What equipment should I get for recording a punk band?

B

bfsuk

New member
Hey,
I'm planning on recording a couple of 70's style punk bands (Sex Pistols, Ramones, Adverts style) in the near future and was wondering if theres any equipment people could reccomend for recording this style. I'm mainly thinking of of Mics, Pre's and other outboard stuff.

I'm going to be recording into a Tascam 788 through a Behringer UB2442FX-Pro Mixer.

For mics I was thinking possibly an SM57 for vocals and guitars. I know this is what Jonny Rotten used when recording The Sex Pistols album so I'm presuming its pretty good for that style rather than a condenser mic. Haven't really got any idea about Pre's or Outboard though.

Thanks in advance for any help,
James
 
your equipment is probably too good for punk.
dont think that high end gear will do it imho.
try some speakers as mics and mic the guitar amps.
youll get closer than you think.
its the energy your going after. would have been best to use a tape multitrack like a tascam 38 or tsr 8.
ive recorded some (many punk bnds) and would urge you to get some tape into the equation. if your recording on the digital recorder try bouncing the beds to tape and then back again. even an old 2 track reel to rell for the bounce to get some tape sound in the equation.
just my 2 cents fwiw.
london calling....here i come !
 
Don't buy the hype that punk was necessarily badly produced. Not all of it was, and the more popular bands actually had some decent producers. Heck, The Clash miked their guitar amps (and almost everything else) with Neumann U87's on London Calling. The Sex Pistols had a raw, but phenomenal production job on NMTB.

IMHO the trick to getting the good raw sound is using good gear and underproducing... not using crap gear and trying to get it to sound good enough but still raw. HUGE difference, because crap gear will end up with an overproduced feel.

Keep the overdubs to a minimum, keep the editing to a minimum, try to capture attitude, vibe and energy. Aim for big, simple sounds. That's the ticket--simplicity.

And crap gear makes things oh-so complicated.

Avoid any undue precision as well.

I also second the tape/analog sound. If you can't get real tape look for a plugin that can at least add some lofi character.
 
The Sex Pistols and the Ramones were recorded on gear that was absolutely top notch in its day. Never Mind the Bollocks in particular was a stellar recording. Dont buy the hype then or now that punk was recorded on the cheap, except for the underground hardcore of the early to mid 80's, and even most of that was done pretty well.

The main thing you have to capture and gear up for is "attitude", and if the band aint got it as in 99% of the cases, no gear, no skill, no anything can do it.

If you are recording pop40 brittney spears/thrice/face to face/blink182/green day style punk its a different story. In this case the most important thing to gear up for is control. Not one note can be out of time or out of tune, and all frequencies not absolutely essential to each track must be completely ditched. Serious filters, eq's, Autotune, and a great editor are a must for this.
 
pipelineaudio said:
If you are recording pop40 brittney spears/thrice/face to face/blink182/green day style punk its a different story. In this case the most important thing to gear up for is control. Not one note can be out of time or out of tune, and all frequencies not absolutely essential to each track must be completely ditched. Serious filters, eq's, Autotune, and a great editor are a must for this.
Click to expand...

In which case we don't have a punk album at all, but another example of overproduced, fake, top 40 pop garbage.
 
I've got an old 2 track reel to reel recorder so I might have a try with that aswell when I've bought some more gear.
Thanks,
James
 
bfsuk said:
I know this is what Jonny Rotten used when recording The Sex Pistols album
Click to expand...
In the words of Kryten, "This is complete and utter shash." IIRC, he used a Neumann U87.
 
did he? I was reading an article in Sound On Sound about the recording of the album and it says he used an SM57.
James
 
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. But the SM57 is probably one of the most versatile and used mics on the planet. Every engineer I know has at least one. I have seven, myself.
 
Yeah, I'll probably end up getting at least one of them. Any idea's for what Mic Pre's / any outboard I should be looking at? The pre's in my behringer mixer don't sound anything special and I know people on here don't rate them much.
 
I would actually try the mic through your mixer before totally discounting its pres. As for an external mic pre - there are many at different price ranges. What's your budget?
 
Not a huge ammount unfortunately. I've been hearing good things about the M-Audio DMP3 though and that's probably in my price range.
 
MichaelM said:
In which case we don't have a punk album at all, but another example of overproduced, fake, top 40 pop garbage.
Click to expand...

Yeah, and unfortunately, this is what most people think of as "punk"

We have a really popular local forum azpunk.com it is a hillarious read, as tons of pretengineers advertise their studios and "skills", and the "punks" discuss who has discounts on Jordache and Gucci

sad world

but sonically, I think about albums like Suicidal Tendencies, D.O.A-Bloody but Unbowed, The Meatmen-Rock n Roll Juggernaut, Dayglow Abortions- Feed us a Fetus, Minor Threat-Out of Step, The Mentors-You Axed For It, all pretty good productions. DRi-Dealing With It couldve been better, as could Minor Threat's first album, but really as a genre, Punk had plenty of sonic disciples willing to work on it.
 
The DMP3 is a great little pre for the price. I have one. In fact, a few of us were singing its praises earlier today.
 
I just had a thought, If I use a reel to reel 2 track tape machine to give my recordings a "tape" sound, how would i sync it up when recording back into my Tascam 788? What I was thinking was take individual tracks out onto tape then back in onto a virtual track. Is there a way to do this so that the new "tape" track is syncd up with the original tracks or would I need to move the track once its in the 788 as I'm pretty sure you can do this. I'm pretty new to recording and stuff so any help is appreciated.
 
I just had a thought, If I use a reel to reel 2 track tape machine to give my recordings a "tape" sound, how would i sync it up when recording back into my Tascam 788? What I was thinking was take individual tracks out onto tape then back in onto a virtual track. Is there a way to do this so that the new "tape" track is syncd up with the original tracks or would I need to move the track once its in the 788 as I'm pretty sure you can do this. I'm pretty new to recording and stuff so any help is appreciated.
 
I just had a thought, If I use a reel to reel 2 track tape machine to give my recordings a "tape" sound, how would i sync it up when recording back into my Tascam 788? What I was thinking was take individual tracks out onto tape then back in onto a virtual track. Is there a way to do this so that the new "tape" track is syncd up with the original tracks or would I need to move the track once its in the 788 as I'm pretty sure you can do this. I'm pretty new to recording and stuff so any help is appreciated.
 
you need a sync for the tape machine to pull it off, even if you got the start or end in time, no way in hell will an unsynced tape machine play at the exact same speed as it did 5 minutes ago. The tape sound is the last .00000001% of the sound anyhow, make sure you are worrying about the important stuff first.
 
Using the stuff you have I would only use the 2 track reel to reel for mixing down on, I'd most likely do at least 2 to 4 mixdowns, starting with a nice clean one, then hitting the tape a bit harder with each additional mixdown until it sounds like I went too far, that'll give you several choices of tape character to choose from.
 
punk is punk... you cant TRY to go for a punk sound... thats not punk. record it with what you have, some 57s and a decent condensor. punk is the attitude, not the equipment
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top