Would this home recording setup work?

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56bandmaster

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Hi guys,

I'm new to this forum, but I have a question.

My band is about to do some home recording. We're trying to learn a bit about how it all works and hopefully get a half decent result. I have a Behringer MX1804X desk and a Sony TCD-D10 portadat, along with a bunch of mics (SM58s, a couple of Sennheiser 441s, etc).

What I was thinking was to do a simple three or four mic setup on the drum kit, mix that down via another 4ch mixer into the MX1804x. The guitar, harmonica, bass and vocals would each have a ch on the MX1804X. I would then use the remaining ch for an ambient room mic.

I would then take the stereo output from the desk and run it to the TCD-D10.

My main problem would be monitoring the vocals, but I was going to run an aux to a powered wedge so the vocalist at least would be able to hear himself. We're pretty well rehearsed and we know the tunes backwards, so I thinks it's most important for the vocalist to be able to hear himself.

Our lack of recording experience aside, what could we hope to achieve with a basic setup like this?

Cheers,

Dave
 
I have done same kind of thing recording our bands rehearsals by portable MD. The room makes a big difference in that kind of recording. Also you have to think carefully the placement of mics and the instruments.

If you have a pa-system you can monitor the vocals by that. I don't know If your mixer has a monitor section but our crappy lo-fi mixer has and I just use that. In this way the vocals are picked with your ambient mics too but I don't find it to be a bad thing.

In a good room, with good mics and placement you might catch some pure LIVE feel.

Try to take the mixer to another room and monitor atleast with headphones, just to check the levels. It's quite impossible to do serious mixing if the leaks are big. Try it out record a bit... listen...make changes....record...listen...

It's not easy but it could work...
 
Other than the monitoring issue you should be able to get a good live recording with the gear you have. As Riku said, the live sound of the room makes a big difference. You may have to hang some curtains or arrange furniture to absorb some frequencies.

If you have concerns that a monitor wedge may be a problem (sending vocals into other mics, etc) you could get a small headphone mixer.

There are units by diferent companies that take a stereo (or mono) signal and split it to four or five headphone feeds (each with its own volume control). These little head phone mixers normally provide a few watts of power. They aren't great but they are better then a wedge. They cost less than $100 (obviously you need to have or buy several sets of phones).
 
Thanks for the replies.

We've set aside an entire weekend to do this, so I'm expecting to learn a lot about mic'ing and mixing techniques as we do a set up - record - listen - change what we need type of deal.

I'm pretty confident that the room is good enough. It's a large living room sparsely furnished with an adjoining tiled kitchen/dining room (which will be excellent for our vintage tweed amps).

I'll let you know how it goes (the session is set for October 20/21).

Cheers,

Dave
 
Well, we did a preliminary session at my house last weekend and got some good results. After years of putting up with others guys close miking my amp and making it sound like crap, I finally managed to get a great guitar sound to tape.

I had a cranked tweed Deluxe in a corridor with a Sennheiser 441 about 12 feet away at about head height. The thing sounds like a saxophone!

Now we just have to get a similar vibe for the harmonica amp (a tiled kitchen should do the trick) and get some better performances and we'll be set.

Thanks for the advice!

-Dave-
 
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