Recording the album!

[Mickj83]

After listening over the previous trys at a demo tape my band has decided to scrap all prior material. Not to mention that there has been some volitility in the band. Supposedly now I am the guitarist as opposed to the singer. But anyhow. So we are gonna record this thing. All we have to work with is an 8 Channel Beringher Eurodesk mixer (not sure on specific model #), a crappy Radio Shack Mic, 2 really crapy odd mics. (I do mean crappy really crappy). My plan is to just run the vocals direct to mixer. Run the bass guitar and guitar to the mixer direct from the outputs on the amps. Unfortunately we have no DI boxes but we have done it that way before. Then just throw mics on the drums and record the whole thing to VHS. I wish my band would just wait until I have a chance to get a multi-tracker but they are quite stubborn. Any suggestions? Am I doing anything wrong?

[Dragon]

You're not doing anything wrong with what you've got to get sounds on tape...but if you're going to use that for an actual demo...just pray that competing bands have a worse setup!

[drstawl]

Mickj: My suggestion is to go ahead and 'waste' a whole day recording the best you've got to record with that 'shabby' set-up.
But (and this is really important) treat this
equipment as if it was the stuff at a top
commercial studio. If you don't believe in your equipment, it will always sound like crap. It may sound that way no matter what you do, but don't waste your time by not giving the equipment you've got at hand a fair shake just because you know that a cleaner set-up exists elsewhere.

[Mickj83]

I have faith in the equipment and I have managed to get a decent sound on it before. That Eurodesk packs a lotta bang for the buck. The reason we trashed the early tape was a few errors here and there. Only thing really wrong sound wise was the drums. They were very weak and could not be heard.

[drstawl]

Well- it sounds like you need to cut the
volume on the other tracks and up the drum volume. If you've been scrupulous about the recording as a whole, you can digitally up the total volume later. But I do agree you ought to be investigating why this shit is happening. In the meantime, focus on getting a decent recording no matter what. Have you got any way to digitize this stuff and share it with the rest of the homerecording.com community? The smallest files uploadable seem to be .rm files- RealAudio (not counting pure MIDI), followed by .mp3 and .wav. If you can't place this stuff on a server you can send it to me as an attachment to an E-mail at:

DrStawl@home.com

[Dragon]

FYI, I wasn't criticizing you (obviously you want the best sound you can) or even your recording equipment. But those mics!!! Garbage in, garbage out, you know. Try to beg, borrow, or rent some real mics before the session and you'll do so much better...

[Mickj83]

I just reformated my HD. I have plenty of room. I have had success in the past with recording to computer. I guess I could put some of the stuff up. As a matter of fact I have a previous recording from the tape that was scrapped. I have it saved as a Real Audio. The only problem is it is a rather large file. If I can find a way to downgrade it I will. Or should I leave it in the high quality it is in? If not I will just copy it off the master again. Its full of playing errors but eh.

[This message has been edited by Mickj83 (edited 06-28-1999).]

[Dragon]

If you're doing it right, an encoded stereo RealAudio file shouldn't be more than 1 or 2 megabytes for about 4 minutes, I think.

[Mickj83]

Ok I got the previously mentioned clip up. You can download it at http://members.xoom.com/Mickj83/song.zip

Since there is no way in hell that will stream I got saved as a zip. Its only 3% smaller but eh. I would have made a cool page but I havent re-installed my HTML editors.
It is about 2MB. At the same time out of sheer boredom I recording some stuff that you can enjoy. Its me playing the solo to Whole Lotta Love (or a very close facsimile there of).
To download http://members.xoom.com/Mickj83/mick1.rm

About the above mentioned clip.
The setup was as follows:
Fender Standard Strat -> Danelectro Daddo-O
Daddo-0 -> DOD FX10 Bi-FET preamp
Preamp -> Left channel of my SB64
SB64 -> Cool Edit
I then added reverb, saved it as a wav. Imported it to Real Producer G2 Beta.

[This message has been edited by Mickj83 (edited 06-28-1999).]

[This message has been edited by Mickj83 (edited 06-28-1999).]

[This message has been edited by Mickj83 (edited 06-28-1999).]

[S8-N]

Hey man,
I hope I dont get thrown out of this site for what I am about to suggest, but it sounds to me like you should get every member of the band to pitch in fifty bucks and get five or six hours in a real studio. Hammer out four tunes in four hours with mixdown and have something that sounds decent. Nothing is worse than spending hour after valuable hour recording at home just to end up with a jambox quality recording. Thats the lesson I learned working with 4-traks. BLASPHEMY ON HOMERECORDING.COM!!!!

[Mickj83]

Your suggestion is a good one. But I don't think the material is worth it. Besides I want that Do-It-Yourselfer Pride. So I can say yeah man I recorded that. But thanks for the suggestion.