Recording R&B Band Live - HELP!

Fraser13

New member
Hey,
I have a gig coming up (March 19th) and was hoping to record it. We are a 13 piece band:

4 Vocals
Guitar
Bass
Drums
Keyboard 1
Keyboard 2
Trumpet
Alto
Tenor
Trombone
Bari Sax

The room isn't very huge and I'm new to recording so I was wondering if anyone has any tips, or do's and don'ts.

So far what we're thinking is daisy-chaining 2 Firestudio Projects/Tubes together and having those go into a laptop. Then we were thinking we'd mic everyone and plug each person into one of the XMAX preamps on the Firestudios.

We're trying to figure out if we should get DI boxes for the bass and 2 keyboards, or if we should mic their amps. Also for the vocals, should we run them into a mixer then take each line out and record them separately?

Hopefully I didn't miss anything. If anyone has any information at all, that would be a great help. Thanks very much.
 
Live gig? Dont bother trying to mic everyone separately.

Take the main outs of the mixer and record to a stereo file.

Keep. It. Simple....
 
Live gig? Dont bother trying to mic everyone separately.

Take the main outs of the mixer and record to a stereo file.

Keep. It. Simple....

That's one solution - although the mix on the night is rarely the one that sounds best on tape. If you really want to be able to give things a decent tweak afterwards, you're going to need some degree of separation.

I would usually DI whatever I can in this situation - at least you know you're getting a reliably clean signal.

I'm not sure what you mean or what you hope to achieve with your vocal approach. Are you referring to the mixer for the live rig? If the venue mixer has pre-fader line-outs then by far the easiest, while still very effective approach is to run the line-out from each channel to an input on your firestudio.
 
Hi,

I would do the opposite to what tim suggested (sorry Tim), I would mic everything and DI everything I could as well.

The reason is that by doing this you may be able to salvage a mix if there is a crappy sound coming out of an amp or a DI the other signal you get may be OK. Also it makes sure that you don't miss anything in the recording (i.e 1 keyboard too quite, one guitar missing etc). Remember you don't have to use every channel if the mix is OK

Cheers

Alan.
 
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Live gigs is pretty much all I do these days/I also disagree with Tom O. A stereo mix off the board will be in most cases very poor. What you mix and how you hear in a room is totally different than the sound that you will end up with in the stereo mix. Do indeed take d/i's of the bass and keyboards.Dont mic the amps.Gtr amps yes of course.
 
Thanks guys, some helpful stuff here.

For vocals I'm kinda stumped cause I don't really know how to set this up. Maybe this is really simple but how do I run the vocals into a mixer then run that into a P.A. for the audience, and then run each vocal channel into the Presonus box?

Also, we contacted the venue asking if it would be ok to record (we assumed it'd be fine), but the lady ended up telling us this. She said if we wanted to record we'd have to give a deposit of 300$ and we'd get it back if the bar clears 500$. She says it's because lately people have been coming in, recording and the people who come out to see it aren't consuming enough alcohol, so the business is losing money cause they have to pay for hydro, staff, etc (something they'd have to pay for either way, right?). Does this sound like a scam? Should we just put 300$ toward recording at a studio then messing around with live recording/this lady's deposit?

Thanks again for everyone who's responded.
 
Asking for money to record? It's a scam. Find a venue that respects musicians. What's the difference between recording a gig and just playing a gig.

I am assuming by the mixer question that not everything is going into the venue PA. What I would do is split any signal that is going to the venue PA so that both the PA and the firestudio get the same signal. Anything that is not going to the PA can go straight into the firestudio. A simple Y connector with 1 female XLR and 2 x Male XLR's should do. If there is an earth loop (hum) issue you may have to lift (disconnect) pin 1 (shield) on the XLR going to the firestudio but if you use power from the same power point as the PA this should not happen.

When setting up give yourself plenty of time to find and cure problems. The last live recording I did (24 tracks) we set up 6 hours before the gig and sound checked 4 hours before the gig (did have 6 bands on the night but that's another story).

One thing I forgot to recommend is an audience mic if there are inputs available, great for a bit of ambiance and also capturing the audience. However looking at the line up you could be short of inputs. To expand the inputs can the fire studio accept any line level inputs from another mixer? You could get a small mixer to sub-mix the keys to 1 channel or add the audience mics.

Cheers

Alan.
 
You could run everything to the Firestudios then use the direct outputs from each channel to go the the PA.
 
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