Live recording...

Goldilox

Goldilox

New member
Just a thought, but I'd actually like to do some tracking at a gig (mainly to improve on the sound for some Youtube videos). Anyone done much live recording at small venues?

I'm wondering how you'd go about it? I'd be using a tascam US1641 into my laptop. I've got a bunch of dynamics, 2x Samson C01 and a Sontronic STC-2 LDC. For the size of place we play vocals, kick and snare usually go through the mixer, but amps are just left 'in the room'.

I'm assuming you'd start with a mixer feed and mic guitar amps? Would there be any point in drum overheads or would the bleed make them unusable?
 
You could try to track everything, but that gets complicated pretty fast and it takes more storage space and mixdown time. I recommend capturing the board feed and a mic in the room. If the mix sounds okay in the room those two feeds can give you enough to construct a decent soundtrack for your video.

That's how I did the audio for this video: Run Bambe Run: "Twisted" live at Rock N Soul Cafe - YouTube. It's an honest representation of the live sound but better than just a mic in the room. Room mic was an AT822.

But if you do want to track everything you might want to consider getting a mic splitter with enough channels. I had Rapco build a 16-channel split for me with ground lifts and two 15' tails. One tail goes into the house PA snake and the other goes into my mixer which feeds an HD24.

Several manufacturers make rackmount splitters of 4-8 channels. Some have transformer isolation which is nice but expensive and usually not necessary.
 
If you take a board feed and a room mic into your interface, you could easily place mics on the instruments that aren't coming through the board (to mix in with the board feed) without the need for a splitter snake. Then you can mix together the 3 and have fairly solid control over the balance of instruments without spending any money.

Setting all that up is a pain though. There are little handhelds (I use zoom h4n) that record the board feed to a stereo track and it's built in stereo mics to another stereo track. When I get it home, mix the two together (don't forget to time-align them since the mics will be recorded slightly later than the board's direct signal due to distance, esp. in bigger spaces) and I'm done. Great quality with absolute minimum setup- 1 stand, 1 cable, 1 power cord.
 
And be sure to place the mic absolutely dead center between the PA speakers because you can't align to two different arrival times.
 
When taking a board feed I usually only grab the vocals and leave the rest of the band to be captured by the stereo room microphones.
 
moresound said:
When taking a board feed I usually only grab the vocals and leave the rest of the band to be captured by the stereo room microphones.
Click to expand...

Board feed to me means whatever the live sound person is sending to the house system. I can't exactly tell him to just put vocals in the mains. But some people like getting an aux send or subgroup just for the recording, and that could be customized.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top