in a booth ever again'. And how right he is.

I record the whole band together in one room, including the vocalist, the upright and the very loud horns. And they will play like they are used to, have fun and play well. The quality of sound is my problem.

The secret is 'microphones'. They come in all shapes, there are thousands of different microphones. Don't worry about bleed, but find out what 'off axis response' means and the thing about omni, uni, wide cardioid and hyper cardioid.

A trumpet will sound great on a Sennheiser MD441 or a Beyer M160 and not so good on a Shure SM58. A Beyer M201 is a hyper cardioid with a very nice off axis response. A Beyer M201 on snare will sound great and the hi hat bleed wil sound less than and much better then when you use an SM57.

Put a banjo player next to the drummer and aim a Beyer M88 at the banjo and be surprised about the very little drum bleed on the banjo sound, which will sound very good. Same when you use an M201 on banjo.

The M160 is a ribbon mic. Ribbons are hyper cardioid, sound very warm and phat and will not go any higher than 13 khz. But 13 khz is a very high frequency so thats not a problem.

Record a jazzband with only SM58's, swap the 58's for MD441's or M88's and the band will sound a whole lot better. Why? Because the M88 is a hyper cardioid that will sound at least decent on any musical instrument and great on many instruments and it has one of the nicest off axis response of all microphones.

But there are many great sounding mics with very good oar. Try to find the best mic for the job and remember that the most expensive mic will not automatically be the best for the job. Sometimes less is more.
 
Track Rat said:
I track very large rooms all the time. They're a lot more forgiving than you'd think. There's crosstalk in the mics but it's always managable and the leakge can be your friend.
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I haven't done any retracking yet to critically check crosstalk, but it's turning out pretty decent (the overall recording). I've got the drums isolated a least a little from the other mics, keyboard and bass are direct in so it's not sounding as bad as I thought it may. And the drums sound pretty good because of the natural reflections in the room. Lexicon and Eventide can eat their hearts out. We're going to do a third (and hopefully final for now) session in a couple of weeks, then I'll start messing with trying to mix in that little BR1600CD or trying to export the files into my HD24 and mixing on my board.
 
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