Help Recording a Live Show

C

Catchmo

New member
Hey all, need some ideas here.
I'm recording a band at a bar and need some input on how to get the best possible product out of it. The band is a funk groove jam band basically with a small amount of vocals. I know they have a 6 piece drum set plus a small percussion set with bongos and congas. They have a guitar and bass and they also have a saxophone. I'm bring my Korg D3200 with that has 8 xlr inputs plus 4 1/4" inputs available for recording. The bar does not have a sound system (small dive bar) so they are using a PA for vocals and I believe the sax and percusssion set.

My main issue is getting what is going through the PA. The vocals won't be a problem but I'm worried about the sax and additional percussion. I figure I could mic most of the band as if it was a live tracking session. Should I mic everything through the Korg and just send what is needed out to the PA or should I set the PA up for a standard live setup and grab the signal from that?

Thanks peeps
 
Just put a stereo microphone pair up in the room and get a stereo feed from the board. then blend the two (actually four) when you get back home.






:cool:
 
That's what I WOULD do except there is no board. The room is small enough that the drums don't need to be miked. By dive bar I mean DIVE bar! I wish it were so simple.
 
Catchmo said:
That's what I WOULD do except there is no board. The room is small enough that the drums don't need to be miked. By dive bar I mean DIVE bar! I wish it were so simple.
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What you are calling a "PA" is probably a mixer and amp in one box, right? Get the line out from that into one or two channels of the Korg, and place one or mics in the room to capture the overall sound as best as possible into other channels of the Korg.

There are lots of ways to mic the room. I generally put an X/Y stereo mic up at FOH, but you probably won't have a mix position out in the room. I have also taped PZM mics on the walls even with (90 degrees off axis of) the main speakers. If you can get away with it, place a mic on a short stand DSC. If the mic is substantially distant from the sources you'll have to slide the direct track later in the timeline in post to line it up.
 
So you don't think I should try tracking the instruments? I know it's a live show but I'm trying to make up for not having a true board feed with miked instruments. The only things going through the PA are the vocals and sax and maybe the secondary percussion. I would only have the room sound for the rest of the instruments and to be honest the sound in this bar sucks very much so.
 
Catchmo said:
So you don't think I should try tracking the instruments? I know it's a live show but I'm trying to make up for not having a true board feed with miked instruments. The only things going through the PA are the vocals and sax and maybe the secondary percussion. I would only have the room sound for the rest of the instruments and to be honest the sound in this bar sucks very much so.
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That could work, capture the PA on one track and mic what's not in the PA yourself (which seems to be your original plan). If you have a spare input put a mic up in the room anyway.
 
If this is a DIVE...DIVE ~ I would be hesitant to go into it with my recording gear to begin with.

:drunk::drunk::drunk::eek::drunk::drunk::drunk: That would be you in the middle of all of the sh!t.

And now you when you get back home ====> :mad:






:cool:
 
I'd mix it and send a feed or feeds out to their little PA rig. I'm guessing they're using something along the lines of a one-piece mixer/amp (like the old Peavy XR680)?

Setups like I think you're describing generally don't have a sound guy. You could add value by making their live mix better as you record them.
 
LDS said:
I'd mix it and send a feed or feeds out to their little PA rig. I'm guessing they're using something along the lines of a one-piece mixer/amp (like the old Peavy XR680)?

Setups like I think you're describing generally don't have a sound guy. You could add value by making their live mix better as you record them.
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That is exactly what they are looking for. I talked to them yesterday and although the main reason for me is to record, they had said they want me "to do their sound." I also found out last night that the PA equipment their using is much better than I had previously assumed. They just bought huge powered JBL speakers and an old 16 channel mackie mixer which is pretty nice considering they have three keys, drumset, conga setup, guitar, bass, saxophone, and a laptop with sampling. They also have another mackie 6 channel mixer.

The plan is to run all the keys (3 channels) and the laptop (stereo pair) through the mini mixer and then run that out two two channels on the big mixer. The drumset will have 6 mics(snare, kick, 2 overheads, one rack, one floor), the bass, the guitar, the sax, the congas, three vocal mics will all go straight to the big mixer. That's 14 tracks so I have to tracks I can use for room sound.

I still have a question about sending it to the recorder. The board has 4 aux sends plus some other sends. I figure I will send all percussion to one track, vocals on another, keys on another and instruments on the other one. I would like to separate them if I can, not sure I will be able to though. Does this sound right and thanks all for your input.
 
moresound said:
I believe that the 16 channel mac has direct outs on every channel if I'm not mistaken.
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It does but I only have 12 inputs total I can use and if possible I would like to pan as close to what I do for a studio recording but with all this instrumentation I'm not sure I can pull it off exactly the way I want to, i.e. the drumset miking. Maybe I can bus everything that is center panned and direct out anything that will be panned left or right
 
moresound said:
I believe that the 16 channel mac has direct outs on every channel if I'm not mistaken.
Click to expand...

If it's a VLZ it has them on the first 8 channels, and they're post-fader, so any mix adjustments alter the record level. The original CR1604 has inserts on the first 6 channels which are post-fader to do double duty as direct outputs. Post fader direct outputs suck for live recording when you just want to capture the signal right after the preamp and do all your eq and level adjustments in post.

It is possible to use the inserts as pre-fader sends if you're clever (or have read the Mackie manual).
 
bouldersoundguy said:
If it's a VLZ it has them on the first 8 channels, and they're post-fader, so any mix adjustments alter the record level. The original CR1604 has inserts on the first 6 channels which are post-fader to do double duty as direct outputs. Post fader direct outputs suck for live recording when you just want to capture the signal right after the preamp and do all your eq and level adjustments in post.

It is possible to use the inserts as pre-fader sends if you're clever (or have read the Mackie manual).
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I think it's a CR 1604. Is there any other way to send the signals pre-fader besides the aux or if you have time elaborate on the inserts?
 
I was gonna make some suggestions, based on what we did recently, but after reading that you only have 8 recording input channels, a minimialsit PA, Drums/horns/congas, and will be working BOTH live sound AND recording, in a dive that in all likelyhood has HORRIBLE acoustics, all I can say is... Man, I FEEL for you. You are in for a rough night.

One bit of advice- get a good assistant/mic tech.

Oh, and you ARE getting paid for this gig, right? I would NOT do that gig for free.
 
Catchmo said:
I think it's a CR 1604. Is there any other way to send the signals pre-fader besides the aux or if you have time elaborate on the inserts?
Click to expand...

On the original 1604 there's no way to get pre-fader outputs from individual channels because the inserts are post-fader, a somewhat bizarre feature letting them be direct outs for a tape-based recording system.

On pretty much every other mixer on the planet the inserts are pre-fader, but can be pre- or post-eq and many are post-HPF.

To tap from an insert jack use a mono 1/4" cable and put it in to the "first click". It picks up the signal from the insert jack without interrupting the signal through the jack. It's not the most reliable connection, but the Mackies have a strongly sprung ring contact that grips the plug pretty well. You can also buy/build a special cable that can be fully inserted.
 
If your very limited to the number of recording channels just do kick and overhead only on the drum set.
That should be good to capture the drums if you mix the overhead just right.;)






:cool:
 
So the show was great, the recording of the show ran somewhat smoothly with a few bumps in the road, and I DID GET PAID!! The best part is they want to do several of these live recordings and this first one was basically a crash course and I learned a whole bunch.

My main issue was the post fader outs so what I ended up doing was miking all the instruments not needing the pa directly into the Korg recorder. Then I pulled an aux out from the PA for the keys, vox, sax, and congas. I haven't listened to it yet but I think what I got is pretty good.

My other issue, and I could use some suggestions if anyone out there has any, was with the Korg D3200. I've used it a lot doing studio type recording with takes running only about 5 minutes. The first set for this show was 1hr 10min and at about 1hr 5min the Korg gave me a message saying Disc to busy and it got rid of everything recorded to that point. The band wasn't too upset about it(friendship is a powerful thing) but for future gigs I want to make sure this doesn't happen. For the second set I faded out between songs but I don't want to have to do that. I fear that this issue is just the limit of the Korg itself. I was recording at 24/kpbs. Could this have been the problem? Should I go to 16?
 
Great that you got paid.:D

I know nothing of the Korg- I can tell you that the Alesis HD24 still has a good following for live recording, with a decent-sized hard-drive installed in it (there are two bays, so you can set the HD24 to record to one, and if it runs out, automatically switch to the second,) and it gives you up to 24 tracks to record to. If you are going to be recording this band several more times, you might find you get good enough to record other bands in live settings, and other bands may ask you to do so. Having 24 tracks will come in very handy.
 
Catchmo said:
So the show was great, the recording of the show ran somewhat smoothly with a few bumps in the road, and I DID GET PAID!! The best part is they want to do several of these live recordings and this first one was basically a crash course and I learned a whole bunch.

My main issue was the post fader outs so what I ended up doing was miking all the instruments not needing the pa directly into the Korg recorder. Then I pulled an aux out from the PA for the keys, vox, sax, and congas. I haven't listened to it yet but I think what I got is pretty good.

My other issue, and I could use some suggestions if anyone out there has any, was with the Korg D3200. I've used it a lot doing studio type recording with takes running only about 5 minutes. The first set for this show was 1hr 10min and at about 1hr 5min the Korg gave me a message saying Disc to busy and it got rid of everything recorded to that point. The band wasn't too upset about it(friendship is a powerful thing) but for future gigs I want to make sure this doesn't happen. For the second set I faded out between songs but I don't want to have to do that. I fear that this issue is just the limit of the Korg itself. I was recording at 24/kpbs. Could this have been the problem? Should I go to 16?
Click to expand...



Seams like you went just pass the allotted record time, fading out between songs gave you the save and the win.....yay.


No keep at 24/kpbs.






:cool:
 
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