Live performance bootleg

[cmharwood89]

Hi all - this novel is part mic'ing, part mixing, and part soundcheck discipline.

I play casually with a group of buddies/colleagues (mostly bar-friendly covers) and while we only play a few shows a year, I've been putting significant time into improving our sound. We played an outdoor gig a couple of weeks ago, and I decided to try for a good bootleg recording, both to share with friends/family and so we could do a post-mortem on our own performance.

Our current stage setup:

• Drums: Single kick mic (behringer C112) and two overheads (cheap MXL SDCs) in a recorderman-ish setup
• Guitars: SM57s on each cab (nice Vox on the lead gtr, and a cheap boss Katana on the rhythm gtr)
• Bass: Line out from bass amp
• Keys: Hammond organ and synth on a submixer for the keyboardist to tweak, with line-out to the main mixer
• Trombone: Shure PGA98H clip-on with RPM626 in-line preamp
• Vocals: Peavey PVi2 (male vox) and Sennheiser E835 (female vox)
• Stage/crowd mic: Cheap Omni calibration mic with as much compression as I could pile on

All running through a Behringer XR18, so we had a half-dozen IEM mixes running in addition to the FOH mix.

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I am both the lead vocalist/rhythm guitar and our sound engineer, so I'm finding myself somewhat over-tasked when on stage. I have been trying a lot of tricks to make setup more consistent, like virtual sound check from a recorded practice, etc, but I know that our last gig (recordings below) had a few glaring flaws.

• Like the amateur I am, I aimed the horn mic right down the center of the trombone's bell, and it's harsh. I don't see clipping, but I swear I hear it (maybe the in-line pre was clipping). Maybe it's just those brassy harmonics emphasized - I don't know.
• Bass guitarist changed his volume a little after soundcheck, so I ended up clipping the peaks on his channel. I ended up writing a little Reaper JS script that did a nice job of restoring the clipped peaks, but lesson learned about setting gain more conservatively...
• Same for the organ/keys. Especially when he throws the hammond into overdrive, it's just a much hotter signal, and I ended up with some clipping that I was able to tame in post, but not perfectly.
• On a performance note, my own mic discipline needs some work. I was trying to keep an eye on my mixer tablet while performing, so I was getting pulled in a lot of directions.

So, I submit our humble bootlegs for your judgement. I don't think it's bad, but I'm always wondering what I can do to make it sound better -- both live and in the recordings. I'm curious what tips/tricks others have for performers/engineers who need to manage the sound from on-stage. How do you set levels when your band is shy pre-show and drunk/brazen after intermission? Where do you mic a trombone for presence without the harsh harmonics? How do folks manage blending in crowd mics - both in IEM mixes and in show recordings?

Here are a couple of sample tracks for your critique:

 

[rob aylestone]

They sound fine, but they are NOT bootlegs. You recorded yourselves, that’s just a recording! Smuggling a zoom into a gig, and standing still for an hour and not making any noise is a bootleg. So is craftily, sending a feed from a bands mixer to a hidden recorder, so is maybe making a copy of the USB drive their engineer left in the desk while they were off coiling cables. Got to be an element of naughtiness involved to be a bootleg. Permission of any kind is just a recording.

I quite like the drums, by the way, and the bass is tight. Guitar is a bit lightweight maybe? Perhaps intentional?

 

[PorterhouseMusic]

Sounds pretty good. Nice and clear, I can hear everything.

 

[cmharwood89]

They sound fine, but they are NOT bootlegs. You recorded yourselves, that’s just a recording! Smuggling a zoom into a gig, and standing still for an hour and not making any noise is a bootleg. So is craftily, sending a feed from a bands mixer to a hidden recorder, so is maybe making a copy of the USB drive their engineer left in the desk while they were off coiling cables. Got to be an element of naughtiness involved to be a bootleg. Permission of any kind is just a recording.

I stand corrected! I grew up on Pearl Jam concert bootlegs, which were so standardized that I guess the idea of "bootlegging" a performance recording got diluted. I'll start referring to them as concert recordings, but my questions remain intact.

I quite like the drums, by the way, and the bass is tight. Guitar is a bit lightweight maybe? Perhaps intentional?

Thanks! I was surprised by how nicely the drums turned out. I do need to put together some windscreens though, since my overheads were picking up quite a bit of wind noise. Even the $60 Behringer kick mic was huge upgrade from the SM57 that I previously used on kick.

Guitar is a little light on some parts, but I think a bit heavier on others. I did intentionally move rhythm guitar to the back of the mix on all but a few songs, but I tried to get our lead guitar to the front of the mix. Very little EQ on either one.