Reamping a whole performance

[nddhc]

Recording is still very much a hobby for me. I try to learn what I can and have fun doing it. I dont have a band or anything, it is just me doing everything myself and trying to learn as much as I can in the process.

Lately ive learned the joys of reamping like when im recording drums and dont have enough mics to actually have a room mic. Ill record the drums using the close mics and overheads, then afterwards ill send that signal into a speaker in another room and use the same mics to capture the room ambience. Without having enough mics in the first place, I think this is a good alternative to artificial reverb assuming you have a good room to begin with.

I was thinking of an extreme reamping scenario - unfortunately I dont have the right speakers, gear, or enough mics to do it properly but it might work if you had everything.

Say you record all your instrument tracks yourself as a "one man band" then you setup various speakers in a room to mimic the positions that real musicians would be standing. You could even record your guitars direct at first, thensend that signal to real amps setup in the room. You would mic the amps like normal and treat it like a main recording - not just an extra track for ambience. I love the whole 60s Phil Spector/Brian Wilson Wall of Sound for some songs and maybe this could be a way for me to recreate it (almost )

Has anyone here ever tried something as crazy as this? I think the hardest part would be the drums. Sending a prerecorded drum track through a speaker might not get the feel of a real drummer.. but in that case you could just send the direct guitar and bass tracks to real amps in the room, then actually play the drums live yourself.

 

[cusebassman]

Reamping guitars and basses is a standard practice - drums though?

I suppose if you want to think about getting the "natural" drum sound from the room, you'd really need to record it while playing - the way the drumset projects its sound into a room is far different, of course, than the way a single directional speaker would send the recording of a drumset.

By sending drums (or anything, for that matter) to a speaker in a good room si essentially creating a natural reverb chamber, but you know that. It is definitely worth a try to get some interesting sounds, and it would be cool to hear what it would sound like if you were to reamp the guitars and basses, and have the drumset replayed into the room, and record the whole mess with a single mic pointing at it as though you were recording a band live using one or a stereo pair of mics.

 

[Izzy Pop]

nddhc-

You have some interesting thoughts there. Not sure that is going to give you what you want to accomplish. The only times you should really use more that one mic is to either capture two distinctly different sounds from a single source (i.e. micing the top and bottom of the snare), or if you are trying to recreate a stereo image. Its gonna be hard to get any kind of stereo image of a drum kit from a single mic or speaker, you could use two speakers but if you send them the same signal you probably end up with phase issues. I'm not sure if what you are describing will get you the "wall of sound" that you want, but by all means give it a try. Some of the greatest recordings of all time started out as complete experiments.

Check out themixbus.com/category/mic-techniques for a better understanding of using multiple mics and phase issues.

Ian