Help me prepare for my first home recording session

  • Thread starter Thread starter Smath
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Smath

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Ok. Here's my situation. We are going to start recording this weekend and I am trying to figure out how best to do this. First of all, here's what I have equipment-wise :

Behringer 1604A Mixer
Audix Fusion 4 Drum Mic Kit(3 F-10's, 1 F-12)
Octavia MK-319 Large-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone
2 Shure SM-57's
M-Audio Delta 44
M-Audio BX5 Monitors(will have soon)
n-Track Studio

Now, we want to record drums and bass at the same time, as our drummer and bass player seem to get into a much beeter groove when playing live together, rather than playing along to a pre-recorded track. Our plan is to have our lead singer/guitar player sing & play along with them, but only record the drums & bass. Obviously, we would have to have the guitar/voacls in the headphone mix, but not going into the Delta 44. Right now, I'm not even sure if this is possible, or how I would do it if it is.

Should I mix all of the drum mics onto inputs 1 & 2 and then mix the bass to inputs 3 & 4 so both are recorded in stereo? Should I record everything to seperate inputs and record mono? What should I do for mic placement? (1 kick, 1 snare, 1 between bass toms, 1 on floor tom, condenser overhead?)

Can someone help me get started on this or provide any input on what I should do?

Thanks!
 
Smath said:


Should I mix all of the drum mics onto inputs 1 & 2 and then mix the bass to inputs 3 & 4 so both are recorded in stereo? Should I record everything to seperate inputs and record mono? What should I do for mic placement? (1 kick, 1 snare, 1 between bass toms, 1 on floor tom, condenser overhead?)


Thanks!
Click to expand...

personally I would record all the drum mic's in mono on seperate tracks and pan them accordingly durning mixdown. you will have more control over your mix this way.
 
Well, Your equipment is limited for what you want to do but there are ways to cope. Personally, with what you have, I'd do the drums in three tracks; kick on one track, snare on a track and a single mono overhead. I'd use your kick mic from your drum pack, a SM-57 on the snare and the Octava overhead exactly two drum sticks end to end distance directly above the snare looking down at it. You could assign the kick and snare channels to the mains out, pan them hard left and right and send that to two inputs on your sound card. The overhead channel you assign to the ALT 3-4 outputs and pan it hard left and send that to the third input on your sound card. The fourth input you could track the bass in direct.
 
Yep, should work.

The method you plan to use of recording bass and drums together should work well. I've had good experience with that. Think about recording the vocalist at the same time too though, you can use it as a scratch track and go over it again later.....but sometimes the scratch vocals seem to turn out the best.....anyway its worth hanging on to them just for reference if nothing else.

Best,

Tucci
http://www.locuststreettaxi.com
 
Thanks and new questions

Thanks for all of the input so far. It has been really helpful. I think we will experiment with several different drum recording techniques and see what works best for us. Actually, I'm thinking about mixing the drums to 1 or 2 tracks, and recording bass, vocal and/or guitar on the others. If, in the ned, we don't get the sound we want, we can always re-record the drums and do it to 4 tracks. Is this a no-no?

Also, I bought the Octavia MK319 condenser mic to use as a drum overhead and for vocals. I bought it @ Guitar Center without testing it out, as I am a complete newbie at this and don't know what I'm looking for really. Should I reconsider and pick up a different mic? I'm trying to stay in the <$100 range if possible.

Thanks! :p
 
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