Live Recording

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crosswind

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A band has asked me to do a Live Recording of thier set at an upcoming show...


Whats the best way to capture the live sound of the band??

I was going to Line into the sound guys board and put it on hardisk then mix the tracks with Digital Performer... would that work? and if thats the case.. how do i go about doing it? what gear would i need?


I just wanna try and capture thier full and big sound onto the disc live..
 
Do they want a real well-recorded show that they'd put on a CD, or do they just want something they can listen to for themselves? A FOH mix is generally not what you want for a recorded mix. Also you gotta be careful to stay out of the sound guy's way. The Dead Milkmen recorded a live album in which they put a pair of condensors up in the club they played at and recorded to DAT or something similar. It doesn't sound too bad.
 
The FOH mix doesn't really capture the room/atmosphere.
The only live recording I did, I recorded the FOH mix to a minidisk, and set up my own two codensers plugged ito my little mixer, then synced both recordings with N-track, mixed, mastered, etc.
You can listen to a bit from that show at my Nowhere page.

http://www.nowhereradio.com/Eejit/singles

Break Your Heart is from that show.

Oren
 
One of the specialties of my studio is live recording. This is the way I commonly work.

1. if budget is tight (9 out of 10 times) I take as much preamps as needed that are build especially for these live-recording gigs, and put them straight into the input of the recorder. All the preamps have a parallel link for connecting to the stageblock. So signal from mic is inserted directly into the preamp input, which is recorded straight on tape. A copy of the mic signal is paralled out to the stageblock. This way I allways record before any equipment of the PA-guys can interfere. The preamps can be quite cheap if constucted well by a person who knows what he's doing. I've got a local company doing only custom audio building and they build 32 preamps like discribed above. It set me back about 1500 dollars. These aren't as fancy as Focusrite RED, but they can meet the average recording console specs.
This way mixing can be done afterwards in a studio using the multitrack tapes.

2. if budget is no problem, we take out a chevy van which was build for only one purpose.....high level pro recording on location. It's fitted with all the major equipment like 64 track digital, and all isolated preamps etc. It';s basicly the same principle as in example one, only with pro equipment and monitoring and direct mixing facilities. Remember this is kinda major budget, but as I mentioned the idea is basicly the same as in example one.

3. if there's no budget....get a four track recorder and record the stereomix from the FOH together with a pair of as good as possible ambience mics.
 
Downside...

You just split the mic signals then?

Do you add mics of your own or usally just use the stage mics provided?

Surely you would need to set the gains on all the preamps too, during soundcheck or peformance.

No Eq?? just pure pre-amp action?

What recorder do you use?

I spoke to a guy who ran a snake splitter(multi-core/split) to a dress room and mixed down with headphones to a dat all on the fly.. honestly i like the system you mentioned MUCH better and for obvious reasons.

Funny thing is this guy i supposed to be a pro, maybee he is.

Everyone does things different i guess.
 
Yes, signals are splitted, but in a special way.

XLR input ---->direct link------->XLR output (to FOH/stageblock)
|
|---->preamp with jack output to recorder input.

This means clean and unprocessed signals into tape. You do have to set gainlevels for recorder input. I use the Tascam DA88 and DA38 digital *track recorders.

The whole setup is rather small and setup and opertating within 20 minutes after arrival. I always check the PA-company first for usage of mics, and I always take with me some high level mics for audience and extra signals. Things on my very important list:

6x high quality condensator
1x high quality kickmic
4x active DI
6x Phantom supply
beer

You don't have monitoring capabilities for what you're recording, but you DO have the PA setup. I learned the trade in the PA business, so I can hear from the signal processed by PA wether or not the signal send to tape is ok for mixing. If it's sounds like real garbage on the PA, it's most likely not good for studiomixing either.

This is a low budget method, but can achieve high quality results. I've mixing dozens of live recordings this way, all for commercial productions.
 
Outstanding, especially about the beer. I suspect after about the first 6 hours of mixing, it would be handy.
 
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