Advice needed - Home-Rec of Band without Drum-Kit

[cloudburst]

In order to record some good quality audio that we can mix and play with, avoiding excess studio time until absolutely necessary for mastering etc, I'm keen for my band to explore recording at home.

We have:
- Vocals & acoustic guitar
- Guitar
- Bass (me)
- Drums
and occasionally overdubbed
- keys (the guitarist)
- WX7 wind controller (me)

I've a MacbookPro Retina and am expecting to go out and buy an analogue to USB interface box (been looking at the Scarlett 18i8).

The main challenge is the drums. For many reasons, I don't want to have a full drum-kit in the room:
- the neighbours
- the bleed with other acoustic instruments
- complexity to mic
- drummer's availability
etc

So I've come up with two options:
1. Have the drummer record with us live but use his MIDI drum-kit (it's a good one that he seems keen enough to use)
2. Use our rough recordings of the entire band as a backing track to separately record the rest of the instruments, having the drummer add the drums layer at his convenience with his own equipment

The problem I see with option 2 is the need to avoid bleed of the 'rough backing track' into the voice and mic'd instruments layers. Seems the obvious solution is headphones for everyone, and no monitors. However, most of those analogue to USB interface boxes seem only to have 2 headphone outputs - so I'm starting to think this may be a clue that I'm approaching this in a silly way.

So my questions:
- Is this a common scenario, and are my options sensible. Is there a better way?
- Would option 2 work, or would it be too much trouble?
- Why so few headphone outputs on these boxes?
- Am I right in looking at the Scarlett 18i8? Would something else be better for me?

Many thanks. And please go easy on me - I'm a total noob at home recording.
CB

Edited December 6, 2014 by cloudburst

[cloudburst]

I'm starting to form the impression that most folk don't approach it this way, but rather start with a rough track to provide tempo, then individually add drums, guitar, bass, vocals etc.
Does that sound about right? Certainly makes for a cheaper interface box, less cables to trip on and less cups of tea to make in one go.

CB

[Old_Ben]

Don't know much about your set up, and what kind of feel you want the recordings to have.
So if you want to capture a live sound or feel then it might be best to get everyone in the same room, and have everyone record in the room, not using any real amps but using a program like amplitube which allows you to have amp and effect simulators that are pretty good and realistic. and then take the midi input for the drums and have everything go through a speaker set up, then everyone will be able to hear each other.
For quality control purposes you will get better results doing vocals and acoustic guitar separately in a quiet room with no one around and play along to what you tracked in the room.

However doing it this way will make it harder, (especially if you are recording it and not getting an engineer / friend to do it) to make sure everything is in time / tune and with minimal mistakes, and may find it easier to do a guide track for the drummer, then get his parts bang on, move on to guitar & bass individually, then add vocals keys and solos afterwards.

However that set up should be fine for your needs!

Edited December 6, 2014 by Old_Ben

[lurksalot]

I would love to do some recording of the band , but I reckon my chances will be no more than a portable recorder at a gig , the singer has a zoom h4n but refuses to leave it out of his reach , so I might have to invest in some toys myself .
As for setting up a session I have often wondered about a minimalist way of doing it and I guess it is always good fun trying different ways of doing it , but alas I have no personal experience to to make your quest any easier

[gadgie]

It seems that we do a rough track with everyone chiming in. Then we mic up the drums and give the drummer headphones with the rough track as a guide. Record the drums. Now we have a backing track of drums recorded. We add tracks to suit on to that....I think!

[Mornats]

You could try two headphone splitters to get around the headphone socket problem.

Also, have you thought about using the midi drum kit to trigger drum sounds in EZDrummer or BFD2 or something like that?

[moonbass]

Behringer do cheap headphone amps that will split your signal. The Microamp HA £400 is only about £17 on Amazon.

[cloudburst]

Thanks all for your inputs (!)
I'm coming to the conclusion that I WAS thinking along the wrong lines and it's probably the done thing to build it up one layer at a time from click to rough track to drums, guitar, bass, acoustic, vocals.
So now I think I'm in the market for a Scarlett 2i4.
Thanks again.

CB

[cheddatom]

In my studio I always get the band to play together at first, and use this for the "guide" track. Sometimes, depending on how much bleed there has been, I will keep the guide drum track. Quite often I'll keep the guide bass track. Sometimes I even keep the guide guitar track too, but depending on the music will double that.

Bleed isn't necessarily bad. Check out this track [url="https://soundcloud.com/rifffactoryrecordings-1/the-jukes-superstition"]https://soundcloud.com/rifffactoryrecordings-1/the-jukes-superstition[/url]

Everything except vocals was done at once, just a couple of guitar overdubs after. (It's our [color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Bassfunk on bass by the way)[/font][/color]

[51m0n]

My advice, save up for a day in a big rehearsal studio

Mic the drums, DI the bass, Line6 POD for guitar.

Track the drums, then in your own time overdub the other stuff 'properly'

You cant do what you want without a decent space and its going to be loud, but a day in a rehearsal studio is not too expensive at all.

[NancyJohnson]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1418041335' post='2626166']
My advice, save up for a day in a big rehearsal studio

Mic the drums, DI the bass, Line6 POD for guitar.

Track the drums, then in your own time overdub the other stuff 'properly'

You cant do what you want without a decent space and its going to be loud, but a day in a rehearsal studio is not too expensive at all.
[/quote]

This is pretty much what I was thinking when I read this.

You could (emphasis on the could) record the guitars/keys to a click and then get your drummer to add their poop after, but generally it's better to capture the traps first.
P