Mixing and Recording Live gig

N

norm55

New member
Im playing a out door party this weekend and I want to record it to cassette left/right from the board.Should everything be panned at center?or is there a good rule on panning for this situation and should I use a direct box for bass on top of micing it ?
 
I like to pan as though I am looking at the band from the audience. There are no set-in-stone rules though.

Same with the bass. I know I prefer a direct sound, but live you might want to just mic it. Or blend the two together if you can.
 
see if you can get a four-track MD (or better eight-track tascam/alesis) so you can throw in some decent stereo mikes for real-sound. Combine these with the mixing-board recording. It still isn't ideal, but whats coming out of the mixingboard alone, will be out of balance, unless you're in a big area.
 
deck'n'mics

set up early and try to do a bit of a sound check. Ilike to use 2mics plugged into a tape deck,Ithink the sound from the desk cant be trusted. But with a bit of canny mic placement and a good live mix you should get a good all round sound , a bit boxy maybee but when you are on a budget there ain't much options. I have found that desk tapes have to much vocals but that depends on the desk and the type of music and how good the singer is and if it is a good party then the over all inebreation of the band has to be taken into consideration as well.good luck.
 
Just a suggestion, but I don't believe it's possible to get a good mix to tape and front of house for your audience at the same time. Things that are naturally quiter (voice) will be also "through the board" at a higher gain level than for instance a marshall 4x12 cabinet. Its sound comes primarily from stage. If you have an extra aux send (or 2 for stereo), I would try using it for recording so that your live mix won't suffer. Of course this will require a good set of phones and a little playing around untill you get a good tape mix. Obviously if you have a multitrack machine there are better options, but if not this may help.
 
Hey,

I hate board mixes usually. They sound very flat. One way of improving on this is to have an "ambient" mic in the room to give it more of a live feel. When it comes down to the final mix between the board and the room it's just a matter of taste on how you balance the two.

Good Luck

Rusty K
 
I have some experience doing this kinda thing... Just tracking the output of the board will give you a bad mix. As explained by MONTE. Actually, it can only give you good results in huge situation where the sound that comes from the amps and drums on stage is nothing compared to the speaker outs.

The next way to go is making a seperate mix using an aux (or 2 for stereo). With decent cans or with a soundcheck (track-listen-adjust-track-listen-adjust...) before the show you can get pretty ok results. Done this a few times.

And the next step up is using a multitracker, but unless you have a huge amount of tracks (one track/mic, only levels to keep an eye on), you will still need the cans to make decent submixes. I did this on a show with 7 bands a while ago. Needs ALOT of preparation, is 2 times as much work as just mixing live (keep an eye on the levels, make 4 submixes, rewiring the inputs from aux and direct outs...) Don't try this if you haven't got a live mixer that knows the band and knows how to get a good mix in a short time. And believe me, unless he's VERY motivated, you won't get the guy to do it more than once every half year... Adding a room mic here is a very good idea, if you have the tracks...

And there's another alternative, that I haven't tried. Just track a stereo roommix, preferebly from the position where you mix.
 
Hey everyone thanks for the advise I did not end up trying to record But as I see It would have been a waist of time.So what is the best way to record live Do you need a board with seperate outs for each channel to go into a muiti track and use the subs to run the PA?
 
look here (<-it's a link!!!:D)

It's this amazing story about this decomposing mutant that gets back together with all his parts and calls in all his alien friends with huge super-natural powers to record 25 bands in 3 days!!! :eek:
 
I see it all makes sence now:D Hey Roel do you have any mp3 on what you recorded that day I would like to check it out.From what I read on what you where saying did you use the insert on your board for your direct outs?
 
Didn't really get as far as mixing any of it. One band wanted a quick mix, and based on that they would decided if they would pay me (very little!!) for mixing it. That quick mix was good enough for them, so they just asked more cd's of that. Assholes.

There were 3 more bands that were interested, one of them did a demo afterwards, no need to mix the live-thing, the other planned to do a demo, but didn't get to it, and the last band ws interrupted by police... :D We was being to loud...

I did use the inserts as direct outs. Except on the channels where I needed them. There I routed them seperately to an aux-channel. I also made submixes using the aux. 8 channels of simultanious recording on my VS is not enough.

Doing this is easy, you make special cables, connect the ring and tip of the insert jack together so you feed the ouput straight back to the input, but ALSO to the recorder...
 
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