Need help with live recording setup please!

S

Speedy VonTrapp

New member
Hi there, everyone. I need some help with recording my band. We’re really just looking for recording our practices right now. Hopefully we’ll get a really good take, and be able to post a song on a website, however, so we’re going for as good as we can get.

Here is what we have running right now. I already know that it’s not the perfect way to go, but can’t seem to figure out how to do it right. So, please help if you can!

Here is what we are using:

Mackie 1642-VLZ PRO mixer
Behringer 1204FX-PRO mixer
Yamaha MD4S (4 track mini-disc recorder)

Mics:
MXL 603s (2)
SM57 (4)
Peavey Diamond 22 V series
AKG 9000 (4, I think)


Here is what we are doing. (Please don’t shoot me.)

Kick – SM57
Snare – SM 57
Overheads – MXL 603s
Bass Direct
Guitar 1 (Carvin half stack) – SM 57
Guitar 2 (Mesa Boogie Half stack) – SM 57
Vocals Direct

We run the drums, bass and both guitars into the Mackie mixer.

Drums and bass are sub-grouped to 1, and sent out to one track on the Yamaha recorder
Guitar one is sent out to track 2 on the recorder
Guitar two is sent out to track 3 on the recorder

Vocals come into the Behringer mixer. (2 tracks, one lead, one back up vox)

Mono out of the mixer to track 4 on the recorder, and the L-R control room outs into the power amp, which goes to the mains and monitors in the room. (I don’t know the model or size of the amp for the P.A. sorry.)

I know that there must be a way to push everything through the Mackie, and forget about the Behringer, but the owner doesn’t know much about it yet. I’ve downloaded the manual so I can look at it at work, but can’t seem to figure out the routing.

I’d basically like to have the same set up that I’ve got, but not use the Behringer mixer, unless I really have to. It seems like there should be a way for all of it to work.

Please, anybody that has any experience with that Mackie board, please let me know what we need to do to make our lives easier. :)
Thanks a ton,

-Speedy
 
You should have plenty of inputs on the 1642 to handle your setup; The way I'd set up the channel strips (instrument, bus routing, and pan) would be:

1. Kick - Sub 1/2 - 5% L
2. Snare - Sub 1/2 - 15% R
3. OH L - Sub 1/2 - 25% L
4. OH R - Sub 1/2 - 25% R
5. Bass - Sub 1/2 - 5% R
6. Git 1 - Sub 3/4 - 35% L
7. Git 2 - Sub 3/4 - 35% R
8. Lead Voc - Sub 3/4 - Pan to taste
9/10 Back voc - Sub 3/4 - Pan to taste

The above pan values are just examples, your mileage may vary.

The idea here is that you have the rhythm section going to stereo subgroup 1 & 2, with the gits and vocals going to subgroup 3 & 4. Then you run subs 1-4 out to your recorder.

The only thing I'm not 100% sure of is the wiring on the Ch. 9 XLR jack for the mic. That is a stereo mic in XLR, and I'm not sure if an adapter is needed or not. The manual you d/l'd should tell you all about that.

HTH,

G.
 
This is good for running everything right to the recorder, but that is not my problem. My issue is that I want the vocals to run to the mains, as well, and I need 2 outputs for the power amp for the vocals.

That's why I used the Behringer. It's mine, so I know how it works better than the Mackie, which is the drummers. So, I could easily route the vocals to both places from the Behringer.

I am having a hard time figuring out the routing for the Mackie.

Here is my suggestion/question, based on what your response was above:

The vocals have to be combined to one channel for the recorder, but sent out 2 channels for the PA.

So...

3/4 to the PA, and also push the "main" button on each of those channels, and send a mono signal to the Yamaha for with the vocal tracks?
 
Well, first off, with the configuration I suggested, the vocals *don't* have to to be squished into one channel for recording. The nice thing about using the two pairs of sub groups to go out to the recorder is that you'll have two stereo submixes on your recorder instead of four independantly mixed mono channels. This can give you a much better "soundstage" in you final mix; you can have the main and backup vocals panned different if you wish; same for all your drum tracks with are on the other stereo sub gorup (1 & 2).

And as far as the PA goes, that's not an issue either. Since you are using the Sub outs to go to the recorder, you can use the Main outs (or even the Control Room [C-R] outs if you wish) to feed the PA. Yes, you'd use the "Assign To Main Mix" buttons to send subs 3 & 4 to the Main outs. And you'd still have the Sub outs 3 & 4 going stereo to tracks 3 & 4 on your recorder.

Or, if you want *only* the vocals going to the PA, and not the guitars as well, then you can use the "Direct Out" jacks for the vocal channels to feed the PA. The only catch there is that only channels 1-8 have direct outs; you'd have to move the guitar on channel 7 to channel 9 and move the backup vocal to channel 7 instead. No biggie.

G.
 
Well, I only want one track of vocals on my recorder, though, not 2. I want one track of rhythm section, one track for guitar one, one track for guitar 2, and one track for both of the vocals together.

So, please forgive my hard head, but I'm just not grabbing what you're saying.
 
This can be a paradigm shift for those new to the racket, I understand. Let me try to explain it out in better detail.

With the setup you "want" you have two bottlenecks that will limit the quality of your final recording mix. Those two bottlenecks are the fact that your entire rhythm section will be squashed to one channel and that both your lead and backing vocals will also be squashed to one channel. This means that in the final stereo mix, no matter where you pan those channels, you will never be able to seperate what is on each channel, and they will all be coming from a single point location in your stereo image.

Your entire rhythm section will always be right on to of each other; bass, kick and snare. And your stereo overheads will be wasted since they will be condensed to a single channel. All those will be flattened into a single source. Same with your vocals; your lead will always be on top of the backing vocals, forever joined at the hip. Your mix will sound like a small number of mono signals paperclipped together to greate a "fake stereo" recording.

I'll bet you are doing it that way because you think you have to because you only have four channels. I'll also bet that given the choice, you'd like to be able to pan each microphone and instrument seperately and create a true stereo mix with real depth and character to it.

What I'm trying to say is that with the 1642 you can do all that, plus feed your PA the way you want to, and that it's not hard to do once you get a handle on just how the routing all works on the mixer. :)

The mixer is basically a 16x4 mixer. The "4" represents the four "Sub" outs. These four sub outs will go to the four track inputs on your recorder; 1-t0-1, 2-to-2, etc. You got that far already.

Where the magic comes in is in thoe 8 buttons located above the four sub-channel faders. There are two buttons per sub, labeled Left and Right. What those so is assign each sub out as a left or a right channel in a stereo soundfield; this means that they'll understand and carry the L-R pan for any given input channel as set by the input channels pan control.

Using this knowledge and these buttons, what I'm suggesting is that you use the four sub outs not as individual mono channels but as two stereo "submixes". This isn fact is where the common use of the term "subs" to describe the four output channels comes from, they are commonly used as stereo "submixes" or "subgroups" this way.

So what you do is push in the Left button (and make sure the Right button is pushed out) for Sub 1 and the Right button in, Left button out for Sub 2. This will give you one Left/Right stereo pair that you can submix to. To the same thing for Subs 3 & 4 to create a second Left/Right stereo pair.

Now, if you look over on the 16 individual input channel strips, next to each fader at the bottom is a vertical series of buttons labeled "Solo", "1-2", "3-4", and "L-R." If you don't know what "solo" is, don't worry about that right now other than to know you should leave all the solo buttons off (out) for the purpose of this set-up. If you do know what it is, then sorry for holding your hand tootight ;).

But it's the next two buttons we are concerned with. These tell the channel strip which subgroups to send their signal to; "1-2" will send the Left & Right pan signal to Subs 1 & 2, "3-4" to Subs 3 & 4.

So now you have two stereo subgorups set up and you know how to assign the input channels to thise subgroups. The strategy I am recommendingis thatyou assign all the channels for you rhythm section (drums, drum OHs and bass) to 1 & 2, and that you send the guitars and vocals to 3 & 4. This allows you to keep the rhythm section seperate from the rest of the band until the final mixdown, which can be a handy seperation to have for things like compression and EQ later on. But mainly it allows you to use the pan controls on each of the input channels to set each instrument and voice in its own place in the stereo spread instead of being forsed to squash them together into individual mono channels.

If you want to send only your two channels of vocals to your PA, that's easily done also. Instead of sending you Main Mix out to the PA (which, no matter how you have the subs configured, is going to contain everything) use the "Direct out" jacks on the back of the mixer. If, for example, you have your vocals coming in through channels 7 & 8, then run your cables from Direct outs 7 & 8 to your PA inputs and you'll be cookin' with gas. :)

Does this make sense to you?

G.
 
I actually would have paid for that kind of a reply.

I pretend to think that I'm a smart person, but it seems I let myself down here. :)

What you are saying makes total sense to me, except for one single point:

Rhythm section on submix 1&2, and guitars and vocals on submix 3&4.

So, on my recorder, track 1 and track 2 will be the rythm section, and track 3 and 4 will be guitars and vocals together?

If this is correct, then my larger worry is about mixing time on the computer later on. (If it totally throws you off because I forgot to mention that I dump everything to a computer later, and mix with Sonar, I SEVERELY apologize.) I don't have the capability to set it up where we practice, so the recorder is the portable solution between the 2.

So, assuming that I'm correct with my above statement about the tracks my recorder will receive, I'm concerned that later on, I won't be able to bring up guitar one, or two, or whichever track needs it, independantly of anything else.

I do understand what you are saying about the stereo field, though, and realize the potential sound-quality wise, compared to the way that I am doing it. Is this potential worth more to me, than having individual tracks that I can double, and effect later on with Sonar?

Our largest goal with these recordings is to learn where we make mistakes, and what we need to work on, etc. But, since we have the gear, I want to be able to make the recordings as good as they can possibly be. So, the day or 2 after we play, I go through, and do some mixing. Double one guitar, and pan either side, while the lead plays up the middle, for example. Nothing crazy, but something that just gives it a bit more dynamic than the "practice in the basement" sound. We'll deal with a real recording later on, but for now, I'm just trying my best to get what quality that we can out of it.

So, again, assuming my routing guess above for my recorder is correct, do you still suggest that I go that way with it, after learning about the post-production work that I do on the tracks?

You have been more help to me in the past couple of hours than I ever thought I'd get so fast here. I've loved this forum for a long time for a reason, and you're one of them, thank you very much!!


-Speedy
 
Speedy VonTrapp said:
I actually would have paid for that kind of a reply.
Click to expand...
Not so fast! (Now I know why you're called Speedy.) You have not gotten my bill yet! :D ;)

Moving the stuff to computer really does not change the equaition. I was assuming you'd be doing some mixing anyway, and you'll have to mix down to two channels no matter what. Whether that was all done in the analog domain or in the digital is really not germaine to the question at hand.

You are right to a degree that there is somewhat of a trade-off in that the guitars are no longer on their own tracks but are pre-mixed with the vocals. But on the other hand, what you are gtting in return is all instruments and vocals being able to be set in the mix seperately instead of just the guitars.

The underlying principle here is that no matter how you slice it, you're stuck with a compromise caused by the fact that you have more channels of instruments and vocals than you have channels to record. You're stuck "pre-mixing" your tracks somehow. The layout your initial described involves pre-mixing everything except the guitars, giving you the freedom to play with the guitars how you wish later on. The cost is that you are premixing large amounts of instruments into big mono channels with very difficult mix settings. Piling the whole rhythm section onto one mono channel is going to have a limited quality sound at the end of it all no matter how you do it. And putting the lead vocals on top of the backing vocals may or may not work, depending on the song; you just gotta cross your fingers and hope that it sounds OK to have them together.

Using the stereo subgroups, OTOH, doesn't take away the freedom of setting the guitars how you want them, it just moves that freedom from the mix on the computer to the tracking on the mixer. You can still set the levels and the pan and the EQ, you just have to do it as you record instead of in the mix. Yes, this is more limiting in the fact that you can't go back and re-record the guitars without re-recording the vocals as well. That's the trade off. But what you are getting in return is equal freedom for the rest of the mix: You'll be getting your stereo overheads back, you'll be able to pan the rhythm section as wide as you want to fill the soundstage instead of just having a mono point source for what are normally the backbone instruments of rock and roll, and you'll be able to get the relationship between the lead and back vocals right, panning them for proper interest, and not just have to cross your fingers and hope that the back vocals won't just get lost under the lead.

If you really want to do things according to your original plan, however, it can be done just as easily that way too. What you'd need to do is set up the sub channels the same way as I described in the last post. Then you'd need to take all your rhythm tracks - drums and bass - assign then to "1-2" and pan them all 100% hard left so they go only to Sub 1. Your first guitar would then also get sent to "1-2", but panned all the way hard right so that it's heard only on Sub 2. Guitar #2 would go to "3-4" panned hard left and both vocals would be assigned to "3-4" panned all the way hard right.

Note that when using the mixer this way that the panning is not really related to the final panning settings on your computer. In this case you are using the panning only as a way to assign the tracks to the specific mono sub channels you desire. Once they hit the recorder, the panning is basically gone, you just have four mono channels of music that you will assign panning to later.

The choice is yours. You can do it either way. But I'll give you 3:1 odds that the subgroup way I originally described will give you a more professional sounding recording.

Hell, play the song twice in practice and record it both ways and see for yourself! :) The worst that could happen is that you'll get tired of the song one run-through faster than normal. ;) :D

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Not so fast! (Now I know why you're called Speedy.) You have not gotten my bill yet! :D ;)
Click to expand...

The bill really doesn't matter. I probably wouldn't be able to pay it one way or the other. :D

I think that I may do just what you suggest, and try it both ways. I have already tried it several times my way, so I think that I'm going to set it up next practice for the better stereo field. One of our largest problems with recording in general, is that we're just in a basement, and the person listening through the phones has a very hard time telling the difference between the cans and the room. So, mix set up wise, it's not a perfect world, because we're just loud. Not too loud, though. ;)

I'm going to print this thread and take it with me, in tow next week. We might be able to just adjust it from practice to practice. We're not going to stop in the middle, and see what it sounds like, because the practice is what's the most important first. So, we'll set it up, get some quick levels, and try it out for the night. If we happen to take a break, we'll play it back, and see how it sounds, and adjust at that time, possibly, too.

Then we'll see what we want from there.

I have to admit that I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't consider the fact that the overheads, and kit in general were going to severely benefit from actually being spread out in the field. I ought to know better than that.

I look forward to our practices every week, but this week, I'm even more excited with added possibility of our recordings coming out sounding much better once we work out the mix.

Huge, huge, thanks for taking some time to write down some wisdom for us, Glen.

I will definitely let you know how it all turned out. It might take us more than a week to really nail it because we only practice once a week, and if we don't break enough times to make adjustments to the mixes, then we'll just have to do it after practice is over with.

In the meantime, we're trying to get our sound guy a bit more isolation in the room next to us.

THANKS A TON!!!

-Speedy
 
Speedy VonTrapp said:
The bill really doesn't matter. I probably wouldn't be able to pay it one way or the other.
Click to expand...
Well, I'm glad you told me before I wasted the 37 cent stamp on sending the bill. Oh well.. ;)

What you describe about practice coming first and honing in on the recording as you go makes perfect sense. In a way, you'll be practicing both the playing and the recording at the same time. With luck, you'll get great at both at about the same time and wind up with a great recording of a great performance.

Good luck with it all. Glad to help out. :)

G.
 
That's what we're hoping for, too. Eventually when we're ready, we'll break everything down, and record track by track, and go for a decent demo ourselves. But for now, this should be sweet.

I just have to say that after I printed the thread out, I re-read it, and based on what I've learned here over the years, it all just keeps clicking more and more and making more sense every time I go over it. I'm convinced that once we have the mix set up well on the board now, that this new method is going to be the way to go, for sure, and I'm excited to hear what it all sounds like, because everyone in general, (in the band,) has been really pleased with what we've already done, compared to some live things we've heard/done in the past.

Thanks again.

-Speedy
 
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