recording drums when tracking whole band live

[captions87]

my band are getting ready to record a 6 song ep/demo to be able to send to promoters, labels, music blogs, etc. we plan on tracking the whole ep live, with all of us playing together in a room. the room we're going to record in has been soundproofed and somewhat acoustically treated, relatively dead room but still a tad live sounding, which is a good thing. we're miking each amp/cab individually and for the two guitar amps, have built a pair of boxes lined with foam to slip over the front of the amp and place the mic in order to minimize bleeding, and we're only tracking the instruments live. vocals and any percussion we add will be done separately. my question is, for drums specifically, does the miking technique or theory change when tracking live with the rest of the band playing in the same room? should the overheads be positioned a different way, or should we use SDC mics as opposed to LDC's so that there won't be as much of the room, and in turn, other instruments getting picked up by the overheads? this is basically a demo, and we're more of an indie rock band, so we don't mind if it sounds a bit lo-fi in nature, but we also want to make sure that everything sounds clear and crisp for the most part.

 

[gecko zzed]

Think of it is this way:

You are all playing on stage. There will be mikes on the cabs and on and over the kit. There won't be blankets, baffles or other devices to reduce bleed. And it will mix just fine.

Admittedly, there is usually a bit more space on a stage, so you can spread out a bit, which is helpful.

I wouldn't worry too much about bleed (indeed, if you "don't mind if it sounds a bit lo-fi in nature", this won't matter).

So long as the musicians perform well, and cohesively, you should get very good results just miking up in a conventional way. By 'cohesively' I mean that they play with an ear for the music, i.e. they're not trying to outdo each other in volume,or you don't have one player that overwhelms the others.

Here is a short sample of a live, lounge-room recording:http://www.box.net/shared/vpjk5hldbr

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Close mic everything. Move the overheads down to just be cymbal mics if possible.

 

[nate_dennis]

Dude, use the bleed. Seriously, if you're tracking live, the bleed will only go to reinforce the whole. 100% seperation is for people who don't want to commit to anything before the mix. If you're tracking live and will keep the main take as a whole, this won't really matter. I'm no pro, but that's just my $.02

 

[LDS]

Dude, use the bleed. Seriously, if you're tracking live, the bleed will only go to reinforce the whole. 100% seperation is for people who don't want to commit to anything before the mix. If you're tracking live and will keep the main take as a whole, this won't really matter. I'm no pro, but that's just my $.02

There's a huge difference between recording a performance and performing a recording.

 

[nate_dennis]

There's a huge difference between recording a performance and performing a recording.

Elaborate, please.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Dude, use the bleed. Seriously, if you're tracking live, the bleed will only go to reinforce the whole. 100% seperation is for people who don't want to commit to anything before the mix. If you're tracking live and will keep the main take as a whole, this won't really matter. I'm no pro, but that's just my $.02

Regarding the first "if", it could contribute or detract and you won't know until after trying a mix. Maintaining separation leaves your options open, like the option of getting a decent mix instead of a bunch of useless tracks. On the second "if", you'd better hope nobody flubs a note because you won't be punching anything in, so it very well could matter.

If I were doing it I'd run all the instruments (besides drums, of course) direct and re-track them as needed. Some, like the bass, may be fine as-is and others may really need to go through amps. You do need headphone amps for this.

 

[nate_dennis]

Maintaining separation leaves your options open, like the option of getting a decent mix instead of a bunch of useless tracks. On the second "if", you'd better hope nobody flubs a note because you won't be punching anything in, so it very well could matter.

I don't claim to know all the answers. Hell, I'm lucky if I get to record once or twice every few months. But . . . how does your point above reconcile with the fact that wonderful records were made well before multitracking ever existed. Bands would record in a room and the performance went to tape, and that WAS the mix. Or, as Ani DiFranco put it in song "People used to make records, as in a record of an event. The event of people playing music in a room."

All I'm saying is if they're going to track live, why not play it till they get it right, and move forward?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

I don't claim to know all the answers. Hell, I'm lucky if I get to record once or twice every few months. But . . . how does your point above reconcile with the fact that wonderful records were made well before multitracking ever existed. Bands would record in a room and the performance went to tape, and that WAS the mix. Or, as Ani DiFranco put it in song "People used to make records, as in a record of an event. The event of people playing music in a room."

All I'm saying is if they're going to track live, why not play it till they get it right, and move forward?

One reason is that the musicianship was very high, so what was played was generally pretty good from the start. Often they'd be professional musicians who played out with their band constantly. They didn't need to go through dozens of wax discs to get one good take.

On the technical side of it, if you go back far enough there was only one mic in the room so there was only one direct arrival time for any one source. Bleed was not an issue because there weren't multiple conflicting arrival times. Even when they started to use mixers there might only be four inputs with four mics going to disc. And the engineers had degrees in engineering so they had a pretty good idea how to optimize their equipment.

Now we have an explosion of people who play on a more casual basis and who have access to recording technology unheard of a couple of decades ago. Being able to record a bunch of tracks at a time is very powerful, but that cuts both ways. Bleed in tracks is like when the comics pages of the newspaper get printed with the colors misaligned. You can tolerate a little misalignment, but if it gets really bad it's just too hard to read. That never happened with black ink on white paper.

 

[RawDepth]

my band are getting ready to record a 6 song ep/demo to be able to send to promoters, labels, music blogs, etc. we plan on tracking the whole ep live, with all of us playing together in a room. the room we're going to record in has been soundproofed and somewhat acoustically treated, relatively dead room but still a tad live sounding, which is a good thing. we're miking each amp/cab individually and for the two guitar amps, have built a pair of boxes lined with foam to slip over the front of the amp and place the mic in order to minimize bleeding, and we're only tracking the instruments live. vocals and any percussion we add will be done separately. my question is, for drums specifically, does the miking technique or theory change when tracking live with the rest of the band playing in the same room? should the overheads be positioned a different way, or should we use SDC mics as opposed to LDC's so that there won't be as much of the room, and in turn, other instruments getting picked up by the overheads? this is basically a demo, and we're more of an indie rock band, so we don't mind if it sounds a bit lo-fi in nature, but we also want to make sure that everything sounds clear and crisp for the most part.

Has anyone answered your question yet?

Nothing needs to be different with the overheads. Overheads are mostly for cymbals and additional body/life/fill effect for the drums, not really for the room. Use any smooth (not harsh) sounding mics with cardioid pickup pattern. I would avoid omni and figure-8 patterns. SDC tend to work best but that's not really a rule.

The best live recordings I have done were outdoors with plenty of real estate between instruments. Use headphones in place of stage monitors if anyone needs it.

 

[captions87]

Close mic everything. Move the overheads down to just be cymbal mics if possible.

my only concern with doing this is that our more than a few of our songs have sort of heavy explosion type endings, with a lot of heavy ride and occasional crash, which seems to me like if the mics were very close to this, would probably max out pretty quickly, no?

 

[captions87]

Has anyone answered your question yet?

Nothing needs to be different with the overheads. Overheads are mostly for cymbals and additional body/life/fill effect for the drums, not really for the room. Use any smooth (not harsh) sounding mics with cardioid pickup pattern. SDC tend to work best but that's not really a rule.

The best live recordings I have done were outdoors with plenty of real estate between instruments. Use headphones in place of stage monitors if anyone needs it.

thanks, yeah my next question was whether sdc's would work better in this situation than ldc's. as far as real estate goes, it's a 24' by 24' detached garage that has been sound proofed and lightly treated. it's a great sounding room, pretty close to perfect for what we're going for, i just have a concern that the amps may not have enough room to have some separation from other miced instruments, thus causing some bleed.

 

[LDS]

Elaborate, please.

Sure.

In the beginning, there was the performer. He or she made music. People listened. Then it was over. It was a simple performance. Unique. Never to be repeated exactly the same.

Then, some guy named Edison or something devised a way to capture that performance. So it could be repeated pretty much exactly as it happened. The performance could be recorded.

Then some other guy came along (Les Paul gets a lot of the credit/blame) and invented multi-track recording. At this point multiple performances could be melded into a single recording.

Somewhere along the road between that point and now the performance seems to have lost the focus as the end and become a means. A means, with the recording being the end. Now, often rather than trying to capture a performance, many things are recorded then pieced together to become a recording.

Think about it. Loops, cloning vocals, multiple overdubs, stuff you just really can't do live as a performer. Well, stuff you shouldn't do live and call a performance.

Somewhere along the line, the focus has shifted from recording a performance to performing a recording. So much so, that the OP is concerned not about the actual overall sound of his band as a whole in the space where they're performing, but about capturing the individual instruments and sounds and melding them into something else. Not that there's anything wrong with that, we all do it, but it fits more in the category of performing a recording rather than recording a performance.

 

[captions87]

Sure.

In the beginning, there was the performer. He or she made music. People listened. Then it was over. It was a simple performance. Unique. Never to be repeated exactly the same.

Then, some guy named Edison or something devised a way to capture that performance. So it could be repeated pretty much exactly as it happened. The performance could be recorded.

Then some other guy came along (Les Paul gets a lot of the credit/blame) and invented multi-track recording. At this point multiple performances could be melded into a single recording.

Somewhere along the road between that point and now the performance seems to have lost the focus as the end and become a means. A means, with the recording being the end. Now, often rather than trying to capture a performance, many things are recorded then pieced together to become a recording.

Think about it. Loops, cloning vocals, multiple overdubs, stuff you just really can't do live as a performer. Well, stuff you shouldn't do live and call a performance.

Somewhere along the line, the focus has shifted from recording a performance to performing a recording. So much so, that the OP is concerned not about the actual overall sound of his band as a whole in the space where they're performing, but about capturing the individual instruments and sounds and melding them into something else. Not that there's anything wrong with that, we all do it, but it fits more in the category of performing a recording rather than recording a performance.

well one of the reasons we prefer to track live is because we believe it's easier to recreate some of the more important moments in our songs when we're all together playing and vibing off of one another, whereas it's difficult to try and get into that mood when you're just playing along with a temp track. and so we want that to come across in the recording, we want to have that live, 5 people playing all together feeling, but we just want it to sound a tad cleaner than just 5 people playing together in a room.

 

[nate_dennis]

my band are getting ready to record a 6 song ep/demo to be able to send to promoters, labels, music blogs, etc. we plan on tracking the whole ep live, with all of us playing together in a room.

.........

One reason is that the musicianship was very high, so what was played was generally pretty good from the start. Often they'd be professional musicians who played out with their band constantly. They didn't need to go through dozens of wax discs to get one good take.

If they are looking to send to promoters, blogs, labels, etc they'd better have high musicianship anyway. With all of the new technology playing "dozens of takes" shouldn't be an issue.

Somewhere along the road between that point and now the performance seems to have lost the focus as the end and become a means. A means, with the recording being the end. Now, often rather than trying to capture a performance, many things are recorded then pieced together to become a recording.....Somewhere along the line, the focus has shifted from recording a performance to performing a recording. So much so, that the OP is concerned not about the actual overall sound of his band as a whole in the space where they're performing, but about capturing the individual instruments and sounds and melding them into something else.

And that's exactly my point. We've grown so afraid of making decisions that we don't commit to anything before we send shit out to be mixed. 14 solo takes, 9 different versions of the same acoustic part, why? Because no one wants to commit.

well one of the reasons we prefer to track live is because we believe it's easier to recreate some of the more important moments in our songs when we're all together playing and vibing off of one another.

So, just do that. Don't worry so much about the bleed. Focus on strong performances by each of you. Of course, mic each cab, mic the drums, do all of that, that's fine, but dont' fret over bleed. Fret over playing well.

Again (and this is important) I'm not trying to push myself as an expert. I just believe that performance is more important than tech. or all of the other shit we get hung up on.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

If they are looking to send to promoters, blogs, labels, etc they'd better have high musicianship anyway. With all of the new technology playing "dozens of takes" shouldn't be an issue.

And getting back to my original point, close micing, it's primarily to give a better chance at a good mix. A bad recording can distract from a great performance. Allowing for punches etc. is a side benefit that could be ignored. I agree that for this purpose the recording should be done as live as possible, perhaps to the point of taking vocals with everything else. Focusing on capturing a performance doesn't have to mean neglecting the recording process itself.

 

[nate_dennis]

Focusing on capturing a performance doesn't have to mean neglecting the recording process itself.

Very true, and I never meant in imply thats what I meant. I just don't see a problem with a little bleed if it's all a continuous take. That was my only real point.

Cheers.

 

[grimtraveller]

Somewhere along the line, the focus has shifted from recording a performance to performing a recording.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, we all do it, but it fits more in the category of performing a recording rather than recording a performance.

Focusing on capturing a performance doesn't have to mean neglecting the recording process itself.

There is only one reason I can think of why in the beginning of recording, the emphasis was on recording a performance. It is that recording simply had never existed. Therefore it could not have entered into anyone's head to do anything other than record a performance. That's all there was and recording was like a real bang on the head for the human race, rather like movies, then talking movies.
But that notion died big time, the moment Lester Paul was able to successfully complete what was then called 'sound on sound' recording ie multitracking. And it bears seriously considering why he wanted to do that. Recording a performance was great, the day recording was pioneered but it was unsustainable because you simply cannot chain the imagination. We are made progressively creative, as far as I can see, and one of the things that means is that we don't stand still for long. Equally true is that we don't move and progress all at the same time or rate.
So multitracking was as inevitable as amplification and from the moment Les Paul did his thing, lights turned on in many heads and people that made music progressively thought about it's creation in a different way. As more tracks got added and bouncing became possible and varispeeding and loads of other things and new instruments were developed, the nature of creating music changed - as did studios.
The other major factor in this shift was the change in the balance of power. By the late 60s, no longer were the A&R men/producers the absolute kingpins of what got recorded and how. The artists themselves had more say and in some cases took over.
Besides, most recording artists played live anyway. A live performance is disposable by it's very nature. A recorded statement can't afford to be.

 

[G-Jay]

my band are getting ready to record a 6 song ep/demo to be able to send to promoters, labels, music blogs, etc. we plan on tracking the whole ep live, with all of us playing together in a room. the room we're going to record in has been soundproofed and somewhat acoustically treated, relatively dead room but still a tad live sounding, which is a good thing. we're miking each amp/cab individually and for the two guitar amps, have built a pair of boxes lined with foam to slip over the front of the amp and place the mic in order to minimize bleeding, and we're only tracking the instruments live.

I've done a lot of live tracking, sometimes in less than ideal rooms and without baffles and boxes for amps.

First of all, make sure that those cab boxes don't ruin your guitar tone! You might consider pointing the amps away from the drums and using those boxes of yours to shield the drums from the amp side on.

Second, I've found the worst culprit for 'bad' spill to be bass. I'd try and go DI on the bass and re-amp it later if I were you.

Third, It's quite surprising how directional guitar amps are and if you point them away from the drums you don't actually get that much spill (obviously I'm thinking 50 watt combo amps here rather than cranked stacks). Put the drum overheads where they sound best. If you're using cardioids then consider using the null points of the mics to reduce the spill.

Fourth, A bit of guitar amp spill in the overheads can really work to gel the entire recording in a pleasing organic way. A bit of HPF or low shelving EQ can get rid of the worst of the mud from the spill. Place the guitar amps live where you imagine panning them and don't put them too far away from the kit as you may end up with timing problems.

I'd say go for it - live rhythm tracks can make a far more interesting and lively recording than each guy playing by himself constantly thinking 'don't mess this take up, everyone is watching ME'.

Try and reduce the spill at the tracking stage and then embrace the 'good spill' at the mixing stage.

 

[captions87]

I've done a lot of live tracking, sometimes in less than ideal rooms and without baffles and boxes for amps.

First of all, make sure that those cab boxes don't ruin your guitar tone! You might consider pointing the amps away from the drums and using those boxes of yours to shield the drums from the amp side on.

Second, I've found the worst culprit for 'bad' spill to be bass. I'd try and go DI on the bass and re-amp it later if I were you.

Third, It's quite surprising how directional guitar amps are and if you point them away from the drums you don't actually get that much spill (obviously I'm thinking 50 watt combo amps here rather than cranked stacks). Put the drum overheads where they sound best. If you're using cardioids then consider using the null points of the mics to reduce the spill.

Fourth, A bit of guitar amp spill in the overheads can really work to gel the entire recording in a pleasing organic way. A bit of HPF or low shelving EQ can get rid of the worst of the mud from the spill. Place the guitar amps live where you imagine panning them and don't put them too far away from the kit as you may end up with timing problems.

I'd say go for it - live rhythm tracks can make a far more interesting and lively recording than each guy playing by himself constantly thinking 'don't mess this take up, everyone is watching ME'.

Try and reduce the spill at the tracking stage and then embrace the 'good spill' at the mixing stage.

this was definitely the best piece of advice i'd gotten so far, i never though to flip around the boxes. i use a '69 ampeg reverbojet, which is 18 watts, albeit a very loud 18 watts, and our other guitarist uses a fender hot rod deluxe, which is 40 watts. also i just realized they're both open back combos, so using the boxes on the backs of them to dilute the sound coming out the back a bit, but it'll still be plenty audible for the drummer to hear.