Should I record the whole group at once?

D

Dig

New member
I have read varying opins about this and have talked to a number of people and got more varying opins so let me ask you guys.

If you are going to record a 5 piece band is it best to

1.) record the whole band at one time.
What I mean is, should I put everybody in the recording room at once and let the band play together.

2.) Record a basic drum track and record each player individually.
Of course here I just mean bringing in one person at a time to the studio and let them lay their track.

I have been told that playing together there is an energy that comes through but I have been also told that recording individually allows you to record clean tracks. They say that the singers mics will pick up other instrument sounds. Of course others say that is part of the realism. But then the others say yea that's true until you try to change something and have trouble because of all the bleeding sounds hanging out.

Now it's you turn..what is the truth. If you want the absolute best recording possible how do the biggest studios do it?

Thanks a mil.
 
Pfiew. There's many ways...

The way I recorded my first demo was guitars and bass in one room, drums in the next room, vocals as overdub. (2 rooms needed)

The CD I co-engineered a while ago first recorded bass and drums, with guitars playing along via direct outs of their amps, as sortof guidance and as guide tracks afterwards. There was only one live-room, guitars were overdubbed seperately, as were the vocals. Bass was overdubbed where needed (for mistakes...) anyway, the crosstalk on the drummics from the bass didn't really cause a problem for that. There were also 2 isolating panels in between drums and bass amp.

That band doesn't rely all that hard on interaction between the players. One of my friends recorded at the same place last month and they tracked guitars, bass and drum in one go. (There a 3 piece.) Alot of overdubs were done afterwards anyway, but the 3 main instruments were recorded at once....

Still, here the vocals were tracked afterwards too. I think that is pretty common. Vocals have the lowest spl of a band, and get alot of attention in the end, so it's better to have a clean track here...
 
The way I've had most of the luck has been to do this:

1) Record everybody together on a single "scratch" track.
2) Track the Bass (direct) & Guitar (mic) afterwards listening to the scratch track
3) Track everything else the same way

this way you've got the "energy" to play from, but you've got more flexibility with getting it recorded.

---or---

1) Have everybody play together direct (no amps, no mics, just a temporary headphone mix) while recording only the tracked drums. This is handy if the drummer has a hard time playing to a pre-recorded track (and a lot of them do)
2) Track the Bass & Guitar together
3) Everybody else

I've heard most real studios have enough rooms and equipment to isolate everybody and get everybody in 1 take, but it's very tough to get everything perfect in 1 or 2 takes (for the band, as well as the engineer). Overdubbing is very common, even in "real" studios. It all depends on your setup, how you like to work, how the band likes to work, etc...

The more recordings I get involved with, the more I learn that there are no written laws ...you do what works best for your situation.
 
Thanks guys for the info so far.

The reaso I asked this question is that a band I recorded a short while ago wanted to re-record the vocals. The problem that cropped up was the original vocals had bleed onto some of the other tracks and when the new vocal was laid down you can just barely hear the old vocal in there.

Not enough to stop them but it was clearly there to me and sometimes was off beat with the new vocal.

I am trying to not have that happen again.

Thanks
 
It really all depends on how much isolation you'll be able to achieve. If you have a good means of isolating, then by all means record everyone at once.

Otherwise, here is what I like to do:

1) Have the band play live, with everyone playing at once. Record the bass direct with a D.I. and record the guitar direct using a POD or similar amp modeler. All the while, you should be micing the drums. Since you're recording direct, you get zero bleed. Have the singer do a scratch vocal from another room. You don't have to record it - it's only there for piping in to the rest of the bands' phones while they play.

2) Overdub a new guitar track, micing the amplifier. You can either mix it in with your POD track (if it sounds good) or you can just completely replace the POD take altogether with the new mic'ed one (or several mic'ed ones). The different tones you can get combining mic'ed guitars with POD tracks can sometimes be very interesting - sometimes crappy. :)

3) Overdub accoustic guitar, tamborine, or any other track that requires mic'ing.

4) Overdub vocals.
 
Record the group as a whole first to try and capture the energy. It may sound like slop as far as a mix goes but hopefully you've recorded the spirit of the song to reference as you do a more formal recording session afterwards. The first recording is like brainstorming on a notepad.
 
I was just about to post a thread on this very subject!!! thanks.

I was thinking to record the band "live" no isolation and use that as a scratch, maybee just sub group the drums to a seperate track in case he cant play over himself.
 
depends(not the under garment)

I have done two groups "live"in the studio in the last two months and I think that the approach very much depends on what style of music is being played and what the"artists" want to do with the end product.One point is not have any spill instead have ambieance. if you have the drums and bass side byside then listen to just the drums and see how much bass ambieance you have and what amount of real bass you need in there to fill it out,you might just have to eq out some of the bottom end on the bass to get some definition with that type of sound. One thing with the live aproach is that the energy is great and the performance is more solid and flowing but the client should know that this comes at a price .that price is paid in the mixing where you have not much flexibilty with individual sounds.For the vocals I had one of the bands rehearse their songs without vocals and we recorded them that way so when we came to do the vox we got a good clear sound with no music spill.bottom line talk with the band first and find out where they are coming from so you can take them where they want to go .OH and keep rockin
 
Wow..great stuff. This really helps. What I love about this kind of discussion is that you get a variety of opins but there is a consistant thread that you find in them.

Reading through I see many of you agree on some points and then add differing points of view but when I read all the posts I get a great sense of what to do. This increases my confidence in my decisions.

What a wealth of information here. Can we bottle it, distill it and make it into an injectable dose. We can have little viles of this information and inject it as needed.

Thanks again.
 
Thats the way champ soak it in...

The only prob with having bass spill in the drum group is that the kik can share the same freq with the bass, so you lose tweakability with the kik, sometimes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top