Your live recordings?

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twdavis

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If you're recorded your band or another band live, you should post some of the recordings. I'm very interested in hearing them to get a good rough idea of how I can get a good sound from an amateur setup.



If you post clips, could you maybe post details of hpw it was recorded?
 
When I record our band live (8 inputs into a Boss BR 1600)), I usually record the electric-acoustic guitar direct; I mike up the electric guitar amp (sm57), and take a line out of the keyboard amp; Bass goes in direct; I mike the drums with one mike (AKG 535 EB), placed next to the kick drum on a short stand and aimed at the bottom of the snare; That leaves three inputs for vocals (sm58s) ; One output of the recorder goes to daisey-chained main powered speakers in the room, the other is routed to some daisey-chained powered monitors for the band. Not a perfect setup, but it works pretty well.
 
http://www.massivemastering.com/special/LiveRecording.m3u A "snippet" file of various tunes from a live performance.

I know I posted this somewhere (in one of those "don't give me that whole 'but my gear sucks' things" thread) with all the details, but it's basically a live-to-two-track on a cheesy/noisy A&H 2200 using aux 4 as L and aux 5 as R. Five minutes during soundcheck to setup a stereo mix (panning by using relative aux levels) with headphones. Hence, the bass is a bit shy. The overly loud hat was actually the hat blaring through the monitors more than anything else.

57's on the guitar cabs, M88's on the kicks, 57's on the snare, MD504's on the toms, 81's in the air, DI's on the bass going into the A&H. Out of the A&H into an Apogee MiniMe with an absolute peak of -40dBFS (I'd rather be 30dB short than 1dB too hot). No EQ on anything, no compression on anything, no effects except a whisker of reverb (a late 80's ART ProVerb 200) on the snare / toms / OH's.

Everything was stacked up to make a completely unlistenable recording - But I rather liked it. Did do some post-pro here -- A couple dB of gain reduction and a half dB here and there of EQ, but pretty minimalistic at best.

Granted - The musicians were anything but amateur - But the setup was the essence of mediocrity - Even by home-recording standards.

Good core sounds + knowing how to stay out of the way of good core sounds = 95% of everything.
 
Wow.
"Five minutes during soundcheck to setup a stereo mix .."
Double wow. :)
 
The sound for this clip was recorded with a stereo pair above the FOH sound guys head to 1 stereo track, and I took a second stereo track from the FOH desk. Using a Presonus firebox and a laptop, the mics going to the Presonus mic pres 1 & 2 and the FOH to the line in's 3 & 4.

I then took the 2 stereo tracks back to the studio, time aligned then (as there is a time delay on the stereo pair due to the distance from the stage), had a listen to each, eq'ed each stereo track as was needed (actually not much), did some compression to each, and mixed them together to get the mix.

The stereo pair from the FOH desk had a lot of Vocal and kick and not much bass and guitar, as expected due to stage sound (volume), and the stereo pair of mics picked up everything but lacked a little definition due to the room, by mixing the 2 it come together quite well.

And yes I am the bass player.

Cheers

Alan.
 
Some location stuff from 1976 until today. Click on "2 Location Audio Services" and enjoy some of the stuff. I'd love to do more, but there's just not enough business here to support it. I started recording in Minneapolis area in '75 or so. The early recording was an 8 track (Tascam 80-8), recent stuff was mostly around 15 or so tracks. Current stuff was recorded using Presonus Firestudio and Presonus Digimax FS. If needed I added an ART Digital MPA. All was recorded live in shows for the bands. For the early one I was hired by the sponsor radio station, they played the whole show on air next weekend. Richard King Media | Media Conversions and Location Recording Services Please comment. Enjoy.
 
The Experiments - Relief - Live At The ShakeDown 2010

I've been recording my band live for many years. This song was recorded on my Zoom R16. It's a small club, so the only thing in the PA was vocals. I recorded on 7 tracks:

vocal feed from the PA, with all 3 vocals on it, into 1 track
1 mic on each guitar amp, a SM57 on one, a e609 on the other
bass direct - XLR out from the amp
3 mics on the drums: kick (AMG D112), snare (EV Blue Raven) and 1 overhead (Oktava MK-012-01)

I had a friend watch and adjust the gain during the first few songs so the levels would be OK

The next day I loaded it into Pro Tools and mixed.

I'd have liked to do 2 drum overheads (I had a spare tack), for a better stereo sound, but the stage was pretty small. Not much room for 2 overheads.

I love the Blue Raven on the snare, mostly because it's small enough that the drummer won't hit it, and sturdy enough to be OK if he does.

Getting all 3 vocals onto 1 track from the PA is not ideal, but it saves a lot of time (which is important when theres 3 bands that night, and it's hurry up get on, and hurry up get off the stage) and frees up 2 tracks. If I were to do all 3 vocals on separate tracks, plus each guitar and bass on it's own track, that would only leave me with 2 tracks left for the drums. (Zoom R16 can record 8 tracks at once)

I've done each vocal separate before, using mic splitters, so I can get a signal to the PA and a signal to the recorder. It works fine, but it is time consuming.

Anyway, I've done this a lot, from the 1990's when I used a cassette 4 track, to the early 2000's with an 8 track ADAT and a Mackie board, to today, with the Zoom (which is awesome, I love my Zoom R16), and once I did a friends band with a full 10 tracks in Pro Tools on a laptop. (see that here: West Of Memphis - Three-Way Party on Vimeo )

So, any questions, I might be able to help.
 
I just throw my Tascam DR1 behind the merch guy and then EQ the crap out of it (well, some of the crap. Polishing turds and all) later. I'm happy enough with the results.

Anything under the "Bootlegs" section on our Downloads page is done that way.
 
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