Rehearsal recording (with Android/smart phone) using a mic?

[Chest Rockwell]

This must have been tackled before but I cant find anything... just wondered if anyone does lo-fi band recordings and how?

Back in the day it was just a tape recorder, a few years ago I used to use a sony ericsson c905 phone and that was good... but my last HTC was rubbish so I gave up. Now have a galaxy S5 and I'm thinking of buying a microphone to plug into it to pick up the blasting noise and reduce it so that I can get a listenable recording.

Any thoughts/ideas?

I'm really not looking to buy mixing desks or get complicated, I dont need perfect recordings, just a balance of live drums, bass and two guitars, so that it's listenable and mp3's can be sent to the band members.

cheers!!

[neepheid]

I swear by my Zoom H2N Handy Recorder. Just plonk it somewhere in the room where you get best results (probably not right next to the drums) and hit record. Well worth the money. There's a smaller one (H1N) which is about £70 and will probably do a right good job as well, I went for the H2N because of the flexibility of different microphone arrangements, analogue gain wheel and I feel a better ergonomic packaging.

An example out of the rehearsal room recorded simply with the Zoom H2N in Mid-Side mode at its widest (150 degrees) setting ("47 Days" by my band The Inevitable Teaspoons)

[media]http://www.ifb.co.uk/~matthew/mp3/Teaspoons/practice20140325/47%20Days.mp3[/media]

[thisnameistaken]

I got a used Zoom H2 on here last year for 80 quid. On it's lowest gain setting it works great for recording bands in small rehearsal rooms, and it's nice to actually hear the bass and not just a woolly distorted mess.

[gadgie]

Don't use a phone to record something...the guitarist will throw it into the rafters




sorry

[JapanAxe]

I have had good results from a Blue Mikey that plugs into the (old-style) dock connector of my iPod. There are 3 sensitivity levels (selected via a switch on the mic), and you can set the iPod (or iPhone I guess) to record at low or high quality. Next time you connect to your computer, the .wav files are imported into iTunes. After that you can do what you want with them e.g. upload to Dropbox for the rest of the band to listen to.

Great for proving that the guitar(s) is/are too loud!

[livingbasshead]

+1 for the H2N. I record our rehearsals, then bring out the sound with a bit of eq and reverb, sometimes a little compression in wavepad (free) with some VST plug ins (also free). You can really improve the H2N raw recordings in this way and with your presets saved in the software it's really quick.

Other than that if you really want to just use your phone you might find the built in mic is fine - i had a galaxy s3 which was crap, i now have an iphone 5 which is much better so maybe the S5 has a better mic than older models. You could plug an external mic in to the S5 but if it's a normal vocal mic it won't be much better (if any)

[johnnymire]

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1406904301' post='2515804']
I swear by my Zoom H2N Handy Recorder.[/quote]

+1. Absolutely fantastic. Used it for years until it got stolen Now I use [url="http://www.magix.com/gb/make-music/"]Music Maker[/url] on my laptop and connect a stereo mic pair to a soundcard and record that way. Functional, but not as convenient. I know that there are some good interfaces available for iOS which you can use XLR mics, even phantom power etc. but I feel that we aren't there yet in terms of processing power. Long story short, cannot recommend a standalone, good quality recorder enough.

[neepheid]

I would also like to point out that I've had zero success recording loud stuff on any Android phone I've owned to date (HTC Hero, HTC Desire S, Motorola RAZR i) - clips all to hell and back again, no manual mic gain override, just bloody useless. iPhones seem to do pretty good though. Your phone might be different, but that's my experience.

[Happy Jack]

[quote name='neepheid' timestamp='1409050292' post='2535742']
I would also like to point out that I've had zero success recording loud stuff on any Android phone I've owned to date (HTC Hero, HTC Desire S, Motorola RAZR i) - clips all to hell and back again, no manual mic gain override, just bloody useless. iPhones seem to do pretty good though. Your phone might be different, but that's my experience.
[/quote]

I looked into this when messing around with SPL monitoring apps. Turns out that HTC and Samsung phones have an in-built limiter which cuts in surprisingly early - can't remember the dB level but I remember immediately abandoning any idea of downloading the apps!

[Marsy]

I just plug a tascam mic into my iphone and it plonk my phone somewhere in the room. You can angle the mics and control the gain. Works well enough for me. 1 click and ya can upload it to soundcloud to share with the band too!