advice on "proofing" a recording to musicians

W

williamconifer

New member
Greets,

I did a live recording of the 10 piece R&B band I do sound for. I recorded the show non-stop (almost 2 hours) into 4 channels (my equipment limitations javascript:smilie(':rolleyes:')
roll eyes (sarcastic) ) using Sonar 3. I recorded all inputs dry.

The band wanted to hear right away what it sounded like so they could critique their performance and get an idea of what songs they want me to apply spit and polish to. Since it was a remote recording, the band could not sit in the controll room to listen to was was recorded. So I created a rough mix by setting the volume envelope nodes at each song to get a basic balance between the horns, vocals, rhythm and drums. There is a couple members who have experiance in audio production and understood what a rough mix is but the majority of the members view the recording as being sub par because it doen not sound "finished" and does not want to progress with post production work.

My wife who's a photographer says you never show a client a rough draft. I told her that there was no way to mix/edit a 24 song performance in a timeframe the band would have been happy with. Also my thought is that only about 60% of the performance was worth working on. Mixing/editing 100% of the show to get 60% is a LOT of work considering the band has their own measure of success (how many screwups are noticable etc).

Since I am "part of the band". I was only paid $100 to record the show. I was planning to do the post prod. as a gift so I am wary of time committment for the project. My hope was by having them tell me what to work on I can save alot of time. I think this has backfired on me.

What is standard practice in getting a "proof" of the recording to the musician? What should I have done differently?

Thanks again folks,
jack
 
How about.....

Is the postproduction work something that you REALLY want to do????

If so, (which I'll take the leap of faith that you do, sine you posted the question) please elaborate on your statement “Since I’m part of the band”.

If you already have an established “relationship” with the band, what’s the big deal? Approach the few members that understand the process and get their support/inputs on what material should go to postproduction.

Or better yet, since you state that you were going to do the work as a “gift”, pick the material that interests you. If the band has issues with your selection…..tuff. :)
 
You got paid $100 to record 4 channels of audio?

I would say you were quite well paid friend.

Push mixes are part of the business. Your wife does not understand the nature of audio production. I could see why she said what she said, but if you adhere to that kind of approach, you will not get business........

Band member - "Hey man, seems like the guitar overdubs went well. Can you throw me a push mix so I can decide if I need more?"

You - "Sorry man, I can't let you listen to anything until it is done".

Bankruptcy Judge - "You only made $100 bucks in this business? Okay, we will just have to sell the mic cables to pay off your house".

:)

Don't worry about what the naysayers say. If they are too dumb to figure out that they are listening to a "push mix", well, I am not sure what to say. If you are "giving" them the "mixing" work you are going to do, just do it and call it good.

Ed
 
So, maybe I came across a little flipant above. Let me explain more.....

Push mixes ARE part of the business. Artists after tracking certain parts may want to take a listen the next day at home to what they did to judge whether it is what they want to keep. Obviously, you dont' have time to mix the song for this purpose, nor do you really need to.

This recording you did was live. You probably didnt' get a lot of time to move mics around to optimize placement, nor did you get any time to work with the source sounds to optimize them for recording. You basically had to "work around" the live show situation. I do a lot of this and understand the limitations. Not all of the tracks come out the way I would like them too by any means. First and foremost, I let the artist know that it is not going to sound like a studio recording! Nor is it going to sound as good as big label released live recordings that were done with a million dollar remote truck with 48 tracks for the recording.

You also had to submix almost everything because you only had 4 tracks to work with. Now, on a personal level, I would never charge much, nor put much faith in a recording that only had 4 tracks to capture a 10 peice band live!!! Submixing while going to tape in a live situation is not going to produce results that are going to be so terribly workable for mixing. There are too many things you cannot change later.

So, this whole deal here is possible an "expectation" thing. Hopefully, you didn't set up any unattainable expectations with the band members. Hopefully, you didn't have higher expectations for this recording than what is there. I just recently recorded a whole blues festival. I had 24 tracks of audio, so everything went to it's own track. NO submixing at all. I can tell you that even in this situation, I am not happy with how everything sounded! There was no time for me to move mics, and work with each artist to optimize their source sounds for recording. There is also no way to "go back" and redo parts where maybe the drummer hit a snare WAY too loud and hit the A/D's too hard causing digital distortion. Oh well. Out of 140GB's of data on my hard drive, I figure I MIGHT get 1 song per band at that festival that sounds "worthy" of being on a professionally produced live CD. A couple of the artist might even have enough good material on there worthy of a live CD of their own.

Anyway. As the "engineer", it is your job to explain to the artist the limitations of what you did, and to explain the limitations of the "push mix". If you think in this business that your skills are not going to be challanged on a regular basis, you are wrong. Artist's will doubt what you do based upon incomplete mixes all the time! You will need to learn how to deal with that. Simply, I just tell the client that it is not finished and that it will sound better when it IS finished. If they still decide not to continue on with it, well, fine with me. I get paid by the day, and almost always have deposits paided to me in advance for my work. I have had projects scrapped after a week of tracking before!!! No shit eh? Wasn't my fault, and the band didn't blame me. Things were not right and they knew it, but it was THEIR problems, not mine (although, I needed to explain what those problems were.....being the berer of bad news isnt' always easy, and if my explainations don't make sense to them and they still think it is my fault their recording sounds like shit, I probably NEVER would have pleased them....so I would rather move in anyway....)

You claim that you are "giving them" the "editing/mixing". Cool. Do that and move on regardless of what a few in the band might think of what they have heard so far. They have nothing to lose, and neither do you if you already have offered it for free. I don't that you will spend much more than about one day total "mixing" 24 songs with only 4 tracks of audio. There is little you can do with so few tracks that are all submixes.

Peace.

Ed
 
If the issue is getting the band motivated again then polish up one of the songs to show them what the final product will sound like. If it's still not good enough then at least you all know where you stand and you won't wast another 40 hours editing and mixing.

When I release push mixes I try to make one of the songs as kick ass as possible and I constantly use that song as the reference for the project as more overdubs are done. Then the band doesn't get totally discouraged if the rest are simple unity mixes.
 
To be honest, Live performances and Quality recording should not be said in the same breath...Even your top notch professionals who do this type of recording know in order to do it right you have to spend serious dollars for special mics and equipment and then serious mixing time and in my opinion 8 out of 10 still are a dissappointment...well let say there is a lot of difference from recording in a studio...

I am not sure what your experience is or if you have taken any classes in this type of recording, but I think the expectations may have been set to high and I agree with your wife, one who drinks wine to early has a frown on thier face...

Still wondering how you adjusted anything if you perform in the band?
 
williamconifer,
During the show if you wanted one more thing to worry with you could've put a 2 track cassette on to record the proceedings direct from a board stereo out. Since it sounds like you have one huge wave file I'd just do that and let the band figure out which songs of which sets they want to persue. The cassette also makes it pretty clear that it is just an interim copy and it shouldn't get too far out of your control ! Who wants to pass around a cassette as a final work in this day and age - right ?

I'm a real fan of minimalist ambient micing as I really like the live sound recorded in a room that supports the instrumentation and SPL levels and has the proper absorption so reflections aren't flying everywhere. Anyway with a couple of room mics, a board feed or 2, and ambient mic positioning somewhere in the sweet spot between the stage projection, the PA reinforcement and the refection zone I suppose 4 tracks could sound pretty good to me.

I used to do something similiar with 8 tracks and looking back could've probably lost 2 of the 'close-mics' and gotten away with 4-6 depending. I'm a lot better at pulling stuff out of a mix now and the close [recording] mics were just paranoia factor. Plus sometimes the rooms were just not right for ambients.

Sounds Fun ! :cool:
kylen
 
hey great feedback folks!

sonusman

Thanks for the "grounding" on push mixes and expectations. As you can tell most of my production experiance has been by myself or with collaborators. This live recording experiance has taught me that even though I am very talented in many areas in audio/video/web pub. I have to to be brutally honest in my capibilities. Especially with equipment. Is there a chance of making a great recording using my 4 track digital rig? Yes but not likely. I have started on one song and am having to do a lot of editing and EQing to overcome the problem of mixing prerecorded submixes. Honestly I think the mixing/editing is coming along great. The band is really great live, the recording feels live and the feeling of "joy" is coming out in the mix. I am really trying to screw down this first song and save the presets so I can duplicate the settings for the other songs.

I am just going to produce the songs on the recording that are the best performances and give it to the band. At least they will get a better gig cd out of it. As it turns out I am also taking video from that show (and some others) and creating a 5 min. "gig video". Audio that I am now editing will go perfectly with the video. Nothing bugs me more than band/gig video that uses the audio from the camera. It's just not professional sounding. Anyway, it's a fun albiet large project that I hope will estabilish some crediability for myself especially on the video side.

Thanks again for all the insight.

jack
 
I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I usually zip off a CD while doing real time transfers from my hd24 to computer and give this to the client(mostly on live stuff)if they want something right away. I call it RAW tracks. Then after I've worked my mix mojo, they are usually quite happy with the results.:D
 
and if i could crap gold i'd be stinking rich

keep your head up with the abilities...i agree that live recordings and the quality studio recordings shouldnt be put in the same category....some people dont realize what it takes to run two different sounds at once...theres how it sounds on stage and how it sounds on the recording. after doing live music video recordings at a club, i was kinda pissed with the sound guy cause the sound in the club sucked when it came to hearing vocals....on the video recording it came through just fine. people still clapped and came back for the next show so all in all....the club sound was sacrificed for the recording and i think it was for the best. plus jackasses should appreciate the push mix becuase alot of times its what they really sound like if you were there lol IMO
 
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