Going Straight to Tape, All in One Room???

[Nate74]

My current project is an Irish folk group that consists of acoustic guitar, upright bass (me), drums (small 3-piece kit) and a lead player who switches between mandolin, banjo and accordion. All of us sing as well, sometimes doing some pretty cool 3 part harmony stuff.

Our first album was pretty successful, though all of us now feel like it was missing some of the energy we've come to rely on at our live shows. So we’ve decided to try something new (or actually old) on our next album.

I have a Tascam 38 8-track reel to reel and when the idea of going ‘straight to tape’ came up, we all agreed recording to real tape, would be sort of cool. We may end up over-dubbing vocals, but I’m confident we’re all seasoned enough to get good instrumental takes with no overdubbing.

With only 8-tracks, here’s what I’m thinking in terms of track assignments

1. Kick – Beta 52
2. Snare – SM57 or i5
3. Mono Overhead – not sure, but a LDS of some sort
4. Upright (either direct from my pickup through a premap, or mic’ed with a LDC)
5. Acoustic guitar – SM81
6. Lead instrument – (Mandolin & Banjo – SM81, Accordion Beta57)
7. Backing Vocals – all three bussed down to one channel, will probably go with dynamic mics
8. Lead Vocals – LDC if we overdub, dynamic if we go live

I’m sure we can get a good signal path for each of the channels to where we'll be happy with how the instruments sound. And without a need to overdub, complete isolation isn't necessary. But some would be nice for EQ'ing and effects appliction.

To keep the energy level and vibe good, we’ll all be in the same room. So to keep bleed down as much as possible, my plan is for us to go with no amplification. We tried turning off the PA the other night as a test run and disovered that the drums, even when played lightly, were loud enough to interfear with our ability to hear our own instruments and vocals, much less each others'. So we'll need to all have headphones. My mixer has 6 aux sends so each of us can have our own monitor mix which should help the performance

But in terms of keeping the instrument somewhat isolated, what’s the best approach?
I’m guessing if we stand in a circle all facing the center, that may be our best bet. All the mics would be pointing away from the center point and then only pointing directly at the desired source for that channel.

If I put the drum overhead in front of the kit angled back slightly, I'm hoping that will help keep the acoustic instruments off that track... maybe?

Any thoughts or experiences you can share would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[mixsit]

All sounds quite logical and looks like you're dialed in to the variables. I do similar stuff here at home (ie, bands where we would like to have it both ways and my acoustic band - doing it all together (as much as possible), and keeping or maximiziing isolation and replacement options open.

The first and biggest things to weigh in- How big is the room ( that's a huge one, #1 likely as far as what options are avaiable, and #2 how about gobo's and partions?

Getting into this BTW, has steered me into recognizing the joys of the fig-of 8 mics! There you have some very strong isolation tools ! Not only the nulls' but (in ribbons, not so with dual-diaphram) some high freq steering in the orientation of the mic (vertical / horizontal).
The fig-8 back side can also be aimed down (or 'away' from other sources), or gobo'ed.

Back to the room'.. in my case I'd bet, for this kind of work.. I could grab an easy 20% quaility bump' just doubling the room size. Damn

 

[Nate74]

All sounds quite logical and looks like you're dialed in to the variables. I do similar stuff here at home (ie, bands where we would like to have it both ways and my acoustic band - doing it all together (as much as possible), and keeping or maximiziing isolation and replacement options open.

The first and biggest things to weigh in- How big is the room ( that's a huge one, #1 likely as far as what options are avaiable, and #2 how about gobo's and partions?

Getting into this BTW, has steered me into recognizing the joys of the fig-of 8 mics! There you have some very strong isolation tools ! Not only the nulls' but (in ribbons, not so with dual-diaphram) some high freq steering in the orientation of the mic (vertical / horizontal).
The fig-8 back side can also be aimed down (or 'away' from other sources), or gobo'ed.

Back to the room'.. in my case I'd bet, for this kind of work.. I could grab an easy 20% quaility bump' just doubling the room size. Damn

Good point on the room. My last space turned out to be incredible for tracking drums and I know every recording I did there was made better by that space.

I'm actually in an interesting situation now in terms of location. My wife and I put our house on the market and it sold in about 3 days. So now we're in a rental condo until we find a new place. As a result I'm pushing to do the recording at our guitarist's house. He has a room that's about 20'x15' with 8' ceilings. Since I had to dismantel my studio, I have all the bass traps and gobos in a storage facility that I could dig out for this effort. Question though, if we're close mic'ing everything but that drum overhead, how much of the room will be "in" the overall sound? Especially since we're a completely acoustic band?

 

[witzendoz]

Recording live in the one room is my favourite way to work, I have done releases like this for my bands and many others, one album I recorded of acoustic blues for an act was voted best blues album of the year by a blues magazine.

Yes, the room is very important in a couple of ways. A good sounding room does not add any artefacts or bad reverbs/echoes/frequencies etc to the recording. Even when close micing these artefacts are present. A good sounding room also helps with the separation, say the room is very live the sound bounces around and is picked up by the other mics, also too live or too dead makes it hard for the band to get a good playing sound and the performance suffers.

Alan.