I love gadgets!

  • Thread starter Thread starter drstawl
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drstawl

drstawl

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Damn- I'm excited about this idea.

I'm recording a garage band tomorrow (in a garage- where else?), and I finally convinced them that everybody but the drums and vocals should go direct into the board.

The vocalist, whom I've never met is supposed to have a pretty good voice but is somewhat on the "newbie" side. She's going to need some visual contact with the rest of the band; a headphone feed in a separate room will just confuse her. And I'll need to isolate her mic from the drummer. There is no vocal booth or window between the two rooms. This is a real garage.

SO:

I decided to have her sing in the living room of the house with a headphone mix while watching a video feed of the band playing in the garage on the big-screen TV in that room.

Any comments on this quickly-baked scheme?

Is 50 feet too long for a mic cable? I know it's fine for the coax cable that will send the video feed from the video camera.
 
Yo DrStrawl:

Sounds like real fun. Innovation is part of recording recreation. If I had a garage, I might try some of those things. But, with only a home studio, I have to invent "smaller" things to do.

One thing that I've found to work very well is to have a vocalist get CD music background; I pipe that into my recorder and then, she sings. No arrangements. No smokey rooms. [never in my place anyway] No problemas.

There is more and more CD background stuff available. Just a thought in case you dig the singer and want her to come back and do a few studio vocals with "less disturbance?"

Heh, heh, heh.
Have fun Draw....
Green Hornet

:D :D :cool:
 
If the cable is XLR (balanced) then 50 ft is prob...Ive also been toying around with closed circuit video in place of actual windows in a control hutch. Try it and se if it works as well as did in your mind.

Peace,
Dennis
 
Believe it or not, that will probably work just fine. I would recommend putting the TV higher (eye level) or slightly above when the singer is standing.

its been my experience that newbie singers have a tendency to look down, thus closing their throat a little, and reducing tone and volume.

its a good idea though!!!
 
Doc,doc,doc doccccccc! That' what I did last week when my younger bro' bought to talented female singers over! I had Voc#1
sing in the booth and Voc 2 sing in my daughters bedroom. I had a video cam hooked up to my TV in the basement with a 75' run
into an ART MP to board and it came out pretty cool!
Yeah man,it's gonna' work!!!
 
You can't always get what you want

Oh well. :(

Sad to say, although I was prepared to pull this off, and put some time and expense into getting that way when I got there the band was not (they didn't bring the headphones I asked them to bring) so they got a very minimalist recording instead of the detailed, well thought-out mix they could've gotten. But they didn't get fucked by my disappointment.
I was hired to record and record I will.

I've never cut it this close on any recording gig- ever.

The raw tracks were peaking at 0 dB and when imported into Sound Forge the peaks in question looked like a blow-up of a Bowie knife on a chopping block with the chopping block surface the 0dB line. 5 takes in a row. The same peaks. Even though I was backing off on each try!

 
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...but if you try sometime, you'll find...

You get what you need?

Sounded ok here. :)

Queue
 
Not too bad! Cymbals a little harsh and the kick sounds like it was recorded in a garage, but...

Wow (raises eyebrows) that is sweet for the situation that you described! Her voice came across really well!

Well done!
 
I think you did a fine job. Now tell me again why go into a studio to record cover songs? =)

Fangar
 
The target audience for this CD will be club owners for the purposes of booking this band to play locally.
 
Doc,

Good job considering the limitations. It sounds like you are going to deliver what they need.


Now you can say that you specialize in cleaning up "Garage Tracks" Kind of like that cleaner they advertise on TV.
 
what?

i'm confused, did you record the band in tracks, or at the same time?
 
by the way, i dont mean to insult your technique in any way, but the vocals seem dry, they could use a drop of reverb
 
>i'm confused, did you record the band in tracks, or at the same time?

Both the original plan and what they got was a live mix to two tracks on a CDR. All the weird science was aimed at isolating the drummer- mostly from the vocalist, but from the rest of the band as well. Yeah- I could've added a touch of verb to the vocals using the reverb built into the board, but not having an accurate way to judge how much I'd added (mixing in cans) I decided to leave it dry.

Sonic Misfit- that sounds like a good marketing angle for this service. No garage too grungy!
 
tell us if you get any noise from the tv's flyback generator. those are known to sqeal a bit.
 
drstawl said:
>i'm confused, did you record the band in tracks, or at the same time?

Both the original plan and what they got was a live mix to two tracks on a CDR.
Click to expand...

Ahh. I see. Thus, you can't sweeten the vox or bring up the kick, etc. Excellent job given your circumstances.
 
I just realized, since this is for club owners and it has a live flavor, you should blend in a canned live screaming audience. Have the band tell the owners that it is a live recording from the US festival, Woodstock, whaever.

:D :D :D
 
That's future recording work. capturing them live once they get some gigs.
 
>tell us if you get any noise from the tv's flyback generator. those are known to sqeal a bit.

The plan was to leave the video-captured audio out of the loop completely. If the video monitor only receives input from the camera and the sound is muted there should be silence in the virtual vocal booth.

Unfortunately there were some kids in "daycare" there at the house so that nixed the plans. Along with the Bozo players not bringing the studio headphones they bragged about having.

Then the asshole drummer cops an attitude, which really makes me wanna reconsider my pricing structure.

Oh well.
 
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