Bleed - embrace it or isolate the instruments?

[FattMusiek]

I am planning my upcoming recording session of pretty fast punk band. I am pretty bent on recording this band all at once instead of step recording due to efficiency and the fact that time is money. The room in which I'll be recording is rectangular. The dimensions are approximately 8 1/2 ft x 13 ft x 14 ft. The room is treated with a decent amount of Auralex foam, covering a good amount of the walls. There's also Auralex foam bass traps on two of corners. (There are bass traps on only two of the corners because remaining two are next to a door and plexiglass. There are a few traps leftover if needed). The floor is made of wood. In this tracking room there is still an apparent standing wave issue; there was once a lot more foam up and the room sounded lifeless in a bad way. The control room is even smaller (treated similarly with Auralex foam), but it's fitted with a Panasonic Ramsa (16 input) mixing console that sounds damn good to me and offers a lot of flexibility. The facility is located in a pretty big barn, but only these two rooms are set up for recording.

Now that you have an idea of the place, my question is should I embrace the bleed and record all rhythm (drums, bass, and guitar) in the small tracking room or do my best to isolate each instrument?

My approach to the embracing bleed scenario is:

-Drums set up near the back wall
-Bass amp miked somewhat close to drums (further away may lead to phase issues), at a low volume and going into a makeshift bass trap to absorb the sound waves
-Guitar in the same room?


In the isolating the instruments option, I have thought of doing this:

-Drums in the tracking room
-Bass direct in or outside the tracking room (cement floor and thin wood walls)
-Guitar either in the control room (kills my ability to monitor at all) or out in the main area of the barn. I've also considered running a long cable up the stairs and into a very small bathroom, but I'm no so sure about that

Any insight to these approaches is welcome. I hope to hear some good stuff...

Thanks

 

[Sloan]

It would depend on the vibe the band is trying to get across. If they want a polished pop-punk style vibe, then go with the seperation, if not, do it live. If you do it all live, record a few takes of each song and use the best one.

Also, you may feel like doing a hybrid style recording. I just did this the past two days. Record the main rythym instrument and drums at the same time and then add everything else later. For me, it was guitar and drums, then added bass, guitar 2 and vocals. It really gives it a cool live feel with the added clarity of seperation.

Here's a sample of what I'm talking about:
LAYZERBLAYDE - Rockin' Soul.mp3

That's my brother and I and our take on the generic RAWK ANTHEM. It only took like 2 hours? I was really pleased with the results - especially since it started as just an Audix D6 test!

If you want detailed info on the recording, just ask.

 

[LeeRosario]

I am planning my upcoming recording session of pretty fast punk band. I am pretty bent on recording this band all at once instead of step recording due to efficiency and the fact that time is money. The room in which I'll be recording is rectangular. The dimensions are approximately 8 1/2 ft x 13 ft x 14 ft. The room is treated with a decent amount of Auralex foam, covering a good amount of the walls. There's also Auralex foam bass traps on two of corners. (There are bass traps on only two of the corners because remaining two are next to a door and plexiglass. There are a few traps leftover if needed). The floor is made of wood. In this tracking room there is still an apparent standing wave issue; there was once a lot more foam up and the room sounded lifeless in a bad way. The control room is even smaller (treated similarly with Auralex foam), but it's fitted with a Panasonic Ramsa (16 input) mixing console that sounds damn good to me and offers a lot of flexibility. The facility is located in a pretty big barn, but only these two rooms are set up for recording.

Now that you have an idea of the place, my question is should I embrace the bleed and record all rhythm (drums, bass, and guitar) in the small tracking room or do my best to isolate each instrument?

My approach to the embracing bleed scenario is:

-Drums set up near the back wall
-Bass amp miked somewhat close to drums (further away may lead to phase issues), at a low volume and going into a makeshift bass trap to absorb the sound waves
-Guitar in the same room?


In the isolating the instruments option, I have thought of doing this:

-Drums in the tracking room
-Bass direct in or outside the tracking room (cement floor and thin wood walls)
-Guitar either in the control room (kills my ability to monitor at all) or out in the main area of the barn. I've also considered running a long cable up the stairs and into a very small bathroom, but I'm no so sure about that

Any insight to these approaches is welcome. I hope to hear some good stuff...

Thanks

well just try to seperate them as best you can. Those amount of mics at once can help you greatly or it can really give you a hard time. Usually, the better the room, the easier it is to seperate a live mix. That's with the assumption of proper placement.

So tune everything correctly, get them new strings, make sure you have all distractions out of the way, noise is taken care of, position them in a way they can see each other and communicate, etc.

You can try facing the bass and guitar cabs slightly upwards to get rid of that 90 degree angle, facing the wall.

You can take the drummers snare drum and hit it with a stick as you walk into different rooms to see what sound each gives you. Or have him walk around and hit it as you listen at a distance.

Have the singer sing acapella in all the rooms until you find the best one for his voice.

You see, sometimes uncoventional methods get you further than conventional ones. Especially in this case. So if you feel the singer would be better off with a 58 in his hand, then give it to him. If you see that he likes to move around and make an ass of himself as he sings, but it works, then by golly give him that mic.

It might get you a sound that works out better. Especially in punk.

Also, recongnize the kind of punk music they are going for and what level of musicians they are. If you're talking 70's-80ish punk, you're thinking live sound. If you're thinking mid 90s to present, you tend to hear cleaner/overdub style mixes.

If you think they sound better apart than together, that might have to be a desicion you have to make. That's just how it goes sometimes.

But if you do go live, just be sure to take your time in setting up each instrument. There's many different setups that yield different results.

I would personally try to isolate the drums as much as possible. The bass and rhythm tracks being in seperate rooms. Leads and vocals always run the possibility of overdubbing later on. So I would try to have those completely isolated from the rest of the band.

You never know if the singer, lead guitar, solo guitar, whatever...has to change the performance later on. You have to give them that option.

It's usually either one of the two in a live session senario: isolate each as much as possible or use all of the bleed through to create this very ambient, wide and open sound. However, the second is very unlikely to happen in this senario.

I think if you access what level the band is at, what you can and can't do with your gear and the room your in, it'll make things go by much faster.


Also, one piece of unrelated advice:

Since your going for the best "one shot" recordings possible, focus not so much on perfection but rather on character. The first few takes are usually the most energetic ones.

The majority of musicians give thier best performance within the first 3-4 takes. After that, they start becoming fatigued in some kind of way.

So if you want good performances out of them, try your best to keep a lively, positive and focused atmosphere. The important thing is to make them comfortable.

 

[Robert D]

I just did a remote band demo recording this past weekend, all instruments in real time. The bass went direct, the two guitar amps down the hall in seperate rooms, with just the drums in the main room. Man am I glad I got the seperation, since there are many edits to do. Edits are sooooo much easier if there's no bleed. So, unless they are either very good musicians that won't make any mistakes, or they are just against fixing things, I'd go with the seperation.