Any tips for recording live in a bar/club?

EddieRay

EddieRay

#?
I'm finally in a position to do 8-track on-location recording of bar bands for demos, performance reviews, whatever. I've done a couple so far and would like to know if anyone who has done this before might have some tips.

Specifically, I'd like to know how to reduce mic bleed in a drum OH and other recording mics. Also, can anything be done about vocal stage mics picking up the rest of the band? I doubt if I can completely eliminate it but I'm hoping there are ways to minimze it.

I also noticed that drum snares resonate with certain guitar/bass notes. Can anything be done about that?
 
The best way to avoid bleed is to use highly directional mikes. You'll still get a lot of trash, though, because of the recording environment. The vocalist(s) may have to get used to being right on top of the mike, but it works well once you get used to it.

The bass will record better if you run it direct.

A drum OH is a problem because you want it to be less directional. It's really better to mike each of the drum components separately (to the extent possible) with directional mikes and use a submixer for the drums. This may not be an option for you. At least try to hang something on the wall behind the drum kit to minimize reflections off that wall.
 
i've put overs in front of the kit faceing back before, helped a little
(assumeing nothings behind it except maby a soft sheet to absorb sound)
probably nothing will illiminate this problem though, just do your best.
 
bars and equipment

MadAudio said:
And don't let anyone set their beers on your gear!
Click to expand...

i was just gonna say the same.
one of my bar recording ventures I went to get a beer and to the restroom...
got back and there was a condensation blob from someones beer glass sitting
right on top of my portastudio!! go figure? right on the cassette platen!!!

300 fkng tables and they place the drink on my portastudio! :eek:

good luck... at least nowadays if your stuff gets trashed out
you can sell it on ebay.
 
Wow, problem city!!! Recording a band, live, in a bar, surrounded by a bunch of drunks... not the ideal recording situation. You gotta have guts to even try it! You might want to try a dry run, kind of like a sound check with the band when the place isn't busy to get the approximate settings and work out the best locations for mic placement. The settings will change as more people arrive and crowd noise levels increase. Make sure you have all your wires and cables bundled and out of the way, drunks can trip over air so a stray cable is a disaster waiting to happen. Try to plug your gear into a different circuit from the one(s) the band is using, power fluctuations wont make your job any easier. As mentioned before, DI the bass, might be better to DI the vocals also if possible. Cloce mic everything else to reduce bleed over and keep the bands volume above the crowd. Room ambience and crowd noise are part of the appeal of live recordings but the quality of the music in the live setting is the most important thing to capture on the recording. When the band listens to the playback be prepaired for some nasty comments, they always think they sounded better and in the bar environment may have. Stay sober and try to keep the band relatively sober too, the second part of this idea may be hard but will make everyones job a lot easier and improve the overall sound quality of your recording. I've tried the live in a bar recording and learned... the songs that sounded great at the time are often the ones that sound like crap on playback so be prepaired for a few dissapointments and surprises, sometimes the recorder hears something you didn't notice at the gig.
 
It's not really that hard. I do it all the time. Mics plug into mixer as usual. direct outs from mixer go to HD24. Hit the record button. It really can't get any easier. Oh, and bleed is good. It makes it sound, ummm live. If it's a decent sized room, it will sound good.
 
Like HangDawg, I've done it the same way. Direct outs from the FOH board into an Alesis HD24. So far it sounds great.

I've also mixed the Aux1 and 2 outs on each channel as a L-R lead into a CD recorder - in essence, doing 2 seperate mixes(live and aux) at the some time. That was much harder as the ambient mix is hard to avoid in the monitoring headphones.

The best advice I can give you is what you should already know. Have a solid gain structure! if you run anything red, you'll wreck both your mixes.
 
My advice is stay sober. When I was 16 I was learning to run sound for a local start up band of older guys. They should I should check out a band at a local venue and hang out with their sound guy to learn. Well, I smoked a little too much dope and drank a little too much and I passed out standing next to the mixer and got kicked out. Then I couldn't get the car to start and had to call my Dad. He was not happy, but the car started on his first try. While he was in the car he found my lighter and confronted me about tobacco use. Figuring it was better than being confronted about marijuana use, I copped a guilty plea. Overall it was a messy night and I accomplished little.
 
If all your guitar amps etc are going through FOH i would position the amps so that they are facing away from the other mics as much as possible to minimise spill as this gives you more room to add EQ etc at mix down. This can be impractical though as the musicians do need to hear themselves play, so to avoid this get some in ear monitors rather than floor monitors and this way you can point the amps facing totally away from other mics but the musicians can still hear what they are playing and also the punterts will still hear everything from FOH speakers.
Good luck man.
 
Live/bar recordings are my specialty...There's no avoiding bleed. Work with it instead of trying to eliminate it. Hell, I almost always (tracks permitting) throw up a room mic and mix that back in. That's like having a whole track of bleed. :D As was said before, the bleed is what makes it sound live. The only drawback is that you're totally at the mercy of how good the room itself sounds.

When mixing you might want to go easy on the reverb effects. There will already be plenty of natural ambience picked up by the mics. I also find it helpful to have all channels up at all times when mixing. You might be able to dial in the perfect drum sound by bringing up the drum channels one at a time, but then when you put the vocals in the drum bleed totally changes the sound...so don't bother mixing without everything in there in the first place or you're just wasting time.
 
apl said:
My advice is stay sober. When I was 16 I was learning to run sound for a local start up band of older guys. They should I should check out a band at a local venue and hang out with their sound guy to learn. Well, I smoked a little too much dope and drank a little too much and I passed out standing next to the mixer and got kicked out. Then I couldn't get the car to start and had to call my Dad. He was not happy, but the car started on his first try. While he was in the car he found my lighter and confronted me about tobacco use. Figuring it was better than being confronted about marijuana use, I copped a guilty plea. Overall it was a messy night and I accomplished little.
Click to expand...
Wow.....you really are a sailor!
 
Oh, one more thing when doing a mix from a small bar/club...Be prepaired to bust out your high-pass filter. You need to cut a ton of bass out of vox/guitars/overheads or else all of that rumble is going to get real phasy/muddy when coupled with the DI bass guitar track.
 
The trick I learned for recording live drums is (especially assuming the drums are physically behind most of the rest of the band as usual), to set up an "X/Y/K" mic tree as follows.

Using a mic stand that has both an adjustable boom and a mounting thread on top of the vertical stand piece. Screw a 5" two-mic T-bar onto the vertical stand and use that to mount two SM57s in an X/Y coincident position. It's helpful to place a small piece of foam between the 57 heads (which are otherwise touching) to isolate them from vibrating against each other. Place the mic stand in front of kit at the centerline of the kit with the 57 pair facing back towards the kit, parallel to the ground (or maybe tilted slightly down to the toms if the drummer is a cymbal animal or has the cymbals mounted way low), and pointed to even spread across the drums. Elevate the mikes to a height about midway between the tom heads and the cymbal bottoms. Pan these two mikes just a few degrees L and R on the mixer to get a very natural sounding stereo spread (not too wide now.) Then mount you favorite cardoid kick drum mic (I like the e602 myself, but use what you like) to the mic boom and hang the boom down in front of the kick at your favorite front skin or port hole placement (if you prefer to lay the kick mic inside the drum on top of the blanket/pillow, that's fine too.) Then pan the kick to dead center of the 57 stereo spread.

Before you say, "but I woun't get a good cymbal sound if I don't mike them from above", I respond, "try it first." Yeah, maybe overheads would be preferable, but this is a live situation and comprimises have to be made somewhere. In this case you are *maybe* sacrificing a little clarity (which is probably lost in a live situation anyway) but by pointing the coincident cardoids back you are gaining maximum bleed rejection. Besides, if you really think about it, if you are in the audience, you are hearing the drum kit from the front, and they sound just peachy, don't they? The rear facing coincident pair does a great job of naturally reproducing that sound and still give you a decent natural stereo image with good bleed rejection. Then the kick on the third channel just brings your drum mix in over the top for a great backbeat.

Also, I personally don't take anything off the FOH unless it is from direct outs on the channel strips and those direct outs then come in through my desk. Depending on the FOH post-fader mix for decent recorded sound is like depending on someone wearing dark colored sunglasses to color balance your video. What sounds like a good mix for live playback through the PA system is usually not the best mix (and far from it) for a recording. The two have entirely different needs. If you need to take from the FOH, take from the direct outs only (as I often do for vocals, especially if I am to lazy to DI ;) ) and then ride the record levels yourself.

HTH,

G.
 
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