New Orleans Cabaret style 'live' recording, advice wanted

C

colorado_hick

New member
I am looking to record a couple tracks for a demo and wanted to get your all's advice.
Instrumentation is trap set, tuba,trombone,accordion. Vocals and maybe some acoustic guitar will be overdubbed later. Mixing will be done by a pro.

Our room is about 18' square and well dampened. My idea is a pair of Rode NT5s with the omni-directional capsules in the middle of the room, about 12" apart with a pillow between them. Hopefully this gets us close. In addition I will have directs from the accordion, an SM58 suspended in the bell of the tuba, an akg c1000 for the trombone, a generic kick drum mic, sm57 on the snares and each tom, and AT Pro37s for the drum overheads.

Audio interface is a Tascam 16x08 and I will use Reaper or Sonic. Again the idea is just to get good tracks, someone more experienced with better gear will help me mix and master.

Our sound is loose and interactive, here is a video from the last show:

Can you folks critique my plan? I do not have access to a lot of gear. Also links to previous posts that are relevant would be much appreciated. THanks!
 
You'll probably get some drum bleed since the room is relatively small. No magic way to void this unless you record the drums separate and have them perform to a click track using ear buds/headphones. That complicates things quite a bit from a gear perspective.

If the drums could be boxed out somehow, maybe construct a fabric booth using blankets around it. That would dampen a lot of the brighter drum elements, and reduce the reflections that would be captured by the other mics. That would be my poor man's way of doing it/improvising. This method would allow you to retain the live feel even if the drummer can't visually see cues from the other players.

Alternately, in post production you could use some soft gating on the other non-drum mics and if the drums aren't too loud that should squash much of the drum bleed without adversely affecting the quality of the mic'd recording.

In both suggestions light room reverb would need to be added later.

Disclaimer: I no longer do any live recordings like this. I'm only brainstorming based on my prior experience from a decade+ ago.
 
I'd say you can manage the bleed to the point that it's not a major problem in mixing if you get the performances right. Use goboes (upright panels between things), mic selection/placement/orientation to isolate each source as much as possible. If you try to replace one of the live instruments you could run in to trouble.

If you really want a live room mic I'd suggest a coincident pair. Things will be plenty live sounding without adding extra phase complexity you get from a spaced pair.
 
I'd also go with the coincident pair - spaced omnis are fine in a nice sounding, larger space, but just don't really give a realistic stereo field.

However - you've got a bit of a mismatch. Close miked sources, including a drum kit don't blend well with acoustic stereo miking techniques. Matching all the sources in time and space is not for the feint hearted. Personally, I'd probably scrap the stereo channels altogether, and use your best mics for the sources. I'd use the NT-5s as overheads on the drums (with the cardioid capsules, assuming you have them), and the only query would be what to use the C1000 for - it's not a particularly mellow microphone, so maybe hi-hats? The Pro 37s could be handy for the trombone and tuba, assuming they're not too close in. They'll be quite a bright clean sound. The 58 is quite mellow in comparison - so the music might be the decider?

The tuba is a Sousaphone I see - they're a bugger to close mic because the things are very tall, and as a result the bell moves around a fare bit with only moderate player movement. Tubas tend to be much more static. The trombone player is a bit wild, so the same problem might happen there. Spill is going to be a killer here. After listening to the video audio, the players don't have any real internal balance, so stereo miking will be weird to say the least.
 
after the fact update...
I experimented with the coincident pair and spaced Omnis. In the end I went with the omnis because the coincident pair was really sensitive to where I put them and what direction they were pointing and how high they were and all sorts of stuff. I suppose a pro would have known what to do but I liked the presence of the omnis and they were very forgiving. I ended up with them 12" apart with a rolled up sweatshirt between them. I think that it captures the feel of what we were doing well, everything was one or two takes on a lazy Colorado sunday afternoon. I really like how the drumset sounds like a set instead of a bunch of individual drums. I did pay a professional with better ears and equipment then myself to mix and master everything and I am happy with the RESULTS! Vocals and guitar were overdubbed later. Thanks for the advice!!!
 
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