We wanna record our rehearsal tonight.........

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asi9

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Hey, we were toying around with the notion of recording our rehearsal tonight just so we can hear what we sound like when we play and so we'll know what to work on. Here's the deal: we have a mixer amp, and we just plan on going out through may a tape output to the mixer. We're gonna go out of the bass preamp. That takes care of vocals and bass. We have two more mics... both nice Octava's, where should they go? One near the guitar, and one near the drums? Or just mic the room maybe? Keep in mind, we're not going for quality, we just want to be able to hear all the instruments individually. This is only for OUR ears to listen to.
 
My band records our practices.Its a good tool to help spot the rough patches.We use an old radio shack PZM mike mounted to the ceiling and it works great.Regular room miking will sound too boomy,echoy etc.A better option is to use a monitor send or an aux send to shoot a seperate record mix to tape.But PZM mikes are definately the option we prefer for taping rehearsals.
We are doing a demo on cassette 4 track this weekend to shop clubs with our new female vocalist.I bought the little Rolls headphone amp this week so we could mike the drum kit only and go direct or line out on the rest of the gear.The more you can isolate stuff the better the drums will sound.

Tom
 
One or two mics in the hallway outside the room - balance your sound as a band so that everyone can hear each other clearly, including vocals and capture the live-off-the-floor sound. Forget about trying to get a signal off the PA board or anything - signal levels needed to make the PA sound good in the room will *never* work when thrown as is to tape.

Bruce
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
One or two mics in the hallway outside the room - balance your sound as a band so that everyone can hear each other clearly, including vocals and capture the live-off-the-floor sound. Forget about trying to get a signal off the PA board or anything - signal levels needed to make the PA sound good in the room will *never* work when thrown as is to tape.

Bruce
Click to expand...

Here Here, I've tried recording straight out the board and it SUCKS. If nothing else, get everyone sounding good in the PA and mic a PA speaker. Never tried the hallway approach but I bet it works, will have to give it a try.
 
Beg to differ fellows:

"signals levels needed to make the pa sound good in the room will *never* work when thrown as is to tape".
Note my post referred to using an aux send or monitor send for a SEPARATE tape mix not off the main bus to the PA.

"One or two mikes in the hallway..."
I've done live hallway recording,and you need to be prepared for the funky echo and EQ.Think Aqualung vocals.

Interesting argument.He doesn't really have the gear to do it right, so whats the best way to skin this cat?Any room mike will get SOMETHING on tape,albeit boomy and garage-y sounding.Maybe that alone is good enough for them.
My rock bands practices in a genuine sheetrock garage and we find the PZM mike does an amazing job of cancelling those room resonances and weird echoes you get otherwise.
As a p.s.,I recorded this last session from the board to a cassette 4 track for a demo featuring our new singer.I will post a link later this week after some tweaking so ya'll can hear.

Tom
 
Tom Hicks said:
Beg to differ fellows:

"signals levels needed to make the pa sound good in the room will *never* work when thrown as is to tape".
Note my post referred to using an aux send or monitor send for a SEPARATE tape mix not off the main bus to the PA.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... what are you begging to differ about Tom? I was talking about someone trying to use their main fader levels for the room as a direct level to tape.... if you use the AUX's for a totally different send, of course, that is completely different and a great idea!

The best bet is still one or 2 room mics capturing live off the floor -- IF the band balances their levels appropriately acoustically....

We're saying the same things!! :)

Bruce
 
Yeah, we don't care if we sound garag-ey as long as we can hear all the parts. When you play, you listen for different things and may not even reallize and hear other things that are really important. I just found a spot in the hallway where you could hear everything fairly well, and stuck a mic there. Of course, it was our bassists digital recorder, and he forgot to unmute the mic that was recording us....

We'll have to try again another day.
 
Thank you for your remarks, Bruce.You are a pro and I respect your thoughts.I figured we might be talking at cross purposes.
asi9:make it a regular habit to record your rehearsals and then work on the rough spots.Even rough mixes tell you what you need to know.Good luck.

Tom
 
Yeah Asi9, and don't forget to unmute that mic!! Ain't it a bitch, I did the pretty much the same thing when I first got my digital recorder. DOH!!!!
 
Kinda reminds me of the movie Slingblade. After hours of trying to fix the lawnmower, they take it to Carl, he takes one look at it and says, "It ain't got no gas."
 
direct to cassette off the board

Here is a link to the demo I refered to earlier.This is lo-fi cassette for bar owners.I downloaded the 4 tunes onto my hard drive at 22K (about FM quality,or slightly better than the cassette format specifications)stereo.Later upsampling to 44,100 for the CD burn.
I made two EQ passes to bring out the vocals and the bottom respectively.Then I put a (hopefully) subtle room reverb on top to tie it all together.We are shopping the tape for gigs.Have a listen.
http://redrival.com.tomh/demo.asf

Tom
 
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