Live rock recording advice/tips?

[Steve Henningsgard]

Does anyone here record concerts on a somewhat regular basis? I'm talking small-large clubs, although those with arena/festival experience are more than welcome to chime in.

I've recorded a few shows in the past few years, but only now am debating doing so on a somewhat regular basis. Rather than asking any specific questions (for now), I'm just trying to collect as much knowledge as I can. Things like general tips, things you might not think of (like how hot your equipment could get!), etc.

Things I learned recently:

- Assemble your rack equipment with as much space as possible between & above components (for heat reasons)
- Bring a clean towel or two, both to keep yourself dry, and to clean up any drink spillage as soon as physically possible.
- Never bring your primary equipment (mics, hard drive, etc.)!
- Many venues have essentially hard-wired their comps/gates pre-board, so even a board Direct Out is no guarantee of a clean signal.
- Call up the venue & sound guy as far in advance as possible.
- Be as courteous and helpful as you can the night of the show. Sometimes they appreciate an extra set of hands for band set up/tear down. Sometimes they just want you to stay as far away from them as possible. Act accordingly.
- Bring some good dynamics with you. Likely, the venue uses whatever they can until they physically don't function any longer. Voice your concerns to the sound guy a few days before, and offer to use your mics & potentially cables if there's any question about the quality of the mics they'd regularly use.


Anyone else?

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Just found this great thread at GS: Five components to a successful location recording & much more (The Beginners Guide) - Gearslutz.com

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

A thread here that had some good advice as well: https://homerecording.com/bbs/gener...ques/any-tips-recording-live-bar-club-156233/

 

[mcmetal]

I've never recorded anyone at a live venue but i've been recorded live.When my past band did a live cd the engineer had miced everything seperately from the sound guy.2 sets of mics on everything.Our engineer had an old breadtruck he used to haul his PA stuff around so he ran all his cables to a mixer and monitor set up in the breadtruck.He also set up a few mics to capture the audience and then he mixed it all down back at his studio.It turned out great.

The PA guy was an easy going guy and they worked together setting up the mics.

I was recorded another time live at another venue off the sound man's board and it didn't turn out bad.Levels were decent but our singer had him put some delay on his voice which got really annoying.

 

[Richard King]

Live recording is something that I very much enjoy doing and, so far, my "customers" have been very pleased with the results. I only wish I could do more of it. I started doing this in the mid '70's (believe it or not in Minneapolis) for a couple of years and had to leave it behind when my equipment supplier hired me to work for them. I am just starting to try to get back into it again. I use a combination of my own mics (I own 9 variety mics), mic splitters for the band's vocal mics, and direct boxes for bass and some keyboards, etc. I have a 100' 24x4 snake that I use for running the mics to wherever I want to be. Hardware wise I use Presonus Firestudio (2 of them) and Presonus Digimax FS (I'd rather have 2 of these). If you'd like to take a listen go to my site and click on page 2. I have a few location songs there, including one from Minneapolis recorded in the mid '70's that you might even know. Richard King Media | Media Conversions and Location Recording Services If you get into the location business, enjoy as much as I do.

 

[Mo Facta]

Why don't you tell us your current method and how you plan on integrating into any given system? Also:

- Are you mixing as well as recording?
- If not, is your system using a splitter box? Or...
- Are you patching into an analog or digital console via direct outs?

Not all digital consoles have direct outs, such as the Yamaha desks, which have omnis and require an extra YGDAI module to supply separate direct outs in either the digital or analog domains. Many of the omnis may be used for aux returns.

- Will your system be able to adapt to both an analog and digital console situation?

These are considerations that are pretty crucial to know in order to give you any worthwhile tips that might help you in your specific situation.

Cheers

 

[panchouu]

For the Drums, the minimum good sounding setup is with 4 mics: Kick, Snare Top & 2 Overheads. Part from that, if you have more mics, then mic the other drums, HH, Snare bottom, etc. The Overheads, should be placed correctly (remember you don't have tom/HH mics) so everything is heard. Choose wisely the mics.

Record the bass using a DI. No Amps. if you want it amped, then amp the clean direct signal afterwards before mixdown.

A single mic for guitar amps is enough. Again, if you wish you can DI the guitar and amp it afterwards or pass it through an amp modeler for more tweaking (I haven't done that yet, It just occurred to me in this moment, but actually is a great idea; just REMEMBER TO AMP, direct guitar sounds awful to me).

If you have the capacity, recording the audience gives the recording a completely different feel. I have never recorded it due to limitations, but i have just helped in the mixing of a (pro) live album, and having the audience recorded is great.

With just 6 Mics, 2 DIs, a Mackie SR 24.4 and an Alesis ADAT I recorded the whole 3 piece rock band, then edited and mixed it with Pro Tools.

I can tell you, that a limited setup, used correctly, can give you a good sounding record. Don't expect it to sound as good a studio (Shure SM-58 vs Neumann U87, you tell me which is best for vocal tracks), but it will sound good. ALWAYS try to make it sound better. Move a Mic, change your levels, adjust the EQ, remove compression... find the sweet spot for everything.

ALSO! Acoustic instruments (except drums and maybe brass and piano) are very difficult to make sound great live, their volume is significantly lower than drums and guitar Amps, so the bleed will be incredibly high. For the aforementioned live album, the string section either had to be re-recodred or extracted from the original CD. Same happens for acoustic guitars (and pickups, even on the best guitars with the best electronics, connected to the best DIs, don't sound natural as they would with a Mic.

That's mostly what i've done/worked with. Anyone with tips for acoustic instruments, would be great.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Here's what I did. I had built up a 16 channel PA and always had some sort of recording setup, usually stereo. Then I added an HD24, at first in its own rack, which was a pain to hook up each time. Then I racked the board, 16 channels of compressors, effects, main eq etc. into one rack. All mic inputs had compressors on their inserts. At the compressor end of each insert send I put a splitter feeding the signal to an input of the HD24. I could easily record live multi-track without having to patch a single cable. Just pop a drive in, make a new project and song, arm tracks and hit record.

Then I got a 16-channel mic splitter. Combined with the 16-channel snake I already had, I could now take the one rack, the splitter and the snake and tap into the mics and DIs on stage and have control over my own preamp settings while being totally transparent to the live mixer. The 100' snake let me put the recording rack just about anywhere rather than next to stage or crowding the live sound person.

Since I mixed gigs with the same rack I wanted to be able to record my mix as well as the individual tracks, so I tapped off the main mix inserts to two tracks of the recorder. I included a stereo preamp for the room mic in the rack since I still had tracks available, because a live recording without crowd noise kind of sucks.

 

[Bobbsy]

I'm very much with bouldersoundguy here. One of the first things I'd buy is a multichannel mic splitter and multicore. Then split any existing mics and augment the mix with your own microphones as required.

I personally use digital mixer and feed direct outs via ADAT to a computer but something like an HD24 is a good plan unless you know your computer recording is rock solid up to the right number of tracks. If I was buying from scratch, I'd go the disk recorder route--but I'm using gear I had for other purposes.

Finally, since you're likely recording in a noisy environment, remember a good set of headphones with a high level of isolation for monitoring.

Bob

 

[stevieb]

Boulder, I am wondering why you "waste" 8 of the HD24's channels by using a 16-channel snake. I know a 16-ch. snake is gonna be less than a 24, and you can find 16's used much more often, so I am guessing that is why. Truth be told, we don't have a 24-ch. snake, either.

We have used a HD24 for live concert recording on several occasions, and although we never had 24 channels going into the board, we did run a mic or two for the room, which got us to 22 channels once (as I recall.)

Our live recording has, so far, always been in addition to providing live sound for the event, so we don't have problems tangling with the live-sound crew- we are the live-sound crew. Still, I like some of your suggestions about mutual respect.

Richard, I enjoyed viewing your website. You've done some good work.

 

[moresound]

Live recording is something that I very much enjoy doing and, so far, my "customers" have been very pleased with the results. I only wish I could do more of it. I started doing this in the mid '70's (believe it or not in Minneapolis) for a couple of years and had to leave it behind when my equipment supplier hired me to work for them. I am just starting to try to get back into it again. I use a combination of my own mics (I own 9 variety mics), mic splitters for the band's vocal mics, and direct boxes for bass and some keyboards, etc. I have a 100' 24x4 snake that I use for running the mics to wherever I want to be. Hardware wise I use Presonus Firestudio (2 of them) and Presonus Digimax FS (I'd rather have 2 of these). If you'd like to take a listen go to my site and click on page 2. I have a few location songs there, including one from Minneapolis recorded in the mid '70's that you might even know. Richard King Media | Media Conversions and Location Recording Services If you get into the location business, enjoy as much as I do.

Hey Richard do you remember running into a guy in Minneapolis that does live sound and recording by the name of David Kent?

 

[moresound]

Does anyone here record concerts on a somewhat regular basis? I'm talking small-large clubs, although those with arena/festival experience are more than welcome to chime in.

I've recorded a few shows in the past few years, but only now am debating doing so on a somewhat regular basis. Rather than asking any specific questions (for now), I'm just trying to collect as much knowledge as I can. Things like general tips, things you might not think of (like how hot your equipment could get!), etc.

Things I learned recently:

- Assemble your rack equipment with as much space as possible between & above components (for heat reasons)
- Bring a clean towel or two, both to keep yourself dry, and to clean up any drink spillage as soon as physically possible.
- Never bring your primary equipment (mics, hard drive, etc.)!
- Many venues have essentially hard-wired their comps/gates pre-board, so even a board Direct Out is no guarantee of a clean signal.
- Call up the venue & sound guy as far in advance as possible.
- Be as courteous and helpful as you can the night of the show. Sometimes they appreciate an extra set of hands for band set up/tear down. Sometimes they just want you to stay as far away from them as possible. Act accordingly.
- Bring some good dynamics with you. Likely, the venue uses whatever they can until they physically don't function any longer. Voice your concerns to the sound guy a few days before, and offer to use your mics & potentially cables if there's any question about the quality of the mics they'd regularly use.


Anyone else?

Yes most importantly ..... Don't forget to pack a lunch.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Boulder, I am wondering why you "waste" 8 of the HD24's channels by using a 16-channel snake. I know a 16-ch. snake is gonna be less than a 24, and you can find 16's used much more often, so I am guessing that is why. Truth be told, we don't have a 24-ch. snake, either.

I originally set it up to record from my 16 channel board. If you re-read my post you'll see that I also record my live mix and a stereo room mic, four inputs which don't go through the snake.

 

[Richard King]

Richard, I enjoyed viewing your website. You've done some good work.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that. I love doing that kind of work and just wish I had more of it going on here.

 

[Richard King]

Hey Richard do you remember running into a guy in Minneapolis that does live sound and recording by the name of David Kent?

Nope. I don't recall him. I moved from there to Florida in 1996, so I may have missed him completely. The sound man that I always felt was the best there was Bonnie Raitt's brother Steve. He was a tremendous sound guy and always with the best bands in town. He died a few years ago of brain cancer, a real shame. What bands did David work with? I may remember him from the bands.

Edit: Look what I found: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkent4synergy He did good and worked in some very nice Minnesota studios.

 

[stevieb]

y' know, I've often wondered if we shouldn't have a live-sound forum here?

 

[NYMorningstar]

Ummm, we do...
https://homerecording.com/bbs/special-forums/live-events/

 

[NYMorningstar]

Things like general tips, things you might not think of (like how hot your equipment could get!), etc...

You want to meet with the band ahead of time and clarify what is expected of them. If there is a FOH engineer include him. Planning and preparation can't be overstated. Hold local seminars.

Have them create a list of equipment they will be needing and a stage plot so you'll know better what to expect.

Portable sound treatments? Who'd think of that but check out your venue in advance because it may very well need it. Could make the difference between a good sound and a great sound.

Use a separate mixer and amps for monitors and have the band come early for sound check.

Run your amps hot because you never know when you'll need the power and you'll get used to your board settings sooner.

Isolate as much as possible and be conscious of early reflections.(hats, music stands etc.) - cage the drummer, lol. Record dry signals when possible.

Sell your live mixes at the venue on memory sticks!

If there's a camera crew suggest they feed off of you.

Party after the gig, lol.

 

[Steve Henningsgard]

Thanks for the replies, guys! A couple of questions for "those in the know":

- What are some of your favorite live vocal mics? Ideally, they'd sound good, take a beating, and keep out the maximum amount of bleed, but I'd imagine that's pretty difficult to do.

- Computer-based, or something more like an HD24/hard drive-based system? Pros/Cons?

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Thanks for the replies, guys! A couple of questions for "those in the know":

- What are some of your favorite live vocal mics? Ideally, they'd sound good, take a beating, and keep out the maximum amount of bleed, but I'd imagine that's pretty difficult to do.

- Computer-based, or something more like an HD24/hard drive-based system? Pros/Cons?

I use SM58s because they are a known entity. Anyone with stage experience will know how to use it, and I know exactly how to position and eq it. But there are other options, including some from Heil, Sennheiser, Neumann, Audix etc. For singing drummers the Audix OM7 is often recommended for its tight pickup pattern, as is the EV PL80. I have also had positive experiences with Sennheiser e835, and the other models higher up that line get some good reviews.

HD24 all the way. It starts up quick, doesn't crash, can be racked and stacked with other gear so doesn't take up table space. It's way less distracting when you are also doing the live mix.