recording drums and guitars same time

[mrdjc]

Hi im super new to recording and i want to record my band a little demo that doesnt need to sound perfect at all but i want it to be decent enough to where we can give it out and kinda promote ourselfs, well i already have an AKG perception 100 mic something cheap but that does the job, and ive been using it in the middle of the garage (only place to record) to record the drums and the guitars at the same time and its coming out pretty good but im recording it onto my protools on my computer and i'd like to record the guitars and drums at the same time but to seperate tracks so i can mess with the volumes and EQ them seperate.
The AKG 100 picks up the drums pretty nice but keeps picking up the guitars a little in the background and when i try to use it to mic just the guitar amps it picks up the drums, soooo im wondering whether to pick up an sm57 mic for the guitars and use the AKG 100 for the drums or pick digital reference 4-pc drum mics and use the AKG to record the guitars, please any advice, keep in mind im on a pretty weak budget and these are my conditions.
sorry its so long but i thought detail would be best

 

[reddavid]

How about this for a thought - don't use guitar amps and drums at all. Rather, record the guitars cleanly using the clean-out of the amp plugged into the computer, using VST-based amp modellers to produce the desired guitar tones, and use a MIDI drumkit with EZ Drummer or something.

It's not a perfect solution, but it could be used to produce some fairly reasonable demos. The guitars will (arguably - the good man Antichef's got a thread around these parts about such a thing, check it out) sound better with modelled amps, the drums will sound technically better but with a much less realistic sound. You can download demos of both EZ Drummer and Guitar rig, both of which are worth checking out, especially as recording guitars cleanly and doing the amp in software is one of the most super-awesome things of all time. Seriously.

 

[Minion]

I figure the Cheapest acceptable way if you need to have real drums is to pick up a cheap 8ch mixer, maybe a cheap Drum mic kit or a few cheap dynamic mics (Maybe a few SM57 copies like the GLS ES-57) and get a cheap 4ch Audio interface (If you don"t allready have one) and use the Mics to close mic the drums and the Mixer to do your drum mix into a stereo signal into the Sound card and them Mic up the amp and record and add any other tracks later(Bass vocals)

This is basicly what I did when I first started and I got some Fairly acceptable results considering I did it with about $300 worth of equipment...

Cheers

 

[Weasel9992]

If you record drums and anything else in the same room you're going to have bleed. There's no way around it. You can mitigate it somewhat by using the right mics, placing them appropriately or using gobos, but you won't eliminate it entirely.

If you can multitrack it (drums all on separate tracks, guitars on separate tracks) that'll make it easier...otherwise, if you're stuck with just a few tracks to work with, you should be okay if you're careful with placement, phase and your core sounds. Or you can just record a scratch guitar line, then record drums to that, then overdub the guitar line. There are lots of ways to do it.

Frank

 

[amra]

+1 to what weasel said.
To add on a bit:
Do a separate scratch guitar track using line out or something, put it into the headphone mix so the drummer and the guitarist hear it plus the drums, but doesn't come out in the drum mics.

After you get a good drum track, redo the guitar with miced amps. Add bass and vox, etc.

 

[monetmelly]

If you basically enclose the guitar amp with lots of sound deading stuff, blankets etc. and the drums play loud enough you might be able to have drum tracks with no bleed, but the gtr tracks are pretty inevitable to not have bleed