Recording Live Performances at Clubs -- combining equiptment

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alexbt
  • Start date Start date
Alexbt

Alexbt

New member
Hi all,

Our band often plays at clubs that have really good house sound systems.
We have had them record our show live from the board to MD with interesting results.

It could be the MiniDisc recorder, but the volume level coming off the disk is very low. I had to normalize or bring up gain on the tracks in order to hear them well enough.

The drums, while miced are not very loud in the mix (probably because our drummer plays too loud). Also the lead guitar tends to be too soft. (Maybe his amp was too loud and didn't need to be miced as much?
Also the mix doesn't come out stereo like we asked. (Though sometimes you can't 'ask' these people to do anything)

Anyways, is there any way to record this stuff, into 4-6 tracks, with a combination of their equiptment and ours?

I mean, they mic or have a line out from everything in the band. I don't know how or if it would be possible to share the lines. It would be nice to have control over the sound after the fact.

Ideas?

-Alex
 
If you slip the sound guy a few bucks, maybe he'll make you stereo (dual) aux mix that you can use.

The only other way I can think of with 6 inputs is if he's running an 8-bus board. He can put the drums to 1&2, the guitars to 3&4, vox to 5&6. You'll still have to be in some control over your stage volume, though... At least relative levels will have to be controlled well.
 
I'm more of a live guy than a studio guy, and we tend to not really care about bands who want to record. Yeah we'll hook up your mini disc to our matrix outs or whatever, but we're only concerned with how it sounds live. The louder something is on stage, the quietter it's going to be on your recording, because we'll be running less of it through the PA (snare, cymbals, the guitarists 4 Mesa stacks).
Flipping us a few extra bucks would help us out, but we'd still be limited by the tools at our disposal. Many places won't have 2 spare aux's.
Of course the best way to do a live recording is to take a split off of the headbox and run into your own multitrack recorder. However a lot of places don't have a headbox with a split.
You could try using the direct outs off the live desk, but again, not all live desks have this and you'd be getting in our way.

Really it will all vary from venue to venue depending on the situation. I recommend stopping by the venue a few days before hand and advance everything with the house engineer.
 
I think the drums will always be a little week from a board mix. Use 2 EMC8000 mics (XY) and an audiobuddy pre into your Minidisc.
 
I'm more of a live guy than a studio guy, and we tend to not really care about bands who want to record. Yeah we'll hook up your mini disc to our matrix outs or whatever, but we're only concerned with how it sounds live.
Click to expand...

It's a house MiniDisc recorder... not ours. We don't even own one... They offered to record our shows to MiniDisc for us so we bought some discs and did so.

The louder something is on stage, the quietter it's going to be on your recording, because we'll be running less of it through the PA (snare, cymbals, the guitarists 4 Mesa stacks).
Click to expand...

Yeah... realized this.

Anyways, this would be much more complex than I thought. I've gathered from this that the best bet would be to set up a stereo pair in the audience or back, and see if I can get anything off the snake.

I'm also trying to figure this out in the off-chance we host a big show at a large auditorium I know of. We'd supply the sound tech so it would be easier.
For that show, we'd be filming and recording a live album, so control there is obviously needed. I'm not positive we could have it polished for one take. Sadly there is always one small thing that can ruin an otherwise great recording.
 
use two mixers or designate a certain part of the desk for FOH and the rest for going to a recording medium. This means you can seperately control the input and output of the channels going to FOH and the recorder. You might have to double mic the sources though if you dont have two sets of inputs on the single desk, or any XLR to 2XLR cables.
 
Alexbt said:
Anyways, this would be much more complex than I thought. I've gathered from this that the best bet would be to set up a stereo pair in the audience or back, and see if I can get anything off the snake.
Click to expand...

The downside of the mic in the audience is that the guy who keeps yelling "FUKK YEAH! ROK AND ROLL!!!" is going be really loud in the mix.


I'm also trying to figure this out in the off-chance we host a big show at a large auditorium I know of. We'd supply the sound tech so it would be easier.
For that show, we'd be filming and recording a live album, so control there is obviously needed. I'm not positive we could have it polished for one take. Sadly there is always one small thing that can ruin an otherwise great recording.
Click to expand...

If you are running your own sound, it's much easier. You can add mics on the drums or anywhere else you need that are just for recording. You can use direct outs, channel inserts, spare busses/auxes to route signal to your recorder. With enough tracks you don't even have to worry much about levels, you can fix that later.

There's still the issue of changing settings during the show messing with the recording. When I've run sound and recorded, I've just been cognizant of that, but if that's a concern then just split the mics out to a separate board. That's really the best way to go if you have the gear available.
 
I've done multitrack live recordings with pretty good success. I used the channel inserts sent to a HD24. Every mic was recorded to it's own track. Record levels won't change if you don't change the preamp gain. Channel faders have no effect on the signal going to the inserts.
 
HangDawg, i was just going to suggest that.

you can use the inserts on a mixer to go to an external board/daw. just trs out of the inserts into your daw. it'll bypass the channel faders and you should get a healthy signal off the board preamps. Using multiple busses is also an option.

my suggestion is to use a stereo pair of room mics along with using a few inserts on the main board to get supplementary tracks. you should be able to get a good amount of drums through the room mics. I would use the inserts to get some vocals, lead guitar and bass. then you can mix these to taste. by using eq and multiband compression you should be able to get a good sound just out of the room mics. you can use the inserts in case you don't have enough vocals or if you want to bring up the lead guitar during a solo etc.

the big thing is to accomodate the liveaudio guy at all costs. you don't want to make his job difficult. using inserts rather than busses keeps you out of his hair a little bit. Also, ask permission a few days before the gig. Make sure they don't have a problem with it. That way they don't feel like your being too demanding. make sure you explain to them what your plans are. tell them you just want to use the inserts on a few of their channels to get a feed to your mixer/daw. If your setting up the gig yourself then try to have someone designated to live audio and someone else for recording. both are a whole lot of work and you need 2 people to make either of them good. having one person do both is difficult and you might just end up with a crappy recording and crappy live sound.
 
If the PA's in these clubs you play sound so good, record the PA. Im more of a live guy too, and I can definately relate to the notion of not wanting to take my attention off of what the house sound is like, but when asked to do this sort of thing, I like to at least try and it's more knobs I get to tweak anyway. Usually, if they prefer, I'll just run out two aux sends for a stereo feed, and that way you can flip your headphones into whatever the recording deck is, and dial in a reasonably good stereo mix. But...in my opinion, if you want a LIVE recording, record the room like a bootlegger would, except you wouldn't have to hide. Some of the best live recordings I've gotten out of bands we're nothing but pencil condensers, and a cd burner in the right place in the room. Granted, you don't want more audience than music in the mix, but that can be tweaked. Board recordings made from tape outs will always suck because the house mix and the recording mix will NEVER need to be the same mix, especially in small clubs. The size and sound of the club I mix in the most is such that, if I allowed anyone to actually get a "tape/mix out" feed, 80 percent of the time, they'd have a recording with a kick drum and vocals. Full Marshall stacks don't get microphones. Anyway, it's an extreme example but you get the point.

In my opinion, if you want a live recording, trust the house mix, and record the band playing live in the club, not just the band playing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top