Recording band rehearsals with PC??

[Jamesemt]

I've just bought a Zoom H2, and after having recorded with it once, have REALLY got the bug for recording rehearsals (for no other reason than I want to ).

I've also got a PC lying around at home doing very little (use laptops for the net, and have a RAID1 external hard drive for photos and stuff). The PC was the dogs bollocks about a year ago (so is obviously ready for the rubbish tip in PC terms...). I forget the specs, but is running a Core Duo chip, has 2GB of RAM and plenty of HD space (got loads of hard drives lying around - probably enough for about 700GB).

What's going to be the cheapest way of recording rehearsals? I'm thinking I'll need an 8 input soundcard, multitrack software and the mics. Anything else? The rehearsal room has a few mics lying around, and has a basic PA (which I can take a feed off for the vocals??).

Anything blatantly obvious I've missed? Band consists of me on bass, one guitarist, drummer, keyboard and vocals. My only concern is can I use regular mics for drums? How much are decent but budget drum mics?

Willing to spend whatever it takes for a cheapish setup (ie £500 would be good, could MAYBE stretch to £1k at a push).

Any thoughts?

[cheddatom]

I bought some cheap crap drum mics from Ebay, but it looks like you can afford better. I would buy a set of drum mics 'cos they work out at good value. Think about how many channels you want to record.

You'll need 1 mic and/or DI for guitar, a DI for bass, (stereo?) DI for keyboards, DI from the PA for vox - you're already on at least 5 channels.

To get a half decent drum sound, a stereo pair of mics on the kit is essential. Kick and snare mics are almost essential, and slightly less essential - individual tom mics. Ideally, if he's using 2 toms, you'll have 6 mics on the kit which you will need to record simultaneously with the rest of the band.

I don't think 8 inputs are enough!

As far as specific gear recommendations - I don't have enough experience really. I literally just went for the cheapest crap.

[wulf]

What is the reason for wanting to use the PC rather than just sticking with the H2? One of the attractions of the latter for me was that it is trivial to get the recording from the H2 onto a computer as a digital sound file (which had been an ongoing frustration with minidisk).

If the idea is that you will be able to do multitrack recording don't forget that you will have to take time setting up your mics and, because you will probably have sound sources bleeding into each other you won't be able to punch back and fix individual mistakes, only do a bit of balancing between the mixes. You might find it a lot simpler to experiment with the four channel mode on the Zoom (I haven't played with that yet myself, despite getting a bigger memory card that would make it feasible).

Wulf

[cheddatom]

Well, i've been tracking my band with bass guitar, drums, and vox through the PA. I've managed to move around some bass notes from the DI, and the bleed is no noticable. I've managed to move a couple of kick drums on the individual mic, and the spillage just sounds like a flam or something insignificant, and only if you're really hearing.

Anyway, if you're recording band practices then tightening everything up with a fine toothcomb isn't really the point is it? I suppose it's about your approach to the recordings.

[Born 2B Mild]

OR you could buy a Yamaha AW16G off eBay for £200+. It is a multi-channel hard disk recorder that burns CDs. I use one and it works great, and I'm a numpty when it comes to techie things. For the drums, I can get away with a couple of well positioned mics, but the drummer has some cheap drum mics in to a mini mixer, so that can work too. All the demo songs on [url="http://www.myspace.com/angieshawband"]http://www.myspace.com/angieshawband[/url] were recorded in my house using this recorder.

[cheddatom]

£200 for all your pre-amps, interface, storage medium, and a hands-on controller is a good deal. It's not such a good deal if you already have a PC you're thinking of upgrading as you could put in an interface for £50 and get a rack of pre-amps for less than £100 and you have more flexibility with plug-ins etc.

[wulf]

[quote name='cheddatom' post='169698' date='Apr 4 2008, 10:17 AM']£200 for all your pre-amps, interface, storage medium, and a hands-on controller is a good deal. It's not such a good deal if you already have a PC you're thinking of upgrading as you could put in an interface for £50 and get a rack of pre-amps for less than £100 and you have more flexibility with plug-ins etc.[/quote]
The PC is much less portable though. It sounded like Jamesemt is using a rehearsal studio somewhere other than his home and the PC would require at least a couple of extra trips to the car (monitor and base unit - keyboard, mouse, etc can be slung in a bag). From experience, if something is awkward, it needs to be very good not to become too much of a pain in the neck (which is where something like an H2 wins out in my book).

Wulf

[cheddatom]

yeh, good point. I leave a spare monitor mouse and keyboard at practice, and just carry the main box back and forth. Not everyone can do that!

[Jamesemt]

The guitarist has an office at the rehearsal space, so gear could be left there.

I am not looking to overdub tracks, only to get good sound quality out of it.

I've tried recording in 4 channel on the zoom, but messing with the 3D software doesn't alter the sound that much...maybe we just need a new singer

With regard to inputs, was thinking 1 bass, 1 guitar, 1 keyboards, 1 vocals, 1 bass drum, 1 snare, 2 ambient for cymbals/toms

Edited April 5, 2008 by Jamesemt

[cheddatom]

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='170288' date='Apr 5 2008, 03:21 PM']With regard to inputs, was thinking 1 bass, 1 guitar, 1 keyboards, 1 vocals, 1 bass drum, 1 snare, 2 ambient for cymbals/toms[/quote]

That sounds good, so you only need 8 pre-amps and an interface that can accept 8 analogue ins. Or you could get a rack of pres with ADAT out, and get an interface with ADAT in.

For cheap pre-amps you could look for a used mixer with inserts on each channel.

For a cheap interface, I really love my Maudio Delta 10/10 Lt.

For mics, get a large diaphram dynamic mic for the kick, a sm57 for the snare, 57 for guitar, DI bass, DI keys, Pop shield and 57/58/some cheap large diaphram condenser for vox, and then for your two room mics I like sm58s, but I don't know if anyone would agree with me. If you get them in the right position, they don't pick up much bleed, and they seem to cover the frequency range of the drum kit. I get a nice stereo image/sound with a pair of 58s (cheap copies though).

[Vasquez Rich]

I just bung a mic direct into my Dell laptop, works fine. I actually use some video editing software to record the files in wav but the normal sound recorder will do it just as well. Edit the files, write them down to mp3, mail them to the rest of the band before the next rehearsal, job's a guddun.

Richard

[Biggsy]

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='169647' date='Apr 4 2008, 09:55 AM']I've just bought a Zoom H2, and after having recorded with it once, have REALLY got the bug for recording rehearsals (for no other reason than I want to ).

I've also got a PC lying around at home doing very little (use laptops for the net, and have a RAID1 external hard drive for photos and stuff). The PC was the dogs bollocks about a year ago (so is obviously ready for the rubbish tip in PC terms...). I forget the specs, but is running a Core Duo chip, has 2GB of RAM and plenty of HD space (got loads of hard drives lying around - probably enough for about 700GB).

What's going to be the cheapest way of recording rehearsals? I'm thinking I'll need an 8 input soundcard, multitrack software and the mics. Anything else? The rehearsal room has a few mics lying around, and has a basic PA (which I can take a feed off for the vocals??).

Anything blatantly obvious I've missed? Band consists of me on bass, one guitarist, drummer, keyboard and vocals. My only concern is can I use regular mics for drums? How much are decent but budget drum mics?

Willing to spend whatever it takes for a cheapish setup (ie £500 would be good, could MAYBE stretch to £1k at a push).

Any thoughts?[/quote]

My advice would be to plan as far forward as possible. I've found once you start recording, it's a serious bug that needs feeding, much like the 'GAS' many bassists report!

I started in pretty much the same way; just wanting to record rehearsals / jams, and to put down song ideas at home to share with my band mates. So, I got a firewire interface to connect to my laptop. It did the job I wanted, but I soon found myself lusting after the thick, fulll, rich sounds of a professional mix down. After a while of 'self directed study' I've realised it's very possible to achieve very convincing results with a few gear upgrades here and there, and a few basic techniques.

By the sounds of it your PC is very capable. Because I don't like rooting around inside my PC's and like the ability to use my interface on other machines, I prefer firewire interfaces. If that's the direction you go, check the brand of your FW chipset before making a decision as there are known issues in compatibility from certain manufacturers.

I think you'll need 12+ inputs and outputs with the setup you described; Drum mics alone will take up 5 or 6 slots. You could possibly get away with 8, but will soon hunger for more IMO!
You can pick up a 48kHz 8 channel interface quite easily for 150 quid (I did) but again, think forward! If your budget allows, go for a 96/128kHz interface with good quality pre-amps (and at least a couple of channels with phantom power for your overhead mic's) and ideally the option to expand.
RME is probably the best around - the Fireface range is very desireable and you may pick a unit up for about 350 beans if you're lucky. I'm told the pre's are incredible.
Motu would be my other reccomendation as they offer unparalelled driver support for their range.
With both brands you can 'daisychain' more units at a later date if you require more channels, with no need to upgrade anything on your PC (aside from perhaps the FW card to the new firewire 800 (IE1394a) to allow for the extra bandwidth.)

Drum-mic-wise, I tried using regular mic's, and, well, don't. The nicest kits can end up sounding like pots and pans. Ideally you're looking for a large diaphragm kick mic, one for between the snare and hats, two overheads and in an ideal world one for each tom. You can get everything you need for around 150 quid. (sans cables perhaps) Ebay is the most convenient place to find them, although you do have to be a bit careful with your selection when it comes to the bass drum mic. I know many people who have bought a capable set but have had to upgrade the kick mic for one reason or another. (Harmony Central is a wonderful resource for this kind of info!)

In both the mic sense and interface, you very much get what you pay for. I'd love to have a spare grand to throw at my setup, but as with many things it's difficult to know when to stop!

Regarding taking the vocals from an out on the PA, I'd reccomend you don't unless it's only ever going to be for band reference purpouses - the bleed will be huge and the singer won't preform well. By all means have him coming out of the pa while you record the rest of the band, (I do find it surprisingly difficult to remember my cues when I can't hear our singer) but you'll be much happier laying the vocal track(s) down afterwards. You also free up another channel this way.

I know I've rambled on for ages but I've only touched the tip of the iceberg. It's well worth reading up on if it's something you enjoy and there are loads of websites as reference. I don't know if anyone's mentioned it already, but Tweakhedz would be a great place to start: [url="http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm"]http://www.tweakheadz.com/guide.htm[/url]

Blimey, longest post ever!!

[Jamesemt]

Cheers for that huge reply. Looks like its a bit of a minefield

Will check that link.

[ShergoldSnickers]

Just a few notes on recording the drums.

1. To get a really good kit sound - you need a good kit. OK, pretty obvious, but just make sure all the drums are properly tuned, anything that needs oiling is oiled etc.

2. To get a really good kit sound you need to start with some good overheads. Everything else for the kit will hang of this sound. I have a Rode NT4 stereo condenser - a good bang for buck ratio. Its a cinch to set up - no fear of phase problems from having two single mics too far apart when other kits mics are brought in. It's positioned about a foot or two higher than the highest cymbal and gives a natural sounding stereo image. Two condensers in an [url="http://www.recording-microphones.co.uk/XY-coincident-stereo.shtml"]XY config[/url] would do also. Pan one mic right, one mic left, instant natural stereo image.

The xy method is not all there is - it's just that I find it most convenient in the form of a ready made stereo mic.

When mixing, you start with the overhead sound, and bring in everything else on the kit bit by bit. Crap overhead sound? Crap kit sound on mixdown. Oh one last thing - don't forget to remove the straight jacket from the drummer.

[Biggsy]

[quote name='Jamesemt' post='179825' date='Apr 18 2008, 03:16 PM']Looks like its a bit of a minefield [/quote]

PC's (and Mac's to a degree) will always cause their fair share of headaches with high-resource apps like audio sequencers. I guess what I was trying to get accross is that a well thought out, considered approach will give better results, but you knew that!

Sorry for the huge reply - I'm a bit over-enthusiastic about PC recording at the moment after reading a huge amount into it while I try to decide how to upgrade. I don't mean to put you off by any means, more of a mind-vomit on my behalf

I'm positive you could be up and running with a nice stable system easily for 300 quid. Which sequencer were you thinking of using?

[cheddatom]

[quote name='ShergoldSnickers' post='180013' date='Apr 18 2008, 05:58 PM']When mixing, you start with the overhead sound, and bring in everything else on the kit bit by bit. Crap overhead sound? Crap kit sound on mixdown.[/quote]

That's great advice! Lots of students tend to think that overheads are close mics for the crashes.

[mr.sibs]

[quote name='wulf' post='169659' date='Apr 4 2008, 10:09 AM']What is the reason for wanting to use the PC rather than just sticking with the H2? One of the attractions of the latter for me was that it is trivial to get the recording from the H2 onto a computer as a digital sound file (which had been an ongoing frustration with minidisk).

Wulf[/quote]


i have been using one of these for a little while instead of micing up a full practise, if your careful with the positioning you can get a stereo (or dual stereo) file that will allow you to hear everything, and again with the above points, will stop a whirlwing of expense and time

[OldGit]

Hi
I'm looking for a way to record rehearsals (some with 20 + horns and a section) with a small no hassle recorder that produces something I can easily put onto my MP3 player, PC and CDs ..
This is just for me to learn the tunes, mostly. No requirement for great quality beyond the ability to hear things and avoiding overload distortion (used to get that on cassette recorders - yup it's been that long since I did anything like this ...

Looks like you guys like your H2's ... any difficulties with them or other makes and models to look at?
Am I right in thinking you can load the recordings into sound editing software such as Cubase LE (I have that somewhere) and then add tracks etc?

Thanks
OldGit, recording numpty .....