Home Studio Build - Folk Band/Alt-Country

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Slashdot

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Hello,

The Band:

I have a five piece folk band comprised primarily of acoustic instruments; guitars, electric guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, harmonica, snare w/ brush and up to five voices (3 male [tenor, bass, high-baritone], female [mezzo soprano, contralto].

We like to play live with minimal overdubbing. Perhaps it's laziness but it's also just the way we like to play :) More passion you know? In the moment.

Right now we record every practice and demo (live) from an iMac microphone although lately we've been using the preamps in my M-Audio ProKey Sono 88.

The guitars tend to sound too compressed through the pickups/preamp and too boomy if mic'd with a dynamic.

Okay ... so ... to the questions; what gear do you recommend?

The Goal:

Record our first EP that is good enough we can possibly mix ourselves and send for mastering to sell later or quality demos we can put on our website or on BandCamp/iTunes, etc.

Proposed Gear:

I was thinking of the MOTU pre8 so that I could vocal mic most of us and also mic some of the instruments...We don't need much in the way of monitoring as I can put it out over the reference speakers if we need it or have two headphone monitors in the M-Audio keyboard.

I've been going back and forth b/w MOTU pre8, Firestudio Project and Firebox...whatcha recommend? The MOTU I have in mind has about 300 hrs of studio use on it.


Gear in use:

Alvarez-Yairi w/ under saddle piezo
Taylor with sound hole pickup
Epiphone EJ-200 with sound hole contact mic

Mandolin with no pickup

Fender Jazz bass with passive pickups
Fender P-bass with passive pickups

Fiddle with pickup

1967 Fender Vibrolux Reverb
5E3 Tweed Deluxe clone

The Rig:

24" White iMac Core2Duo w/ 4GB RAM w/ Snow Leopard 10.6.x.x and either Cubase or Logic Studio (probably Cubase)
7200 internal RPM although I'm going external Firewire 800/400 for this project
M-Audio ProKeys Sono 88
BeyerDynamics M300TG
Audiotechnica ATM410

The Room:

12x10 with vaulted ceilings. Dry wall. No sound proofing or accoustic foam.
 
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Slashdot said:
The Room:

12x10 with vaulted ceilings. Dry wall. No sound proofing or accoustic foam.
Click to expand...

This is really the only question we're concerned with in this part of the forums. You could probably find out a lot about your gear by just doing a search, or post the equipment list in the "Newbies" part of the forum.

Now, on to the room. Basically, I need to know a lot more than that...doors, windows, furniture and so on. Can you post a diagram or some pictures of the space?

Frank
 
I have a five piece folk band
Click to expand...

We like to play live with minimal overdubbing.
Click to expand...

:eek::eek::eek: Five people...instruments...record live? In a TEN X TWELVE ROOM??????? With a piano, desk, lamp, couch, bookcase, drums, amps.....

In here????
:confused:


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Oh my god:eek::drunk::o

ummmm....I don't think theres anything we can do..you haven't got room for anything else.:laughings:















Just kidding...I'll be back...as soon as I find my shoehorn.:D
fitZ
 
Slashdot said:
Hello,

The Band:

I have a five piece folk band.....

The Room:

12x10 with vaulted ceilings.
Click to expand...

I would woory more about the fiddle player poking someone in the eye than acoustic treatment! :laughings:

;)

Man...that's pretty tight! :eek:


Have you tried just hanging a single omni from the ceiling...and then adjust your individual playing volume accordingly...ala Phil Spector's "The Wall of Sound".
You can also try hanging a stereo M/S pair....
 
You guys are funny :-) I appreciate the wit and the follow up. Sometimes a smile is worth more than an answer.

So perhaps the room is more like 10x14 but not much more.

That piano is a digital piano and it actually sits on the desk but it was hard to draw that. Soon it will be on a piano stand in that position.

Currently we are recording acoustic guitar and bass tracks DI and then overdub mandolin (Rode NT5) and fiddle. Then overdub voices.

But, sometimes we like to just play and record the room. So far it's worked out pretty well just using an iMac mic or a Blue Snowflake.

I've been tossing about the idea of getting a ribbon mic to upgrade the session recording.
 
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