Newbie needs help recording band

[MarkW]

Hi all

For no reason other than that I am the youngest, I have been given the task of recording our band for demo CDs and our website. I’ve never done this before, so any guidance from some of you more experienced folks would really be appreciated.

We have guitar, bass, drums, two keyboards, and vocals - one lead and 2 or 3 backing (depends how hard I need to concentrate on the bass part). I’ve done a little research and either the Zoom R16 or R24 look like they might be good choices: both have great reviews, are within our budget, offer simultaneous recording on 8 tracks, operate as DAW controllers and come bundled with Cubase. At the moment I don’t think the R24 offers any major advantages over the R16 for our purposes, but on the basis that we only want to buy this gear once I’m wondering if it might be an idea to buy the higher spec machine in case we start getting more creative at a later date. Any views?

My initial thinking was that I could take the line out or DI output from the guitar, bass, keyboard and vocal amps and run them straight into the Zoom, one per channel. I’m guessing the DI approach gives a cleaner signal (i.e. no other instruments getting picked up on the track), but I have read that miking the speakers gives a more natural sounding result. Are there any pros and cons of each approach? And if I mike the speakers what sort of microphones would you recommend? I see that some are designed specifically for bass drums, but are there also some better suited to guitar or bass? And what’s the best way to mike a drum kit? One for the bass drum and a single overhead?

Apologies for all the questions, but really grateful for any advice.

Cheers

Mark

[lettsguitars]

I would just get a in/out box with 8 inputs and a laptop and cubase le (free with a lot of in/outs) if it's just for live recording and mixing. Forget zoom stuff or anything else that is aimed at recording 'on the fly' as they tend to complicate matters in my experience. You'll need a couple of large diaphram condensor mics. One for a drum overhead and one as a room mic. All other mics can be sure sm57 style or small condensors for guitars. DI the keys and bass. Overdub vocals. There are a million and one ways to do it but I'd stick to one mic for the drums. Of course you can just record everything live with 3 or 4 condensor mics placed strategically around the room. You'll have to do a little research into mic placements etc to get the best out of your equipment.

[Rimskidog]

what's your budget?

[MarkW]

The budget is about £500, and we already have a couple of decent mics and all the cables we're ever likely to need. One of the things that drew me to the Zoom R24 was that it can be used as a DAW controller: using a mouse to move sliders is apparently a right PITA!

[Wooks79]

For £500 you could get some studio time and a producer, save the hassle, and hopefully be happy with the end product.

If its a case of wanting to learn to record and try to make the band self sufficient though, I completely understand.

[51m0n]

£500 from scratch??

You are going to really really struggle if you dont really really know what you are doing.

I would say that moving faders with a mouse is a lot cheaper than a great DAW controller, and whilst the Zoom devices are good as budget tracking devices, dont rely on them as DAW controllers, and about the least PITA seperate tracking devices as it gets, and as far as I can see you haven't budgeted for mics, or cables. Oh the Zoom stuff is crap as a straight ahead interface IME too.

A decent cheap large diaphragm condensor (for vocals) is close to £500 (AT4045), a pair of good small diaphragm condensors (CM3s or Little Blondies) are going to cost you £200 at least. You could get a drum micing kit (Red5Audio's one is about the best bang for the buck at about £200)

Leads will cost £20 ea, If you are trying to track live and you know your beans you can just about get away with 8 inputs, in a great room, with a great sounding drum kit played brilliantly.

Of course to keep the sound of a laptop and recording interface down it needs to be a fair way away, so you'll need a couple of stage boxes with say 8m multicores, £150ea.

DAW software to mix on $60 for Reaper.

The best cheap 8 input interface is a Steinberg ur824, and thats going to blow your budget without any mics so dont go that way (yet). DO that once you have outgrown the Z16 (in a year or two).

My advice?

Dont record 'live', consider the Z16 a tracking device and mix on a laptop. Free VSTs and Reaper will get you as far as anything else mixwise, its all about your skill. truthfully it will take you several years to learn to mix minimum. Try and find a great space to record in, bigger spaces tend to have less acoustic issues in them with nasty early reflections - great for drums - scout huts and church halls are well worth making inquiries about IME. Smaller deader spaces for the rest.

Get the Red5Audio drum mics and use them for the drums, DI the bass, get a Sennheiser e835 for guitar. Get an e845 for vocals. Second hand is OK for the Sennheisers, watch out for fakes though.

Get down drums bass and guitar with a guide vocal, try and get the vocal out of the way. Overdub the rest.

Always mic guitar amps. Never DI anything but ultra clean guitar.

Small diaphragm condensors on acoustics.

You have a very very very steep learning curve ahead of you, enjoy it, consider everything you buy an investment.

[Bigjas]

I have just started learning how to go about recording our band. Listen to the advice from those who know, it will save you a lot of time and money in the long run. I have gone down the laptop and interface route to enable myself to expand at a later date. I felt that the Zoom type recorders were quite limiting for people that really know their stuff. (I hope one day I will know my stuff)

I bought a Tascam US-2000 usb Interface off ebay for just over £200 (retails at £400), It comes with Cubase LE and has up to 16 inputs. I use it with my laptop that is more than capable of running Cubase. I have not really had a problem using a mouse to control the sliders yet. I am currently at the stage of being able to record tracks and play around with effects etc, I have not got round to mixing and mastering yet, as I understand it, thats the really hard bit to get right ......................



What I have learned so far is that £500 can be just the begining of 'recording GAS', and I am suffering from GAS in a big way at the moment.

Like 51m0n says, its a very steep learning curve, and I am really enjoying it at the moment.

Jas

[51m0n]

I forgot headphones, heapdphone amps etc

Add another couple of hundred quid for that too (the bass is DI'ed remember).


Before you completely despair, the first 3 tracks [url="http://www.invisiblelandscapes.co.uk/lh_music.html"]here (Lines Horizontal)[/url] were built in a similar way (the drums were in fact tracked with a Zoom H4n for OH with a mic on kick and another on snare, recorded in a pretty dead rehearsal room quite deliberately chosen because the acoustic allowed us to superimpose different acoustics upon it come mix time).

It can be done, but its a very slow process and you have to really know your beans to get a great result out of it. You also have to understand the limitations of this approach and work within them. This is rather harder to explain really, but its to do with the feel of the track, its a construction as much as it is people playing, all the instrumentation is played live, but none is played together, its all done to a click track and the samples/programmed synths are designed and built first. Everything is subjected to the tightest scrutiny and editing (if that is deemed necessary) after the tracking process.

There was heavy use of sequenced parts to help generate the right feel for the drummer, and so on during this project, he is also a genius at editing parts (I tracked the drums and mixed the results - he tracked guitars and bass, edited the work, did synth sound design and programming, sourced and sequqnced the samples - I got off easy!). It really helps that both the drummer in this band and I have been sound engineering for about 20 years each, he knows what he wants, he trusts me to be able to fashion the mix exactly how he wants it, better than he can himself. I know he can hear when its right, I cna trust him to give me great tracks to mix, with all the 'work' part done. If there is noise on a track when I get it, its because he wants there to be noise on the track in the mix at that point (he goes so far as to get the right noise in the right places) its all evocative stuff, with a purpose and it should all be there, all I do is try and get everything to really sit as well together as it possibly can.

This is far cheaper in terms of gear outlay to achieve than tracking a band live. You need far less tracks, less controlled space etc etc If you band is keen to be playing 'live' then I think £500 is a little unrealistic personally.

Edited December 10, 2012 by 51m0n

[Zenitram]

So yeah you should be fine really.

[BigRedX]

I'm with Wooks79 and can't help thinking that your budget might be better spent on some time in a decent studio.

I've been a home recordist since I first started playing back in the mid 70s and if you think that musical instrument GAS is a big black hole waiting to suck in all your money, it's got nothing on recording equipment. I've spent 10s of thousands of pounds on recording equipment - both hardware and software, and the most important thing I've discovered is that there is no substitute for having a good acoustic space to record in (especially for drums) and to have someone outside the band with a great set of ears to give unbiased critical opinions about your performance while keeping everyone motivated and the session moving along - a producer/engineer.

The recordings I make now are undeniably technically better than the ones I did 30 years ago, but they still don't sound as good as ones I've made in proper studios with someone else in the producer and engineers chairs. I'm always going to be little more than an enthusiastic amateur when it comes to recording, and I've realised that my aspirations are never going to be matched by my abilities in the studio with me as the engineer.

I don't know where you are but £500 will buy you 3 - 4 days in a decent studio here in Nottingham (and maybe more if you get a down-time deal) and if your band is well rehearsed you should get an excellent sounding demo completed in that time.

[RockfordStone]

the other option is you put a post up in your area for people who will come and record you.

you might be lucky to find someone who will charge a smaller fee and all you have to pay for is the time in the rehearsal room.

may old band paid 1200 quid and we got 5 days with a well known producer in a decent studio, for 500 quid im sure you could find a decent persont do it for you

[MarkW]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Many thanks for all the replies folks. After a lot of deliberation we have made a decision.[/font][/color][/size]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]I s[/font][/color][/size][size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]hould perhaps have mentioned that the demo CDs aren’t for anything fancy – just for the few venues that have asked for them prior to booking us, and also for our own use. We’d like to be able to record our rehearsals and gigs well enough to use as practice aids (I’m still not 100% sure what we sound like live to be honest – all I could hear at the last gig was the drums and keyboards, so I guess we need to address our monitoring as well).[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Apparently the drummer has a full set of mics, and I’ll take a look what sort they are when we’re next gigging on Friday. I liked the look of the Red5 Audio set Simon – seven mics for £160, and one of my friends also uses them and rates them pretty highly. If we need to buy new it’s not going to break the bank. If memory serves we have an SM57 to mic the guitar, and I think the two vocal mics are probably the same. Again, I’ll check on Friday. [/font][/color][/size]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Our thinking is pretty much along the lines Simon suggested: we’ll see the R24 as a convenient starting point on our learning journey, and try recording track by track as well as having a crack at some live stuff. When we outgrow it in a year or two we’ll hopefully have enough basic knowledge to make an informed choice on the next step (the RME Fireface 800 or the MOTU 896 both look like class kit, but they’re quite a bit over our budget at the moment).[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Thanks again guys, and who knows – I may even post one of my efforts on here for feedback![/font][/color][/size]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]All the best[/font][/color][/size]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Mark[/font][/color][/size]

[lettsguitars]

[quote name='51m0n' timestamp='1355096904' post='1894111']
£500 from scratch??

You are going to really really struggle if you dont really really know what you are doing.

I would say that moving faders with a mouse is a lot cheaper than a great DAW controller, and whilst the Zoom devices are good as budget tracking devices, dont rely on them as DAW controllers, and about the least PITA seperate tracking devices as it gets, and as far as I can see you haven't budgeted for mics, or cables. Oh the Zoom stuff is crap as a straight ahead interface IME too.

A decent cheap large diaphragm condensor (for vocals) is close to £500 (AT4045), a pair of good small diaphragm condensors (CM3s or Little Blondies) are going to cost you £200 at least. You could get a drum micing kit (Red5Audio's one is about the best bang for the buck at about £200)

Leads will cost £20 ea, If you are trying to track live and you know your beans you can just about get away with 8 inputs, in a great room, with a great sounding drum kit played brilliantly.

Of course to keep the sound of a laptop and recording interface down it needs to be a fair way away, so you'll need a couple of stage boxes with say 8m multicores, £150ea.

DAW software to mix on $60 for Reaper.

The best cheap 8 input interface is a Steinberg ur824, and thats going to blow your budget without any mics so dont go that way (yet). DO that once you have outgrown the Z16 (in a year or two).

My advice?

Dont record 'live', consider the Z16 a tracking device and mix on a laptop. Free VSTs and Reaper will get you as far as anything else mixwise, its all about your skill. truthfully it will take you several years to learn to mix minimum. Try and find a great space to record in, bigger spaces tend to have less acoustic issues in them with nasty early reflections - great for drums - scout huts and church halls are well worth making inquiries about IME. Smaller deader spaces for the rest.

Get the Red5Audio drum mics and use them for the drums, DI the bass, get a Sennheiser e835 for guitar. Get an e845 for vocals. Second hand is OK for the Sennheisers, watch out for fakes though.

Get down drums bass and guitar with a guide vocal, try and get the vocal out of the way. Overdub the rest.

Always mic guitar amps. Never DI anything but ultra clean guitar.

Small diaphragm condensors on acoustics.

You have a very very very steep learning curve ahead of you, enjoy it, consider everything you buy an investment.
[/quote]Way ott imo. I've used an old laptop a coupple of cheap mics (se) and an alesis i/04 with absolutely more than acceptable results for a demo. 500 is more than enough if you already have a computer and a couple of mic leads! You would NEVER in a million years hear the hum of the laptop over a live band.

[51m0n]

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1355314443' post='1896738']
Way ott imo. I've used an old laptop a coupple of cheap mics (se) and an alesis i/04 with absolutely more than acceptable results for a demo. 500 is more than enough if you already have a computer and a couple of mic leads! You would NEVER in a million years hear the hum of the laptop over a live band.
[/quote]

I would disagree (and I record [i]everything[/i]) that a couple of mics would give you a good sounding demo, it can give you an adequate rehearsal tape, and that is about it. For my three piece we record every single rehearsal, we use an H4n to record the drum kit (positioning is a problem, and you can forget a deep kick drum) a senn 835 on the guitar, and a Red5 kick mic on the bass cab (again positioning is critical to balance the port with the cone, or you get less deep low end to playt with). The results are pretty good once they are mixed, certainly good enough as a document of exactly who played what. But demo quality? You have to be kidding

I accept my standards for recordings may be rather diferent than yours, I think this chap probably wants a better than rehearsal tape quality demo. If you want to get gigs the more pro sounding the recording of the band is the easier it becomes IME.

The reason to not use an old laptop and interface for recording is nothing to do with hum from the laptop, its because a really good quality interface (and believe me you want a quality interface for this) is more than the £500 budget alone. And an old laptop is highly unlikely to give you the ability to record more than 2 mics at once anyway (harddrive and buss speeds in laptops are pretty severely curtailed, getting throughput from 8 tracks to disk is a struggle with a less than excellent 8 channel USB interface IME).

Edited December 12, 2012 by 51m0n

[lettsguitars]

A modern computer and budget interface is more than they had in the sixties. They are still deemed radio worthy recordings. I must admit we use a midi drumkit which helps to get a cleaner finish.

[BigRedX]

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1355317046' post='1896793']
A modern computer and budget interface is more than they had in the sixties. They are still deemed radio worthy recordings. I must admit we use a midi drumkit which helps to get a cleaner finish.
[/quote]

What everyone forgets is that when you went and made a recording in the 60s the equipment might not be as flash and versatile as what you can buy now, but it was always the best that was available at the time. It was perfectly set up and maintained. Run by people who knew exactly how to get the best out of it. Plus the recording space and the control room were properly designed acoustically sympathetic environments. You don't get any of those with a budget of £500 unless you spend on studio time with a good engineer.

[51m0n]

[quote name='lettsguitars' timestamp='1355317046' post='1896793']
A modern computer and budget interface is more than they had in the sixties. They are still deemed radio worthy recordings. I must admit we use a midi drumkit which helps to get a cleaner finish.
[/quote]

In the sixties they had 4 and 8 tracks of tape, not 4 or 8 channels necessarily. If you go back to the 50's they had 1 track. I cant think of a time when they were recording to 2 tracks in mono and using overdubbing, they went straight from 1 track and moving people around in the room to 4 tracks and overdubbing (which was still alot of pain due to degradation during bounces.

I can guarantee you that a recording made with 4 tracks of tape in Abbey Road Studio 1 in mono, recorded over some weeks, will sound a whole bunch better than 4 tracks in a rehearsal room recorded in a couple of hours!

Other things they had 'back in the sixities' tube desks (lovely great wodges of glorious saturation),Pultech EQs (have you any idea how much they cost now??), Joe Meek or similar hand built compressors for every channel (oh yes, the Abbey Road compressors are a holy grail all to themselves), Fairchild compressors (don't go there without remortgaging your house), Neumann U47 (FET and tube), KM84 and U67 mics, AKG D12 mics all sorts of beautiful ribbons from the likes of Coles, tape decks you could 'push' hard for more lovely tape compression and saturation. Beautiful big live rooms to put things in to mic with virtually no unwanted sounds in (traffic rumble - room next door with another band in etc etc). A great seperated control room to listen to the soudsn you were capturing. TIME to move mics around until you were absolutely satisfied.

The may have had 4 tracks of tape, or 8, they didnt only use 4 microphones at a time, that is why they had desks with 8 or 16 or more inputs, and other mic summing boxes too.

Furthermore we aren't in the sixties. People (punters) dont expect to hear recordings that sound like the sixities recordings did, unless you are the Bootleg Beatles, in which case you can use 8 tracks, but good luck getting 'that sound' without using all that kit back then. You may get fairly close, but it wont be the same.

No, in order to record something today that sounds contemporary you will need to multitrack beyond 2 channels, if only to get the immediacy and upfrontness of the vocal, drums and bass.

[MarkW]

What would people recommend in terms of inkjet-printable discs for recording audio? Haven't done this for ages - I just bung everything on my iPod, but if we're handing out CDs we may as well get decent ones!

[RockfordStone]

light scribing is an option if your cd drive on your computer has it... takes a bit of time to do but looks a bit nicer

[MarkW]

Now there's a thought - lightscribe does look nice, especially on coloured discs. Have the drives got faster over the last 5 years or so? The reason I moved over to inkjet-printable was because the LS discs took soooooooo long to do!