Recording a band "live" in a home studio

JBT18

New member
How do you record an entire band at once in a home studio without each guys mike picking up the other instruments> We have each instrument pluged into different channels on the mixer but the vocal mike still picks up the guitar and the drums and vica versa so the whole thing is a muddy indistinct mess!!

please help
 
eh, you're not gonna want to record vocals live. if theres no other way than you'll just have to live with a very muddy/live recording
 
The majority of full band recordings that I have done have been in rooms that were acousticlly treated, with a few iso booths (drummer/guitar/bass in main performance area with the bass & guitar cabs in an iso booth, and the vocals in an iso booth).

Next time try D/I'ng the guitar and bass. You can still have most of the band playing, with minimal bleed that way. You'd have to overdub the guitars again with the amps, but at least you'll have the scratch track.

What kind of mics are you using? The mic's polar patterns and placement of the mic will make a HUGE difference when it comes to bleeding. You prob won't be able to get rid of all of the bleeding, but with some good mic choices and placement, you can get rid of a lot of it.
 
The way you set up will make a lot of difference. If you set up like you would for a gig (everything faceing forward) getting much seperation is cloce to impossible. Keep in mind that in the studio, it has to sound good, not look good. First off, spread things out as much as possible, distance is the tool for all at once recording. Second, face amps away from each other and away from the drums, avoid setting them in corners faced out. Third, cloce mic things as much as possible. Less sensitive mics, placed cloce will work better than sensitive mics spread out. Fourth, play at lower volume and with less distortion and have everyone listen through headphones rather than to the live sound in the room. Fifth, isolate the vocals if you can, a seperate room is ideal, if you can't use another room use a cloce proxcimity mic for vocals.
Set the drums up first then set amps up around them (faceing away from the drums) with some sort of baffel between them. DI the bass and vocals. When recording "all at once" you have to create space between the different instruments. You have to create "sonic space" for each instrument or everything will bleed together. You will never completely get rid of all the bleedover but it can be reduced to a workable level.
I hope some of this helps. Most of my ideas come from trial and error, these are just some that work for me, hope they will for you.
 
Maybe this is not possible for you, but place the amps in different rooms and mike them from there. Have everyone wear headphones to monitor themselves. Put the drummer in another room and live without the interaction or else record the final vocal later. Or let the drums get into the vocal mike. That is how my buddy does it though, I have no experience with recording a full band live in the studio, so I hope this gives you some ideas.
 
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