Demo on a budget

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imadrumr

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I've been reading the posts on this board and I have to say that I'm impressed with the expert knowlege shared by this community! Perhaps someone could pass along a few pearls to a guy who's overall a decent drummer, but who doesn't know shinola about recording.

Brief bio: four piece band (guitar, bass, drums, vocalist) playing classic rock/pop, blues, R&B

Equipment: four vocal mics (mostly Shure SM-58's), a Yamaha four-track, and a Peavey 8-channel powered mixer

Goal: record a demo for as little money as possible

The band has agreed that recording a live-to-tape demo is going to capture our best sound. I'm looking for some advise on how to pull that off. We're prepared to shell out some money to rent or buy some second-hand mic's. If we simply want to place four mic's strategically around the room (we rehearse in a finished basement, i.e. drywalled, carpeted floor), what mic's would you suggest - dynamic mic's, condensor mics, omnidirectional???

Or would it be better to place two or three mics around the room and run a line from our power mixer into the four-track? The only thing running through our mixer is the vocals. Obviously, the vocal mic's would pick up a lot of the instruments. But we may have a little more control in the final mix if we have a track that is "mostly" vocals.

Any suggestions for microphone placement? I've read about X-Y mic'ing, or shoud I just put one mic by the bass amp, one by the guitar amp, and one above the drums?

Needless to say, we're not striving to get something that's radio ready, just something that sounds as good as possible to give to a club owner.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Thanks!
 
If you really want to do it cheap, live and sound half decent I would do the following:

Find a local studio that will let you rent a block of time for cheap. If you just need to record 2-4 songs and can pull it off in one take you can probably find a studio that will give you half a day or late at night for a few hundred bucks. The end quality and time investment will be your best bang for the buck.

You could probably spend 1 hour per song and pay about $100/hour. You might even do it faster for less. Talk to the sound guy at a local club and he might do it in an afternoon for even cheaper.
 
Thanks for the reply. We'll investigate the studio option.

But I'd still like to know what people's recommendations are for microphone selection and placement for the situation I described in my original post.

Suppose we want to record a rehearsal for self-critique. Given that we have a four-track, should I close-mic the bass amp, guitar amp, run a line from the power mixer for vocals and hang a mic over the drums? Or should I set up some ambient mic's? What mic's are recommended for each of these techniques? Or will both these techniques sound like sh*%! If I just want to put two mic's in the room for a basic stereo recording, will SM-58's cut it?

Please give this poor newbie at least a little direction!

Thanks!
 
I second Texs advice but I do believe you can do better than 100.00 an hour.
Here in my neck there is a studio for 25.00 an hour that can put out a kick ass
demo for ya, shop around. Ask musicians from your neck that are on this board
what they know about your local engineers. Number 1, do your homework and dont waste time in the studio. There should be free set up time, hour, half hour, have all your parts down. You can record live with headphones going direct into the board and this will prevent the vocals from being tainted. You can always go back and redo tracks later with amps etc if so desired. We usually record this way and redo the vocal track so there are no drums mixed in with it. For the money you will wind up spending on mics you can probably get it done in a studio and have a better quality.
 
I do appreciate the advice, but my band has talked about the studio route and there are some reasons that we want to try to do it ourselves. I simply thought you kind folks could give me some pointers on how I could improve my chances of getting a *decent* recording (with emphasis on decent).

I'm still open to suggestions... but please don't tell me to go to a studio. I think that argument has been clearly made.

Thanks.
 
Search the site, there are a million tips on how to record live, mic technique,
placement, choice etc, its all here in the threads, go to the homepage there is lots of good advice and tips there etc. I suggest the mic forum and all the recording forums.
 
Sorry to discourage your do it yourself mood. If you really want a good demo soon go to the pros. You could probably get somebody to cut you a suitable four song demo as cheap as $100.

If you have about 3-5 grand for more equipment and are a quick study you could crank out something half decent in a year or so.

If you just want to mess around then just start messing around. All the ways you asked about are possible solutions and each has its own set of recording principles. There's a lot of info here on all of them.

If your not gonna release the recordings then just start doing it and pretty soon you'll be telling us what works.
 
In regards to your equipment you can get some great recordings with 58's or 57's on vocals and guitar amps.

Forget about good sounding drums unless you get some good mics and a good mixer just to start with. The drums are what cost the most to record well.

Do the bass direct.

Ditch the powered mixer as soon as possible. They are usually very noisy.

If the fourtrack is casette than get anything else to record on. Even live to DAT or MD is 10x better.
 
Here's what we do. I use a 424mkIII, a Alesis mixer, and I have 3 57s and 1 other Shure mic for singing. The 424 has a direct feature that takes each input signal to it's own track. By trying diff mic positions we have found a pretty good way to live record. We do acoustic stuff. As long as the mics are pointing away from each other mic we have been able to get some good mixes with very little bleed over. Most of the time we are recording a guitar, a fiddle, and a mandolin, and a singer. I then go back and either bounce for more tracks or live record bass to the original 4 tracks.
Works for us, but then again, we are not making a demo to sell ourshelves. We just be having fun.
dtb
 
Tex and the Dragon are so right...

If you want to make a demo tape on the budget, go for the studio rent. If you want an addictive but FUN hobby, go for the homerec. Don't expect it to be as good as the pro-end studio, though...

This must be strange for you, this is a huge forum about homerecording and all you hear is "don't do it yourself"... for a reason though. You said your goal was "to record a demo for as little money as possible". If you want a demo that people from the music industry actually will listen to, go for the studio rent.

On the other hand, if you choose the homereccing option it will make you so much more conscious about the music you're making, it will give you insight in your good and bad points, thus making you better musicians. I mean, over 12,000 homereccers can't be wrong!

Just read the homerecording.com pages and you'll get loads of information about it. Other great links are http://www.saecollege.de
http://www.studiobuddy.com

I'm sure the pros on this site can scoop up some more, but this will give you a good start. If you choose the DIY-way, have fun and good luck!

Dirk Demon
 
Damn, now I forgot to answer your question!
I'm not in a real band, I do everything myself. I have a TASCAM 424 mkII, a couple of mics, you know, the basic stuff.

I also record a friend's band, but I record the vocals apart from the rest of the band. It's easier (since I have to bounce some tracks anyway) and you'll avoid the bleeding sounds from the rest of the instruments.

The best result for the guitar is (IMHO) one close mic and one ambient mic. The bass goes direct to the TASCAM. Drums will sound a little cheesy anyway, they're the hardest to record. Best option is to rent some decent drum mics.
Good luck again!

Dirk Demon
 
Blah blah, fuck doing it in a studio. Studios are for rich people. Are you rich? Ok then.
Buy or rent a cheap mixer and maybe some extra mics, or just borrow them. Use 3 or 4 mics on the drums, one in the kick, one on snare, one on the other side to get toms and cymbals. Run those through the mixer. Stick a mic on the guitar amp, and run the bass in direct or from the line out on the bass amp into the recorder. Mess around until you get a sound that doesn't completely blow. Then record. Finally, go back and record the vocals later.
You're welcome.
 
I play in a cheesy cover band and just recorded our practice last Sunday with 4 hifi VCRs.Listen to these two mixes for ideas about the type of sound you can produce for cheap or free.
shake
believer
If you are interested in this idea email me tomh888@hotmail.com for details of equipment and techniques.
Tom
 
Hey King of the Pirates,
dtb here. I'm in South Boston, Va. just a little ways down the road. What's up? there's another newbie in Richmond also. Chris Morris. Haven't talked to him in a while. Glad to see some dudes close to home.
dtb
Dan
 
Thanks all for your suggestions. Perhaps I should have been a little clearer when I mentioned a demo tape. We're a part-time weekend band. We play out once or twice a month in some local clubs. Maybe when I mentioned a demo tape, some people got the idea that we were twenty-year-olds looking for a record deal.

Maybe I'll update this thread in a few weeks to relate my recording experience - good or bad.

What a great forum, thanks!
 
Pirate King- Rich people spend days and days in the studio. Any jerk who works at mcdonalds can afford a few hours of studio time for a live demo.

Tom- Those sound a lot better thn I would have expected. What are you guys doing there with the VCR's? I would imagine you could get the same quality just recording live to a casette deck but that wasnt bad for a live recording.
 
Tex
Maybe I'm just stingy or overy cautious with my money, but it seems like a jerk at McDonalds would be making around $6 (?) an hour, and the one time I've recorded in a "studio" (which was actually a guy's garage with a digital 8-track) we were paying $20 an hour, which means he or she would be losing money more than three times faster than they were earning it, which is not even including groceries, rent, bills, etc. which just seems fucking impossible to justify spending. I guess it's just that maybe my personality type is poorly suited for recording in a studio (in addition to being stingy, I'm also impatient, not very trusting of others' abilities, and not very good at taking others' advice) but I can't imagine ever recording in a professional studio unless someone else was footing the bill. I also can't believe that so many people that subscribe to a "home recording" bulletin board would automatically recommend going to a studio to record a demo (which as drumr mentioned, is solely for the purpose of getting shows). Although I don't know drumr's specific situation, since he's posting in the newbie section I'm assuming he has little experience with recording, and so it seems even sillier for him to spend a massive amount of money to record when he hasn't even tried to do it himself and see if he's satisfied with the (much more economical) results. I've been involved in two or three recording sessions done in the manner I described above, and even with my aforementioned personality faults, the results were certainly clear enough to use as a demo.
 
Thanks Pirateking. It seems like you know exactly where I'm coming from. With the number of jobs my band plays, and the little amount of money we make from those jobs, even a cheap studio costs too much. Plus, I think I'll enjoy the process of recording my band. Even if everyone else thinks the final product sucks, I may be happy with it. Not to mention proud that I was able to get some sound on tape. Isn't that what it's all about??

Your idea is very close to what I'm going to attempt. One question- if I run the bass direct into the four-track, will we all (bassist, guitarist, and drummer) have to be listening to the mix thru headphones? Or can we direct wire the bass into the 4-track and still be able to play (and hear) it live. It's a Peavey amp, but I don't know the particulars.

Is my plan to close mic the bass amp a bad idea? I don't even want to waste time trying it if there's no chance of getting an acceptable sound.

Thanks.
 
I think usually if you line out from the bass amp, you can still hear what's coming out of the bass amp, so you won't have to monitor with headphones. If you do direct into the four-track, you might want to line out from the four track into some kind of amp and use that to monitor (at low volume) while you're playing. You have to keep it kind of quiet or else the drum mics will pick it up.
You can certainly try micing the bass amp, though I haven't had much success with it. It tends to have much less low end and sound a lot less powerful. It would probably sound much better if you had a really good mic to use. The advantage of lining out the bass amp is that you can have the bass volume coming out of the amp much lower than when you usually play (just loud enough so you can hear it to play along with), therefore reducing the amount of bass that the drum mics pick up.
 
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