Recording in our practice room

  • Thread starter Thread starter junior boom
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junior boom

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Our 5 piece band is shoe horned into a 10 x 14 room. It has cinder block walls, glass windows and carpet on the floor. We play with 3 amped guitars, amped harp and drum kit. Will there be any way to get a few decent demo recordings in this tight space? We have started out with a "live sound" approach versus track by track.

Mackie 808M mixer
Mackie DFX 6 mixer
Firepod
 
record one instrument at a time...sounds like you will get some good recordings out of that room. basement quality for sure.
 
Hmmm...

What might be a good thing to do would be to try to 'deaden' out the space by adding some sound dampening...

I think I can understand that when you try to record right now - it sounds to bright and everything seems mushed together? Adding some dampening will help tighten things up a bit...

Hope this helps...
 
Record a LIVE take of a song in the room to get the feel & tempo etc
THEN
record take by take, one instrument at a time using the LIVE take as your guide track so you keep the feel & then you can blend in some of the LIVE with the OD's when you mix.
Cover the window with something think & dense (NO not the bassist or drummer) unless you want the reflection from it (NO not your faces).
GO FOR IT.
If tat doesn't work try everything everyone else says & call me a skuzbag.
 
Doing a live take and then using it as the backing track to do overdubs is an option, but it allows no wiggle room for mistakes, whereas live you can compensate for each other's little tempo changes, etc.

If you want to record it live, you can:

Run amps/pedals/DIs, directly into put headphones on everyone (drums being the only "live" miked instrument), and record that way (if you go the DI route, you can add effects later, and/or even run them through the aux loop so everyone can hear them as the "live" recording takes place).

or:

Wheel your amps into different, separate rooms, miked, and put headphones on everyone. This will minimize bleed-induced cacophony. It will require some long cords, but allow you to mike your amps for a big live sound without the small room muddle.

Either way, I would have to think that the harp and the drums will absolutely have to be in separate rooms. I just can't imagine that miking them both in the same room could possibly sound reasonable. Even if the harp has something like piezo pickups, your results would probably be much better if you miked it acoustically...

Just a couple of options that come to mind--I'm no expert by any means...
 
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