Live recording - Try it out

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jgourd

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I took my mobile 16 track system out for a ride with a blues band and came back with a few good tracks. Here is Hoochie Koochie Man.

I left this pretty dry because that is how the band sounds live. I split off the mics from the PA with isolated - ground lifted splitters and then added 5 more mics on the drums. The house engineer only mics the kick for some reason. I was going to do a direct box off the harp mic but the little over driven amp he used sounded great.:D
 
Pretty dry but everything has its own space and is heard. Nice. You almost feel like youre there. What mics are you using?
 
Good question. For just about everything except the drums they were house mics so I can't tell you. The drums were mic'ed with AT Pro35x which are those little clip on instrument mics.
 
I really dug the clarity. What are you recording to? What pres? What compressors? Details....


:)
 
I record straight from the mic preamps of 2 Alesis Studio 12Rs via insert cables into 2 LX-20 ADATs.

I then dump the ADAT data into my DAW (Logic now but Cubase on this track) with a MOTU 2408. In the DAW I gate the drums as best I can and compress the kick and bass. The guitar solo was a little sloppy (it was after midnight) so I buried it in the standard Steinberg reverb. For imaging I put every instrument into a group and then panned each group using the Waves Stereo Imager DX plugin.

The mixdown automation was written using the CMA MotorMix.

Finally, I had an AT stereo mic hanging over the audience which I brought up at the very end.
 
harp sounds great

>I was going to do a direct box off the harp mic but the little over driven amp he used sounded great

Agreed. I thought the vocals sounded a little muddy and the overall mix could have been a bit brighter, but that could be my crap computer speakers. Otherwise great live sound.
 
It could have been a hair brighter but then it would lose that freshly tracked feel. Good tools. Good work.
 
I added a touch of Room Tone to the Live tracks from the Blues gig.

I also threw a few more tracks up.







 
I only had a chance to check out the middle two. The drum sound is very reminiscent of Layne Staley's side project with Mike Mcready from pearl jam -Mad Season. The "big drums in medium room" vibe, which I am a big fan of for slow dirty rock. :)
Are these final mixes? I thought the bass was nice and full ... but the open hi hats are too far forward though, it sounds like the drummer wasnt used to the tension on the hi hat pedal and opened it too wide. ... I would compress the vocals more and wetten them a bit, also pull them out at 4.5k and 12k a few dB. Thats just my instinct.


Great overall sound on the third track. I would fatten up the guitar, double it and compress it more. Especially in the beg after the chaka chaka.

Great tracking.

What are you micing the drums with? What are you using for overheads?
 
The Hi Hat was mic'ed with an AT Pro35x clip on phantom powered condensor. The overheads if I remember correctly was a pair of Beyerdynamics who's model number I can't recall.

The Voodoo Chile was the first thing I had ever done with Logic so it still needs work. The Hi Hat was mixed through the Logic Gate plugin, I'll try to bring it down a little and see how it sounds.

A couple of questions for you. Why would you compress the vocals? The whole reason I am using a 24bit system is so that I can have real dynamics. I'll try it and see how it goes.

What exactly do you mean by fatten and doubling the guitar. I know doubling can be defined as mixing in a 15 - 35 mSec delay. I am assuming fatten is just another adjective for doubling.
 
Doubling means making a copy of the track and panning it in the other direction. So if one guitar is panned to the 3:00 then pan the copy to the 9:00 or 10:00 or wider if you like. This will do ALOT to make your mix sound bigger and have alot more presence. I almost always double guitars, vocals, strings, and whatever else I want to give me the density Im after.

As far as compressing the vocals, Im a fan of dynamics myself (especially on vocals and drums) but Im also a fan of fullness and brightness and not having vocals drop out a couple of seconds here or there. In a live performance the singer is moving around and is not always 6 -12 inches in front of the mic as he/she would be in the studio, and the vocals move in and out. Compressing them will smoothen that out somewhat and keep the levels more consistent. Im not saying compress it like a guitar, Im talking about some easy 2:1 ratios with a 6 ms attack, maybe .5 sec release. Maybe 3:1, maybe 4:1. See what sounds best.

You got some very well tracked material there. The mixing shouldnt be too involved.

Just out of curiosity, how long are you doing live recording?
 
I will try doubling it, but not on the other side. The stereo image in the mix is an attempt to preserve the stage setup. I'll move the doubled image slightly to the left, but not to the left of center and see how it sounds.
 
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