tips for recording a full band live off the floor to 4 track

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jeancoltrane

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so next week i plan on recording my first band demo with a teac a2340. we have guitar, bass, drums, organ & vocals. were lucky to be recording in a really nice barn with huge ceilings & great acoustics and i hope to take advantage of that. trying to capture that 'band in a room' vibe with lots of bleed and minimal mics.

my thoughts so far are -
drums - 1 dark sounding condenser between the kick and hi hat looking up at the snare - track 1
bass - condenser low to the floor infront-ish of the kick drum & ride cymbal looking at the bass amp - track 2
organ - condenser a few feet back split between organ amp & guitar amp - track 3
guitar - close mic'd with a radioshack dynamic - track 3

basically the drums would be middle of the room, with guitar & organ on the right side 5-10ft infront & bass left side 5-10 feet infront as well. hoping this setup with the condensers would provide a decent stereo drum sound with the bleed and just a big room sound in general.

one thing im not sure about is whether to put the organ on the guitar side sharing the guitar track (track 3) or left side sharing the bass track (track 2) any thoughts are welcome on this. vocals will be overdubbed later on track 4.

id probably use more close mics if i could, especially on the drums, but we'll probably only have a few hours to setup, record & tear down with me trying to mix & play guitar so the less submixing i have to do the better. one issue i have is our drummers ride is really really loud, which is why i opted to put the main drum mic on the hi hat side.

heres a clip of the band, vocals start about 7min in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUsZpQVvM0A

thanks for any thoughts
 
If I were doing this I might try a different approach, two stereo tracks and then bouncing to digital to mix them and back to two tracks of the 4-track for adding vocals. The first pair would be a stereo room mic. The second pair would be a submix of close mics on everything.

I would place the group in a semicircle around a standard X-Y setup, guitar on left then bass, drums and on the right organ. The close mics can be a simple or complicated as you want. Using your ideas for close mics but giving the organ its own mic you could put the guitar hard left, the bass and drums center and the organ hard right. Bounce the four tracks to digital, do some judicious time alignment, eq, panning etc., mix to stereo and bounce back to a pair or tracks on fresh tape for the vocal tracking. Getting the close mics mixed may require wearing headphones for a while and listening back to some test recordings.
 
Took me back to an album I recorded in the 1980's of the band I was in.

We sub-mixed the drums to 1 track (I had a friend keeping an eye on the drum mix only in the control room, the term control room used loosely here LOL), then recorded the bass via a DI to a track, the 2 guitars recorded to a track each. We recorded all the songs without vocals. I then mixed the music to another reel to reel (but anything can be used that's stereo) then the stereo mix bounced back to the 4 track. The vocals and backing vocals were then recorded and this was mixed. The Beatles used to work like this.

Alan.
 
thanks for the great suggestions fellas. definitely some things to consider. not sure how i feel about bouncing to digital and back ; ) but i think the concept is sound. i might look into renting or borrowing a friends 2 track to mix down to & back from. that would allow for a lot more flexibility when tracking
 
If you stay in analog, mixing back and forth is going to increase your noise level.
 
Let's be honest - any one take recording is going to sound pretty similar to the video. Bouncing tracks to increase the track count is what studios had to do when 4 tracks was common. Separation is the main problem, and any minimal mic technique on the drums that might work for jazz is not going to sound rocky!
 
DM60 said:
If you stay in analog, mixing back and forth is going to increase your noise level.
Click to expand...

Actually on future recording using my 3340 4 track, I had a large reel 2 track 1/4 track machine, that way we could mix to the 2 tracks on that, then put the tape onto the 3340 and there would be the mix on 2 tracks and 2 tracks spare, that way we reduced the number of bounces.

Alan.
 
Your over clomplicating it. Put one overhead on the kit low enough to clear getting hit. One mic on each amp. as loud as you guys play youl get plenty of bleed. dont make it harder than it needs to be.
 
Put the guitar on one side and the organ on the other to balance the midrange across the stereo field.
 
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