Garry Sharp
Lost Cause
Time to make a new demo, and any advice on the following gratefully received. Apologies for a rather long post.
We play best live, and I am very keen to do live recordings in the rehearsal room. I am much more interested in catching the spontaneity and groove of the band (they are all very competent, lots of session and/or live experience) than kidding myself I’ll get a professional quality studio recording with my gear. Doing one track at a time ruins it, takes all the fun out of it for all of us.
The room is 18’ by 16’, and one of the longer walls and both the 16’ walls slope almost to the floor (cause they are the roof). So there are no parallel surfaces (except 10’ floor to ceiling!). The vertical wall behind the drums (i.e. the back wall) are covered in acoustic foam and the two side walls for about half way down to the front are covered in a mixture of quilts, bits of carpet and medium dense, ordinary foam squares. We are delighted with the sound we get in there for rehearsals.
Line up is bass, guitar, drums, female lead vox and female BV. We use 4 vox monitors, one of which (12” + horn) is aimed at the drummer and also carries a DI’ed bass for him (the band generally follows the bass, which is me, for tempo) Bass and guitar come from the backline speakers, which as you can see from my little picture point back from the “audience” wall.
So, what I would like to do is put headphones on everybody, so the only noise would be drums and the mic’d guitar amp. (Bass will be DI’d) Appreciate that spillage will be a major issue but I’ve read so many producers saying that it’s not the end of the world I would like to see if I can live with it.
I have a Yammie MG12/4 mixer and an AW16G HDR, which is 16 track with 8 simultaneous inputs. Mic’s are Rode NTK for lead vox, AKG C3000B for backing vox (I know, I know, but I like the way that toppy sound sits in the mix), a collection of AKG drum mic’s (they’re the drummer’s and I don’t have the budget for a better set) and an assortment of Shure and Sennie dynamics.
Plan to submix drums down to 4 tracks, plus one each for bass, guitar, lead and backing vox. Might overdub an additional guitar part and more vocals.
I appreciate that I am probably completely mad, but I’m really keen to try this and any advice – mic placement, avoiding phase problems etc., would be very much appreciated.
Sorry again for the length of the post.
Garry
We play best live, and I am very keen to do live recordings in the rehearsal room. I am much more interested in catching the spontaneity and groove of the band (they are all very competent, lots of session and/or live experience) than kidding myself I’ll get a professional quality studio recording with my gear. Doing one track at a time ruins it, takes all the fun out of it for all of us.
The room is 18’ by 16’, and one of the longer walls and both the 16’ walls slope almost to the floor (cause they are the roof). So there are no parallel surfaces (except 10’ floor to ceiling!). The vertical wall behind the drums (i.e. the back wall) are covered in acoustic foam and the two side walls for about half way down to the front are covered in a mixture of quilts, bits of carpet and medium dense, ordinary foam squares. We are delighted with the sound we get in there for rehearsals.
Line up is bass, guitar, drums, female lead vox and female BV. We use 4 vox monitors, one of which (12” + horn) is aimed at the drummer and also carries a DI’ed bass for him (the band generally follows the bass, which is me, for tempo) Bass and guitar come from the backline speakers, which as you can see from my little picture point back from the “audience” wall.
So, what I would like to do is put headphones on everybody, so the only noise would be drums and the mic’d guitar amp. (Bass will be DI’d) Appreciate that spillage will be a major issue but I’ve read so many producers saying that it’s not the end of the world I would like to see if I can live with it.
I have a Yammie MG12/4 mixer and an AW16G HDR, which is 16 track with 8 simultaneous inputs. Mic’s are Rode NTK for lead vox, AKG C3000B for backing vox (I know, I know, but I like the way that toppy sound sits in the mix), a collection of AKG drum mic’s (they’re the drummer’s and I don’t have the budget for a better set) and an assortment of Shure and Sennie dynamics.
Plan to submix drums down to 4 tracks, plus one each for bass, guitar, lead and backing vox. Might overdub an additional guitar part and more vocals.
I appreciate that I am probably completely mad, but I’m really keen to try this and any advice – mic placement, avoiding phase problems etc., would be very much appreciated.
Sorry again for the length of the post.
Garry