recording for 13 hours

[Rocket Boy]

If you were asked to record a 13 hour festival, how would you do it?

 

[ssscientist]

Reluctantly. Very reluctantly.

 

[RD423]

have another engineer come in and swap out after every other song. Or at least after every 2 hours. That way your ears will be fresh enough to mix. Because we all know to get a perfect mix it will take at anywhere from 1 to 2 hours just for the "perfect" mix.

 

[noisedude]

Are you multi-tracking to mix after the event? Or are you mixing to two-track as you go? If it's the first then all you need to do is make sure you've got a healthy signal to play with. If it's the second ................. well .................... rather you than me.

 

[Stefan Elmblad]

Hook it all up, press rec. Use a backup 2-track system from consoles main outs.

 

[chessrock]

If you were asked to record a 13 hour festival, how would you do it?

Yea ... after careful deliberation, I think I'm with Stefan on this one.

Definitely hook everything up first.

Then hit record.

When everything's done ... tear down. If you're using house equip, then this just means to power everything down.

Then leave.

I'd do everything pretty much in that order.

 

[apl]

I'd have at least two or three guys to help, and I'd multitrack for mixing later, so I'd have to find a place to swipe the channels. If the FOH is a digital mixer you may be able to pump it in to the PC. I'd have a dedicated DAW PC set up with a removable hard drive for the music and I'd have 150% of expected needed hardrives ready to go in trays. I'd try to plan it so that I'd be swapping harddrives during band changes. I'd dry run the whole thing in detail and depth before the show started. They'd pay $5000 up front to get the festival recorded to HDD. Mixidown will take a lot of hours afterward and I'd bill my going rate for that.

 

[Rocket Boy]

yeah. i dont even want to try recording that to my computer. i told them to get me a stand alone cd burner with a cd for each band if they want me to record it.

 

[vigormusic]

are they going to be paying you decently for your time?

 

[dgatwood]

Whatever you do, don't try to do it in one single pass on a computer. 13 hours translates at 44.1kHz stereo to more than 8 gigs of audio, or more than 4 gigs per channel. Most file systems won't handle single files that big, and even if you're using one that does, most software will assume you aren't and will not be able to record past 2 gigs.

I assume that there are reasonable breaks every so often?

 

[earworm]

honestly,
if you can earn some money, yes, if its all for free,
think about it...

i once recorded about 6 bands on one evening,
amateur recording, but OK,
then i had to chop everything up, i recorded just LONG wave files,

god, that took me ages to cut everything up,
make wave files, name the songs, name the bands,
make mp3's and blablabla

in the main time all those six bands were SPAMMING me to death
cause they all wanted their cd the same day

fuck it, if its for free i wouldn't do it

 

[noisedude]

You need like an Alesis HD24 - hook it up to a pre-fade aux on the desk, then you don't even need to think about it, just keep an eye on the metering on the HD24 to make sure it's recording ok. Then BAM 24 tracks to play with, to mix just hook it up to a 24-channel desk and send it straight down to 2-track in one or two passes per song. Once you've got it right for a song you're probably ok for the set unless you plan on getting artistic with it.

Make sure you have a couple of reverb units on standby.