Live recording

[Berlingj]

I play once a week with some other folks, just informally, and we want to record our sessions, but we also want them to sound good, so, no just sticking a mic in the middle of the room and pressing record on our Fostex FD-4 (which, admittedly, I don't know how to use because of my own ignorance and the FD-4's almost incomprehensible manual; they assume a lot of user knowledge, I think..).

These are jam sessions, so what we absolutely DO NOT want to do is lay down one track at a time (four guys standing around watching one guy play...)

Now, I'm new to recording, but I've done some research that tells me I'm doing it wrong (or trying) by going after recording in this one-take, live way, but it is nonetheless what I want to do.

We have no PA, per se, everyone just plays through their amps, with the vocals going through a separate amp, but we do have an 8 channel Behringer mixer that we are trying to sub-mix the drums and bass through, so they go into the FD-4 as a single track, then the other amps get a mic in front of the speaker and we press record - 4 tracks at once.

Sounds like crap!

Any suggestions?

 

[dragonworks]

If you have line outs on your amps, you might try those, 1 each into the board, have some seperate control over them, you can always come back and rerecord (replace) instruments in one at a time after the live recording. get the drums mixed down to one track, save one for the vocal, you may be able to get a line out from that vocal amp also, this would
give you individual control over bass guitar and drums on
mixdown. Try recording with little eq and effects and add
on mixdown if you have them. Now do exactly the opposite of
anything I said, I'm usually talking out my ass.

 

[trag-o-caster]

I've had excellent results recording my band live with a four track cassette (TASCAM 414). Shortly after getting it, and not quite knowing what I was doing, I recorded our 4 piece band by taking a feed off of our small PA onto one track. This got the vocals and the guitar onto that track. Also, I duct taped a mic up in a light fixture hanging from the ceiling to pick up everything else, which would be bass, keyboards, and drums. It actually didn't come out too bad at all! Now I realize it's not exactly ready for a CD release, but it was a good, and easy way to capture a night on tape for us to review later.

The second occasion that I recorded a live band with the 414, I close miked the guitar amp, bass amp, and put one mic over the drum kit. I was having some kind of trouble with the tape out RCA jack on the PA, so I simply miked a PA cabinet to get the vocals. That came out considerably better than the previous recording. Sure there was some bleed over here and there, but not as bad as what you'd think. It was good enough to make a decent demo out of.

You can also just set up two mics on two seperate tracks for stereo seperation in either an XY pattern, or one mic on either side of the band. Good luck to you! Trag.

 

[Berlingj]

thanks for the replies

Thanks to both Dragonworks and Trag for your replies. I've since learned that I'm probably experiencing two problems, both on the digital front - the first being just plain old digital distortion (which was horrendous when we tried capturing a single track from our 8 channel mixer, even though ti sounded great in the headphones before recording...), the second coming from trying to record four tracks at once, while the FD-4 only record 2 tracks simultaneously.

I did try just hanging several mics in the ceiling, and that does seem, curiously, to work better than mics directly in front of the amps. (unfortunately, our amps do not have lines out, or at least none that send a line level signal out while still leaving the amp "on").

I've also become convinced that part of the problem is the mics themselves - there's not a Shure in the bunch. Mostly we're using cheap (because they were cheap) Pro Audio mics for everything but the drums, which are NADY drum mics, and sound better than anything else in the mix (Uh, duh!).

So, were considering some SM57s for the amps, an SM58 for the vocals, and a Shure KM44 just to capture the room. Sounds like maybe this last part goes in a different forum, but what do you think?

 

[James HE]

Nady?

You need some decent mics! For live I would keep it simple. Live to two tracks. Don't worry about micing everything. Just make sure everything sounds good in the room. Put two mics in the room (condensors preferably) and a mic in the kick drum. For the vocals, plug the vocal mic(s) into the mixer, mult the line out running one into the recorder and one into the amp. Get a direct box for the bass, send one signal to the recorder and one to the amp. Pan the vocals and kick center, and the room mics left and right. Record to two tracks, you have your document.

I recently recorded a live show, the set up left to right was- Guitar amp, amp for flute (crazy flute player with effects on the signal- really awsome tone, the amps a Mesa!) Drums, Bass cab, then (me) with my guitar amp (another Mesa!) I used a NT1 (placed about 3 feet above the front of the stage) thru an ART MP for the right side, a D4 in the kick (that was the drummers mic, I prefer a B-52 or ATM25) and an AT small diphragm condensor (forget what the model # is) on the left side placed about 5 feet above the front of the stage. The stereo field on this recording is something else let me tell you! I really liked the sound I got out of the NT-1 thru the art MP on this (which is unusual, I often don't like that mic) the AT was a litte shrill, I used the pre's on the Tascam (uggh) but that was my only option. All in all it sounded really good. I'd usually DI the bass, but I'm glad I didn't in this case, I wish I had close miced the flute amp however. The kick mic was sent to the house PA. I put a 57 directly on one of the speakers (couldn't get a line out)to get the kick and the vocals (the kick is so so) I recorded it on a TASCAM 424.
I'm going to put up an MP3 of this recording cause it's so unusual, I learned a lot from it! The group is an all improv group. We play free music and do Improv comedy too! hah! We'll be doing another show in April for sure. I'll be sure to record that one too. I'll be going into a studio tomorrow night with this group. It's just a rehesal really, but thers a 64 channel pro tools set up there! Yippie! (it's great to have a guy in the band who's dad owns a pro studio ) ok... enough rambling....

-jhe