Getting a live vibe for a studio album - how to best use the mics we have

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olfunk

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Hello there

My band are recording our album soon, at the church where we practise. It’s a fairly big church, and it has one hell of a great natural reverb. You tap the hi-hat and it bounces round you like fuck!
The sound we’re wanting to go for is a very human sound. Think Led Zeppelin II or Californication or BloodSugarSexMagik. The drum sound is especially essential to this. We’ll be hoping to record everything except vocals and acoustic guitar live, to capture that vibe better. So while we’re laying down the instrumental tracks, we’ll want to be close to each other.
We play a wide variety of music, and we’re influenced by all sortsa shit! Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against The Machine, The Beach Boys, ACDC, Led Zeppelin, Ash, Parliament/Funkadelic, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Guns n Roses, The Beatles, The Meters, John Frusciante…..put all that in a blender and it might sound like us!

Here are the mics we have:

4x Sennheiser e845
4x Shure SM58
1x Shure C606 (a bit shit but oh well)
1x AKG C1000S
1x Expensive studio vocal mic, probably LCD (not mine though so I can’t check the brand or model right now)

to mic up:

Drum Kit (tuned perfect, sounds great acoustically in church)
Bass Amp (possibly, if it’ll sound better than just D.I)
Guitar Amp (Marshall 100watt combo)
Guitar Amp (Vox 100watt combo)

Then later on we’ll be recording vocals and probably some acoustic guitar.
I reckon room mics will have a good impact on our sound, maybe like one at the other end of the church.
But if anyone could give some advice, maybe even a whole plan of how best to use the mics we’ve got at our disposal, it would be much appreciated.
 
olfunk said:
The sound we’re wanting to go for is a very human sound. Think Led Zeppelin II or Californication

Those are very different sounding albums. For early Zep you'd want the C1000 set up as a distant drum mic, with a sprinkling of the dynamics as spot mics. For Cali, you'd want lots of compressors ;) OK seriously, you'd need a very tight drum sound that might to tough to get with giant church reverb.
 
i see what you're getting at actually. what i meant was think of like the vibe of those albums.

if all the amps are near the kit, we'd probably be best tight-miking now i think about it, won't we? thing is, we really don't want it to just sound like anything anyone could do! its gotta sound great. but my great i dont mean radio-friendly. i mean great as in true.
 
You may want to try to isolate the amps.

I like to experiment with different stuff, so what I tell you is probably gonna be miles away from what others will tell you.

If you can isolate the amps, I'd put the AKG at the center in front of the drums and the vocal mic centered but further back, but lower. Use either the 58's or Senns for the guitar cabs. Use whatever else you have left for bringing out stuff that may be getting lost in the mix.

If you can't isolate the amps, put them all in the room, maybe behind the drums, EQ the heads at the source so that you can hear the bass and drums clearly, or however you want them mixed. You may need to put an eq through the effects loop to do that well though. Walk around and listen for a good spot in the room to put the best mic you have. You may have to make some minor adjustments to the sources afterwards (placing the mic, that is). Basically you need to mix your rhythm tracks right there at the spot of the mic using the EQ and power amp settings at the source. Use the other mics you have left to bring out what is being buried or sounds too distant.

The most difficult problem I see is your lack of a kick mic. You could try a 58, but I wouldn't rely on it. Think of it more as an auxillery mic in case the kick is getting lost when your drummer is playing a little too soft.

I'd try leaving the mic where it is and recording the vocals by finding a good spot to put the singer. But more than likely you singer will sound better close to the mic. Same goes for the acoustic guitar. The AKG might sound better on the acoustic guitar though.

Depending on the acoustics of the room this should give you anywhere from a Zepplin II type sound to a higher fidelity jam tape.:)

But that is just what I would try as a first go with the mics you have.
 
thanks for all the advice dude. only problem with isolating the amps is we'd all need headphones, because if we had monitor speakers, the drum mics would pick that up and we don't have a headphone mixer.
 
My piece of advice is to observe the 3:1 rule. which is to make sure that each instrument's mic is 3x closer to that instrument than any other instrument (or amp). regardless you're going to get a lot of spill, especially on condenser mics. I would accept that any condenser mic will pick up most of the room so use that to your advantage. also I would get the bass drum mic right up in the drum. you also have to make sure the drums aren't making any extraneous noise, like snare rattle from the bass amp, because that stuff will end up on every mic and you won't be able to kill it on mixdown. you have to get the drums and amps squeaky clean to record this live. you might also consider tracking only the drums in the church and playing your guitars into headphones for the drummer with no amps. also when recording live you could benefit from getting in there to do a test run maybe a week before you actually record. that way you can listen back to the recording, do a rough mix, target problems and fix them when you actually record...
 
FALKEN said:
also when recording live you could benefit from getting in there to do a test run maybe a week before you actually record. that way you can listen back to the recording, do a rough mix, target problems and fix them when you actually record...

Good advice. Get in the space and try different things. Since you obviously dig the sound of the church, try starting with your room mics pretending this is a live stereo recording. If the room mics sound good, you'll just need a taste of the close mics for clarity.

Embrace the bleed!

Jay
 
well yeah people are always trying to get bleed out of it and stuff, but in the end, the natural sound your ears hear is all what a record producer would call bleed if you think about it! so bleed bleed bleed.
 
we've got a headpone mixer now so we could put the amps in a different room. we've got a 12 xlr-xlr snake as well which im sure will help. i'll post some tracks on the internet when we've done.
 
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