recording all at once VS. track at once.............who wins???

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carlpony351

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ok heres the dilemma,we are toying with the idea of is it better to record track at once or all at once (guitar,drums,vocal,ecc).
nopw up to now me and my band have been recording our scratch tracks one track at a time and we got great results,but there is always the one protestor in the band saying we should record all at once,well 2/3 of the band prefers track at once,while 1/3 prefers all at once for a more organic feel,well it's 2 against one and we think that if we wan't a so called "organic" feel we'll do something like a live album instead of a studio album.

now if we record all at once we think that we can never get the results we are getting with the track at once wich IMO sounds 100 times better.


so here's my question to all of you:
witch is better?????

what are the pro's and cons and what do all the pro's here advise and what do you guys use when recording??

thanks for your time

p.s. noticve that we are very limited in terms of particining the room off
 
carlpony351 said:
up to now me and my band have been recording our scratch tracks one track at a time and we got great results
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Alright.

2/3 of the band prefers track at once,while 1/3 prefers all at once for a more organic feel.
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Alright, so you've voted on it, and you've come to a majority opinion. It's good to be democratic.

now if we record all at once we think that we can never get the results we are getting with the track at once wich IMO sounds 100 times better.
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Okay, sounds like we've reached our conclusion. The democratic majority wants to do it a track at a time, you've done it before, and it sounds better that way. Great.

so here's my question to all of you:
witch is better?????
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Hmmm. Let's see . . . You've voted on it, and the majority wants to do it a track at a time. You all think it sounds better that way.

I'm stumped. :D :D

Flip a coin.
 
i've had a simlilar problem to that with my band, however nobodyhad their heart set on anything...but here's how i see it:

ALL AT ONCE/LIVE RECORDING:
- you need mics, and lots of them.
- you need preamps/inputs, and lots of them.
- you need a big mixer, or several small ones, and then a way to put it all together at the same time.
+ if you're a band that sounds better live, then awesome, it'll sound overall better musically.
+ many people like the sound you get when you do live recordings, more feeling in it all.
-its really hard to mix this stuff right (at least in my experiance)...especially if YOU are in the band, AND doing the recording!

SEPERATE:
+ all you need is one or 2 great mics, and 1 or 2 great preamps, and 1 or 2 great inputs! (maybe 4-8 actually, for say - the drum set)
+ you can record over and over individually, till it's perfect!
+ you can capture the perfect sound for each instrument, with no bleed
+ countless options for mixing!
- no, it's not played live all together...but for all i care, if you want the "feeling in it all" - run everyone silently through a mixer, and have the people play through headphones to the drummer (first). Then, you can have the drums recorded, and do the same with the guitarists, bassists, etc. and finally, by the time you get to hte vocals, everything will be tracked, and the vocalist will be listening to it all on headphones anyway! haha.

yeah so basically, seperate is what i'd do, and what i DO do. (dodo...ha)... i get a lot better results. However, many bands that come in to record with me just want a cheap, 5 hour demo. I record them live. yes, i can get decent LIVE results, but it is in no way sounding like it would all seperate and with hours of mixing too!

so put that in your "we have to record it live" band member's pipe and smoke it!
 
shackrock said:
i've had a simlilar problem to that with my band, however nobodyhad their heart set on anything...but here's how i see it:

ALL AT ONCE/LIVE RECORDING:
- you need mics, and lots of them.
- you need preamps/inputs, and lots of them.
- you need a big mixer, or several small ones, and then a way to put it all together at the same time.
+ if you're a band that sounds better live, then awesome, it'll sound overall better musically.
+ many people like the sound you get when you do live recordings, more feeling in it all.
-its really hard to mix this stuff right (at least in my experiance)...especially if YOU are in the band, AND doing the recording!

SEPERATE:
+ all you need is one or 2 great mics, and 1 or 2 great preamps, and 1 or 2 great inputs! (maybe 4-8 actually, for say - the drum set)
+ you can record over and over individually, till it's perfect!
+ you can capture the perfect sound for each instrument, with no bleed
+ countless options for mixing!
- no, it's not played live all together...but for all i care, if you want the "feeling in it all" - run everyone silently through a mixer, and have the people play through headphones to the drummer (first). Then, you can have the drums recorded, and do the same with the guitarists, bassists, etc. and finally, by the time you get to hte vocals, everything will be tracked, and the vocalist will be listening to it all on headphones anyway! haha.

yeah so basically, seperate is what i'd do, and what i DO do. (dodo...ha)... i get a lot better results. However, many bands that come in to record with me just want a cheap, 5 hour demo. I record them live. yes, i can get decent LIVE results, but it is in no way sounding like it would all seperate and with hours of mixing too!

so put that in your "we have to record it live" band member's pipe and smoke it!
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I agree that track by track is better for home recording. If your band is top notch and you got the gear go for it. Or at least try it and see what everybody thinks. The choice should be easy.
 
I am not sure what the size of your band is, but I will assume that it is a guitar, bass, vox, and drummer. Perhaps you could record all of the instruments at once in the following fashion and still get the "one-at-a-time" sound. If you have a room for the vox to be sang in that doesn't give you spill into the drums, then that would be cool.

You could run the bass/guitars direct, and then re-amp them later so that they don't bleed into the drums and vice-versa. To hear non-direct guitar sound, you could send an output from the DI box to the headphone monitors while still recording the DI. Do a search on re-amping.

If you get the drums recorded with a click, then it can be fairly easy to go back and re-record somebody's part, or if you have a DAW you could comp the best takes from each performance.
 
ok there is 3 of us in the band.

the reason why we want to do track at once is beause "yes" you just flat out get better results.

"noticve that we are very limited in terms of particining the room off" thats what i said in my first post darwin so that answers that,we don't have more than one room,it's one big room
 
I say, go for feel, groove, performance, so: as many as possible.

But that's easier said than done, you'll need many mics etc.

I record many jazz bands, big bands, choirs and the only way to do that is all at once.

If you have the gear I would say: try it and see what's best.

You will have to deal with bleed, nasty off axis response from some mics, but the performance can be so much better.
 
If you have the time, try recording one tune all at once, and then do the same tune a track at a time.

You can do a side by side comparison and see which method gives you the sound that you want.
 
carlpony351,
I have fought that same fight every time I have recorded the band I'm in. We are on our third album and there are seven of us. Each time I let everyone try one or two tunes live just to give them a chance and we cratered. So back to 2 or so tracks at a time. However now that we are on our third album and running out of time we decided to try again, and lo and behold! it worked great! Maybe it is because we have played together for 7 years now and all spent considerable time in the studio, but it really worked. It saves about 2 weeks a song for me to not have to schedule 1 to 2 people randomly to track on a song.

The main thing you save is time when tracking the band together. If you have to retake a million times to cover someone who blows a take everyone will get really tired fast.

If it works it does sound more organic. Give it a try, you will find out really fast whether it is going to work.
 
Carlpony, then if you don't record the vox while tracking drums, if that is possible for you, you don't need more than one room with what I am suggesting.
 
wire the singer into the bathroom, and put that plastic sound shield in front of the drummer. that way the guitar and bass dont interfere as much with the drum signals, and the singer is in another area.
 
hehe, and here is where we seperate the boys from the man ;)

There are soo damn many ppl who think they are able to do 'homerecording' and make a record with their band.
Well, like shackrock mentioned, you need gear. period.

You need more than a recorder and a mic.

I've got just one comment: Get your butts into a *real* (or at least close to real) studio. With an ENGINEER who knows what to do.

Homerecording is okay but don't expect to do great recordings with one track at the time using your one great mic.

- Why not combine one-track and all-track?? ever heard of over-dubbing?? (if you were a true engineer you would, lol)

A band is a live breathing organic thing. It really lives!
Don't get into the mistake that you can seperate all ellements that make it go. If you would disassemble your car would it still drive?? think not.

So, get your mics out and place them arround the drumkit and plug in the bass with an DI.
Record these 2 instruments while having the guitarist play his usual part, just for timing and feel for the drummer and bass player!! (you might also invite the vocalist to do the same)

After that, you can record all you want with OVERDUBBING. Meaning, having seperate part recorded (e.g. guitar, vox, fx etc)

This way you will use advantages of both recording methods!

good luck and sorry for being a little aggresive, gheh.
 
There are soo damn many ppl who think they are able to do 'homerecording' and make a record with their band.
Well, like shackrock mentioned, you need gear. period.

You need more than a recorder and a mic.
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thats completly retarded and really pissed me off.

we have over 15,000 dollars in recording gear.

heres a brief list of some of the things we have:

2,4 ghz p4 with cubase sx and wavelab

800 dollars worth of shure drum mics


7 condensor mics varying from about 70 to 500 a pop (shure,nady,cobalt)

a 37 channel behringer mixer

a 10 in- 10 out m-audio delta 1010 recording card for the computer


and some pretty good headphones and headphone amps and some of the best spectraflux cables money can buy.

so yeah i think we CAN get good results and no we don't think we need only one mic and we are well aware of how to record but i ask for ADVICE not orders
 
I'm sorry if I offended you, carlponysomething, but clearly you got some perseption troubles at hand. It was a reaction on the '.. and record all seperate tracks with with one good mic".

got it? But obviously YOU should not have a problem, 'coz YOU are the big money spender and YOU got the right tools so YOU can make great records and be the man, right?

Look we're all here to learn of eachother. I just happen to contribute my few cents and occasionally spit out some stupid things which I know I get flamed at, but I say it with reason.
Maybe you get pissed, well that's how I feel about all these damn suckaz who tell me they bought this great harddisc recorder devicy thingy and will make a great record.... those ppl who just have no clue about recording, mixing, mastering and the whole darn process. It's like I would buy 4 wheels and tell my car-dealer to fuck off 'coz I got the wheels!!

again, I'm not here to tell everyone what to do, just to give an opinion and hopefully somebody can use that for his/her learning process. Who knows what's been hidding in that great shadow of recording bussiness, maybe I could shed a light.

now who's the retarted one?
(besides me for stupid spelling, hell English is not my native tongue ;) )
 
Easy down pony boy....people are just trying to help...and you asked for help...no one came to you .....so stay focused...

Recording is an art and an adventure...enjoy it...

Always....ALWAYS..you will get a 'better' feel in the music with everyone playing all at once...since you have such a good set-up, it should be no problem at all to record the drums and bass at once while the guitar plays direct for feel....I'm sure ya'll got some kind of pod or guitar effects box with an amp simulator....really it does help the feel

its also more fun to record with yer compadres like yer showin off to the babes.... and it sounds like you can get a fine sound and separation with all that gear....

so mic them drums up till they make ya cry...go direct with the bass and guitar....someone earlier mentioned reamping later..this works great and if you happen to catch that track thats just jumping off the tape you can always retain its vibe and get any freekin sound you want at a later date.....reamping DI's are relatively cheap...go here...www.reamp.com for more info. your behringer has all the outs and stuff necessary to use this cool little device........peace
 
Here's a thought...

I've often found the same thing: you can't replicate the "energy" that a band generates when everyone is jamming simultaneously. Yet, you can't (in my humble opinion) get the same refinement trying to nail everyone's part at once.

Do both, just pull the scope down; lay down one member at a time, while the rest are jamming (possibly through headphones). Maybe hit two members at once, if you've still enough control.

Irrespective, try and glean the goodies from each method and make some real brownies.
 
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