Another live recording... a little problematic but still good results

C

Chibi Nappa

New member
Just got through mixing another live show with another band. This one was much more of a challenge than my last live project. For one, the room itself sounded pretty bad. Second, the only drum that was close miced was the bass drum. All other drums came from the overheads, audience mic, and vocal mics. I've never done a drum kit without at least micing the snare, and I was surprised at how powerfull the drums could sound with three mics. Anyway, the bass guitar was a huge pain because it kept fighting with all of the bass bleed in various mics. I did alot of highpass filtering...

Oh, and you'll have to forgive the singer with his "amusing" story in the first 30 seconds about pornographic movies. Don't worry, he keeps it all PG13. :)

Anyway, the band is called Jealousy Curve and the songis called "'The World Is You". It really rocks.



Have fun listening to a great song.
 
Hey Chibi,

Nice job. How are you doing these recordings? In the club? In a truck? Under the cans? On a DAW or laptop? Mixing in real time or not till the next day? (Sorry if I missed any previous discussions on all this stuff. I’m new here.)
 
"Better Off Alone" from your other link is a good song and a great recording.

Hey, this is not your typical porn music, lol. Too bad he got kinda' pitchy on his falsetto stuff.

I agree...if you could share some recording particulars, that would be nice.
 
Now THIS is good example for all the people out there fighting with their drum sounds. LISTEN PEOPLE! 1 kick and 2 overhead mics, and the drums don't sound like a mile away! Nice job dude. I read a lot of stuff about people close micing everything on the drum set, and then I listen to their stuff and it still sounds like a mile away (learn about reverb, EQ and compression people!). Sound great mate. Very nice stereo image on the guitars. Vocals could have been better but that's more a message to the singer than to you. Bassguitar doesn't bother me at all, sounds nice. Beeing a bassplayer myself, he didn't impress me much, but he sounds functional, so that's always good :)

Don't think there's much to improve on this one :)
 
I hope these guys appreciate what a good job you're doing for them. This should be particularly useful for the singer :)

Congrats Chibi
 
Particulars on the recording... Alright, here goes.

This recording was made in a very cramped bar. I record individual tracks to my Roland 2480. It's just small enough to be portable, and I can get 16 track recordings so it's perfect for what I do. In most cases the house board has individual track direct outs. I just grab those. In smaller places with no house PA, I just use the 2480 as the front of house mixer, so everything is running in there anyway. All mixing is done the next day/following week at my house. My mixing room is nothing special. Tannoy Reveal Actives in my living room...a lot of trial and error buring CDs, but experiance has cut that down (but not eliminated it) over the years.

For this recording:

SM 57s on each guitar cab
bass DI
Key DI
3 vocal mics (SM 58)
Bass drum mic (forget what it was)
Two Octava mc012s on drum overheads
Studio Projects C1 in the audience.

The first thing I do is zoom into the wave form and align the audience mic with the bass drum mic. This eliminates the delay caused from the audience mic being so far away.

When I mix live recorings, I don't get too creative...I usually find that live recordings have a life of their own, and I try to find out what it wants to be rather than form it into something else. For example, I usually let the physical placement of the cabs and singers in the room dictate my panning. When you are dealing with that much mic bleed, sometimes it can keep things more focused. Sometimes not, but it's just the way I like to do things.

Another thing I like to do with a live recording is keep digital reverb to a minimum and usually turn up the audience mic pretty prominently to get my ambience. In some cases that's all I need (such as the Ike recording in my other post). In other cases such as this one, the room doesn't sound that good, and I need some digital verb to enhance it.

Aside from that, it's every cliche' you've always read about on these boards. Really listen to your mix, know your monitoring system, cut more eq then you boost, only compress when needed, etc. It all just comes from doing it 1000 times. :)
 
Super tight band...VERY well recorded. The fact that it was live only furthers the respect.

It's SO nice to hear folks out there plugging along doing excellent original material.

Warms the heart. Great job all around.

K-
 
A 2480 huh? That is a good way to keep it simple. I am gearing up to do location recording too. I will offer both a live mix and separate tracking. I don’t mean that I will mix their house pa. Instead I’ll do a real time stereo mix and send it into the HD recorder then burn demo CD’s for the band at the end of the night. I’ll also send 24 tracks into the DAW for mix down on another day.

I have several racks worth of gear and it’s a little too much to be carrying into the clubs. I’ll use a splitter snake and record from a truck outside. I have tried doing a real time live mix under the headphones from within the club. It was a real nightmare. The ambient volume from the room pa was so loud that I couldn’t even hear the cans. (Another guy ran FOH) The recording came out okay and the band was happy with it but I was not. I know I am better than that. I decided right then and there that the only way I was going to get a good live mix was to get myself out of the club completely. So, I began designing what will soon be my first mobile studio.
 
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