I Need Help With Recording For My Band!

[NHFeelings1]

Hey, i am in a little garage punkish type band and we want to record a demo tape or cd, whichever is easier. We have some equipment, but no knowledge, the equipment has been laying around the house for a few months from my brothers old band, Lynk, and well, we were thinking we could use the equipment to record. Here is all the info i can really give you on what we have and stuff:
*Yamaha 300 12-Channel Mixing Board
*RMS 4-Channel Mixing Board
*sony tape recorder (2 deck, one for recording, one for playback
We want to know if we can use any of this to record a demo, if anyone can help, please reply asap. Also if it helps, 2 of our amps have line outs, incase you needed to know, so we could use our amps to record. We need to record 1 mic, 2 guitars, 1 bass, and 1 drumset. We have tried recording before on little tiny tape recorder by plugging everything in the 12-channel and then plugging in the tape recorder to the mixing board, but it just comes out as a bunch of garbage, we can hear a guitar at one point, then drums, then bass, then guitar, then vocals are all distorted and everything is just jumbled together and sounds horrible, if you can help me solve this problem, i would appreciate it! THANKS!

 

[wes480]

ok, this may take a few posts...but, i think we can get some decent demo results for you.

Here are some basic ideas, and things to keep in mind...and then you can be more specific as to the gear you have (like the mixer..etc...mics)

- If you have a soundcard on your computer, with just a line in (like, anything from an sblive on up - use it)

-You can record overdubs as many times as you want to...as long as you have a semi decent computer. And your overall quality can be 16bit/44.1khz at least...which is CD Quality

-A problem you may have had with the yamaha mixer was clipping the preamps? Or the line inputs...does it have preamps?

Obviously with 1 mic...you arn't going to get an *amazing* sound. Esp out of the drums...but, with enough trial and error..and effects afterwards..you can at least have a nice demo for free.

I'd go ahead and set up your drums, get the mic the best you can....run the bass and guitar amps and the mic into the mixer. Make sure it isn't clipping and run it into your soundcard..into multitrack software (something like Cooledit) - you can get some decent trial programs.

Record the band live like that...

then go back and add any extra guitar parts it needs...and then add your vocals...and then add your hamony..or whatever else.

You're basically working with however many tracks you want..

For recording the vocal stuff...you may want to use the mic preamp built into your soundcard...if your mixer doesn't have a better one.

After you mess around...see if you want to stick with it....200-300 dollars could get you a BIG step up in quality on the computer recording side of things.

 

[AndyCarpenter]

First, the line out on your guitar amp is insignifcant cause you are gonna want to mic your amp, not run a cable straight from the back of it to the mixer. Second, the problem with running everything through your mixer straight onto your tape deck is you lose control of each individual track once the tracks are laid down; and also that you will have to record live (is that what you want to do?) and then you probably have a lot of isolation issues to deal with. The best thing to do would be to invest some money and a little time into computer software. Get Cakewalk Home Studio or something like that and take the time to learn it; that way you can lay down the tracks one at a time.

 

[esactun]

Mic it, it likes it!

You might want to get more mics. I agree with AndyCarpenter that you'll wanna mic the amp rather than use the line out. Without some amp modeling or somesuch, guitars taken direct usually sound really lousy. If you haven't done much recording or much listening to low-budget home recordings, you might not realize at first just how bad it sounds (or was that just me, back then?? ).

Say, a mic for each guitar, maybe two for drum overheads, one for vocals... a bare minimum of five if you're recording live. If you're doing the tracks separately (such as on a PC/DAW or a 4-track) you can get away with fewer-- maybe even two. [In that case, esp if cash is an issue, SM57s would be my choice.] That being said, my pal Mark got some (relatively) nice-sounding recordings of our old band in his basement with one cheap-ass dynamic into a cheap-ass tape deck-- but he had spent about two hours roaming around the room with the mic while we played to find the sweet spot. There's no guarantee that your space will have such a spot, though.

If you can record on your PC, I'd go with that. There's LOTS of free/cheap software to get you on your way if you're trying to limit your spending (but music requires, nay DEMANDS spending!!! ) Even cheap hard-drive recording is generally better than cassette.

wes480 is spot-on when he says $200-$300 can get ya a BIG quality upgrade.