Trying to record a garage band. Advice needed

[Lemon187]

Hey everyone,

In my messy garage I have at most a 5 member garage band. 3 guitars, 1 bass, and one drummer. No vocals at the moment. We really would like to record some of our jams for various reasons. Were not looking for studio quality recordings but simply something to archive out jams.

Here is some of our equipment:

Numark Mixer

^ Right next the fridge/drum set

Not Shown:
Laptop (Running Windows)
Instruments

Im thinking the goal of the project would be to record the audio to the laptop. Ive got a buddy that works at a music store and can get pretty much any software for a very good price, so do not hesitate to recommend software.

I had an idea to get one single mic and have it hang from the garage door opener motor. You can see in the picture below what I am talking about:

Guitar center had a deal on a shure sm57/58 for roughly $100 with a cable and a stand. We were going to jump on this but we had second thoughts and wanted to ask someone who knew what they were talking about. Please any advice would be greatly appreciated. A method of software, hardware and a setup.

Thanks everyone!

 

[TetraFish]

Something like a Zoom H4 would do the job nicely, if you all ran into a mixer you could record direct into the zoom or just use the built in mic.

[url=https://en.audiofanzine.com/pocket-recorder-multitrack/zoom/H4/user_reviews/]Zoom H4[/URL]

 

[TetraFish]

Here's a sample we did using the Zoom H4 so you can see if this is the kind of quality you're expecting.

The Middle (M4A)

 

[dintymoore]

One mic recordings can work real well.

Big factors would be the mic choice and what everything sounds like in the room. Of course the mic placement would be how you'd balance things.

The biggest hurdle for you will probably be getting a mic you'll be happy with. For just archiving an SM57 would be fine, plus it's useful for lots of things. Most people will tell you that it's a better instrument mic than a SM58. A mic like that, being truthful, won't sound really all that great but it might be ok for what you're talking about. On the negative they are kinda grainy, boxy and not real expensive sounding. On the positive they never sound all that bad either. They are very safe.

I've made some recordings with a $20 Sony cassette deck that were clear and didn't lie.

As long as it's not distorted, even the cheapest recordings won't lie about the 2 biggies: time and pitch.

The cheapest thing to record on is a VHS machine, just using the audio ins. They have built in compressors and many don't sound bad. Most of them lying around are broken or about to break though.

Most people will go the route of a cheap audio interface into a computer. Try doing a search on this site and there's lots of them around. I tend to go used on Craigslist for most stuff. Watch out though there's been a bunch of phony SM57's on eBay in this last year, so I wouldn't order one from Hong Kong.