002R for recording?

J

Jonty

New member
Hey, I'm completely new to recording and would like some advice on recording my metal band.

We are looking to record, and as we want to spend a fair amount, we don't want to spend it on a one-off recording session at a professional studio.

We need to

The gear that we have at the moment is a Line6 Pod2.0, a Line6 Spider2 amp, a Warwick bass amp with D/I, a Shure SM58, a set of Sennheiser HD-555 and a really good PC.

I was looking at getting a Digidesign 002R, 2 SM57's, 2 more sets of headphones, a vocal mic and two condenser mics.

Now for the questions! :)

Is there anything immediately wrong with this setup?
Do we need a headphone amp?
What vocal mic should we get?
How should we record? Bass guitar, guitar and drums then overdub vocals and lead?
Which condensers are cheap and good for overheads?
(Anything else I haven't mentioned please tell me, oh and we have a good room to record in)

Oh, and our budget is $2000 or less...

Cheers in advance. :)
 
Is there anything immediately wrong with this setup? Yeah - you've excluded someone with some recording experience SERIOUSLY.
Do we need a headphone amp? YES if someone is recording and at leats one person is playing you do - or a splitter or SOMETHING.
What vocal mic should we get?A Good one
How should we record? drums, Bass guitar (1 mic & 1 DI), guitar and then overdub vocals and lead - But you may want to record a guide track of guitar & vox at the same time as or before the drums - using a drum machine/click track for tempo.
Which condensers are cheap and good for overheads? MHS1
(Anything else I haven't mentioned please tell me, oh and we have a good room to record in)
What are you using to monitor/mix?
What program are you recording into?
What interface will you use?
DI box!
Cables (esp ext h/phone one for the drummer.)
 
rayc said:
What are you using to monitor/mix?
What program are you recording into?
What interface will you use?
DI box!
Cables (esp ext h/phone one for the drummer.)
Click to expand...

Probably some Tascam VLX-5s that a friend has... (Anything that is about $400 a pair better than this?
Probably ProTools LE or Cubase SX3.
I was thinking about getting a behringer D/I later on.
Have a fair few leads, and ill be getting a load more with the equipment.
 
okay,

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? You said you didn't want to spend alot of money on a one off pro studio session so I assume you want to be able to record all your stuff from now on. It's a great decision but you have to weight out the pro's and con's... when i got into recording it was partly to record my own band but also it was for an intense love of music, creativity and to eventually start it as a business.. You have to be patient and willing to learn alot of stuff. There's alot more to recording then pressing record and playing your tracks.. research research research my friend. This is a skill that will take you years to get good at... do you want to make that commitment? Understand that when you get your equipment and record for the first time it will NOT sound evan close to what you'd get in a pro studio (unless by chance you're some sort of prodigy engineer with natural talent--do those even exist?) I've been doing this for just under 2 years and i'm only now grasping some crutial concepts... mostly because I dove into it thinking i could learn completely on my own.. but now i'm here talking in discussions... researching mic placements/mix techniques.. over the past few months of doing this it has greatly improved my skills.

here's a quick list of pro's and con's to home recording

Pro

1 more control over your mixes (assuming you've learnt how to make a good mix)
2 never rushed in the studio..you can take your time and experiment
3 you can work on your own agenda
4 once you get better you can actually start recording other bands and making a bit of money
5 It feels great knowing you did everything yourself

Con's

1 rather steep learning curve at the start
2 disappointment when you realized a track was clipping or a mic placement didn't work and you have to retrack (it will happen trust me)
3 having no limits to how much time you can take is a blessing and a curse...sometimes your album will take FOREVER to track because it's too relaxed.
4 not having a properly treated room will make it really hard to track and mix anything (if you can look into this as well)
5 playing the role of musician, engineer, producer is alot to take on
6 if your mix sucks the band will blame you


i'm sure you can add more to the pro's and con's... i'm not at all trying to discourage you.. just make sure you know what you're getting into.. sometimes it's nice to go into a studio and everything is done for you.. i've thought about doing that just to releave the stress of trying to record my own band (other bands seem so much easier) hope this gives you something to think about
 
If quality matters for this recording...I can't stress enough going to a professional studio.

I BELIEVE I spent $450 for 4 hours of studio time at a professional studio. We went in, got set up, got the desired sounds, and recorded 8 songs live in 3 hours with multiple takes of all the songs.

This doesn't include vocals or leads as we did that all at our producer's house. However, it gives you a good idea about how much it would cost to go to a professional studio.

You could try the method I did and lay the basic tracks down at a studio, then dump them to an external drive at the studio and record the rest of the stuff at your home. This would benefit you because instead of buying tons of stuff for recording all of your instruments, you can now focus on buying a simple pro tools setup, a great preamp, and a few mics so that you can get great vocal and lead guitar sounds at your home.

You could dump those tracks back onto an external and bring it back to the studio to get mixed....I'm not too experienced in this part though because my band's producer mixed ours.

I hope this helps!
 
eeb said:
okay,

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? You said you didn't want to spend alot of money on a one off pro studio session so I assume you want to be able to record all your stuff from now on. It's a great decision but you have to weight out the pro's and con's... when i got into recording it was partly to record my own band but also it was for an intense love of music, creativity and to eventually start it as a business..
Click to expand...

Yeah, we want to be able to record all of our stuff so we have as much control over it as possible..
I also spend most of my life playing and listening to music, and I also hoped to do it as a side project to make some money while im at uni. So I want the best I can get with what I have at the moment..
I'd prefer not to upgrade but to just addon extra stuff, such as some decent preamps and eqs..
 
well that's a good a reason as any...


are you sure you want to stick with pro tools? because with the digi that's what you're getting into.. I really don't know too much about the digi so someone else should jump in to say more.. I'm using a delta 1010 with adobe audition.... the nice thing about the 1010 is it's easily expandable.. you can add more 1010's... it's really easy to add outboard gear to the chain.. I'm very happy with the setup and if i wanted to i have to option of going pro tools as well...

oh another warning... this shit is contagious.. it's kinda like getting a tattoo... you never stop at one.. with recording (if you're anything like me) you'll start day dreaming about gear/mics/acoustic treatments/programs/plugins etc.. and you'll come on the bbs during work hours and get next to nothing done! hahahaha that being said I've never regretted my decision to get into this (i'm thinking about going to school to get some formal education in this)
 
If there is one thing I regret, it is not knowing how to use pro tools. The reason being that my producer, as well as most of the studios in my area, use pro tools. It's not too late for me because I'm just doing demos on garageband.

I would recommend calling up a few studios professional studios and ask what they use. You can purchase something that would be easily transfered to their system if you ever wanted to transfer tracks and record some things at their studio.
 
Jonty said:
Can someone explain the pros/cons of protools or am i better off using cubase sx3?
Click to expand...

There aren't any "defined" pros to using Pro Tools. In my experience, most of the studios in my area use PT, so transferring tracks is a breeze. If someone in your area is using Cubase sx3, then that would be ideal.

Then again, if you never plan on brining these tracks to a studio, then it doesn't matter what you want to use.
 
If you wanna use protools, you're probably better off getting m-audio, and going m-powered. M-powered and LE are pretty much the same, imo. Protools really isn't anything special though, unless you get a TDM system, but leave that until you have at least a spare $50,000.

So $2k budget. What the room(s) like that you will be mixing/recording in(post pictures/room layout)?

First I'll recommend acoustics. Read this. You will want to make panel absorbers: rigid fiberglass, in a frame, wrapped in fabric, like this. Acoustics are a must for decent quality recording/mixing.

mics:
SM57 for snare/amps etc.
52 Beta for kick/bass
Studio Projects B1 for overheads/vox/acoustic guitars etc.
maybe a few more mics

preamps/interface:
Presonus Firepod

Software:
Sonar, Cubase, anything really

Monitors:
Behringer B2031A Truth, M-AUDIO BX8A, TANNOY REVEAL 6D there's loads of options.
Headphones of any sort(maybe VIC FIRTH SIH1 for drums)

Headphone amp:
BEHRINGER HA4700, any headphone amp really...

I recommend going to a few shops and trying out mics with the singer of your band, and see which suits. You have lots of options, and it's just really personal preference. Also, none of this will guarantee you a good sound. Experience and knowledge will...
 
Cheers m8 for that - makes it a lot simpler :)...
Discovered taht our drummer has a decent vocal mic so we'll try that 2day :D
I'll post back later to tell you what it is...
 
They'd work. Don't know how good they'd be though... They require a battery, which generally ain't good. I stick to my earlier "recommendation"(although I left it very open). With a $2k budget, you can afford a couple SPB1s, which will probably be a hell of a lot better, than these.
 
Jonty said:
Can someone explain the pros/cons of protools
Click to expand...

Pros:
Everyone has it
...
...
...
...

Cons:
Digidesign is not very kind when it comes to copy protection and the like. Be prepared to not be able to use your software without the hardware. Not get software upgrades without purchasing new hardware...etc. There is a lot of gayness involved that just isn't there with a lot of DAWs.

On a side note about DAWs: they all more or less just shuffle data. there is not really "sound" to any of them (even though some will argue otherwise). Try as many as you can and use the one you work with the best. It's ALL about workflow. If it does what you want and you work well with it they THAT is the best one to use.

I personally use Adobe Audition 1.5. It doens't do midi but everything else it does is easy to use and flows well for me. I can use protools just fine but I just like Audition better.

And if you record all of your tracks from the begining of the song it will ALWAYS be easy to drop them into any program out there. session files are overrated unless you are mixing. And even then you better have the same plugin set.
 
Here's something I wrote in response to someone who asked a very similar question a few weeks back:




Yanno, i'm gunna go out on a limb here, cause what i'm going to suggest is basically going against the grain of this forum:




If you only want to record your band and don't really have a real passion or an interest in the process, go rent a studio for a day. You'll achieve much better and more satisfying results and spend much less time doing it.

Thing is, it takes months (and years and decades!) of practice before you're stuff will sound remotely like anything releasable - or even something you'd want to sell after a gig.

My point is, if the buying the gear is simply a means to an end - don't bother! If you're not interested in it and are looking for something which is fairly quick and easy, you're looking in the wrong direction!

A few days in a "commercial studio" (used in the broadest possible sense) will get you a demo of sellable quality (if it doesn't, you went to the wrong place!). Buying the gear will get you hours upon hours of frustration and fairly poor results for quite a while. Now most people here accept that - in fact it is this that we take pleasure out of (somehow!) - but as I said if this is simply a means to an end you're looking in the wrong place.



But if you're determined to go this route, or genuinly have a passion for recording music, then great! I'll let the other guys recommend gear for ya
 
  • Like
Reactions: mrT
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top