N00b at live recording...

[ronnus]

I've tried recording my band in the practise room using a single mic and a laptop running Audacity. I know this isn't ideal in the slightest, but is there any way to get it to sound, well, less sh1t?

Any instrument being recorded on its own sounds pretty decent, but when everyone's playing together the mic seems to get "overloaded" - the bass and drums are right up front in the mix, and the guitars and vocals are fairly lost.

I have a feeling the only answer will be to use separate mics and a mixer (and maybe a more "pro" setup lol), but has anyone made a single mic work when recording live? I've tried rearranging the guitar amps and PA to better capture them & messing with Audacity settings, and that's worked to an extent, but still not ideal. Would a shockmount for the mic help drop the bass and drums out a bit? Should I just stop being stingy and pay the rehearsal studio place to record us live?

Also has anyone tried any cheap, all-in-one digital recorders, like the Zoom H4 in a live/rehearsal situ?

Any help/advice/slagging-off gratefully received!

[WalMan]

It really comes down to experimentation (no sh1t Sherlock )

Years ago my band used to rehearse in a small but reasonably dead studio and often recorded straight to a reel to reel with a stereo mike pair, or even the guitarists boombox so that we could take ideas away to work on & learn, with passable results.

I have bags full of gig recordings on cassette, that I really must find the time to put into digital form before they disintegrate, that were recorded on nothing more than a hi fi deck or the guitarists which are fine as a record of the [url="http://www.myspace.com/akindoffury"]evening [/url]

I suppose it depends what you want the recording for, your own purposes or to post on your MySpace & send off to get gigs.

If its just for yourself to work on then tweak on as you are, but if it is for wider use then with the price of recording gear nowadays then you should really throw a bit more at it. Perhaps a couple of [url="http://www.studiospares.com/pd_450430_BOUNDARY%20MICROPHONE.htm"]boundary mics[/url] operating as a pair in the room.

Recording with just a (decent) stereo mic will give the band as a whole an idea of how members are interacting and whether everyone is playing for themselves.

Sorry these are developing into the random noodlings of an old fart

[The Funk]

You can record a mono recording with just one mic BUT instrument placement will have to be spot on before you record as it'll be the only way you have of setting levels.

If you're using a dynamic mic (Shure SM57-type job) then you should consider upgrading to a decent condenser mic to pick up the room sound better: the best "cheap" option is the Rode NT1, which comes in at around £130.

The other thing worth investing in is a decent mic preamp. Samson do a valve mic pre for under £70 (Samson C Valve). You could plug your condenser into that and the preamp into the laptop.

If you don't have a budget for this at all then pay for a few extra mics for the rehearsal room and use one mic for the vocals, one for the guitar amp, and one mic for the room (which you say picks up bass and drums quite well). Then plug everything into the PA mixer that's in the room. Then plug out of the stereo output of the mixer into the mic input on your laptop (which is also stereo). Record the entire signal as a stereo track on Audacity.

To plug out of the stereo output of the mixer into the mic input of your laptop you'll need two long guitar-type cables, a 1/4" jack Y-adaptor and a 1/4"-1/8" stereo jack adaptor. The Y-adaptor and 1/4"-1/8" adaptor might cost you around 5 quid and the extra mics might just cost you around the same for a session. So if you literally have a budget of ten quid, I'd do it that way.

In Motown's studios they only used 3 mics total!

[paul, the]

This I'll be bookmarking.

[alexclaber]

I regularly record rehearsals with the video function on my digital camera, and then pull the audio track off the file with mediacoder. You need to bear in mind the following:

1. Both mics and instruments have varying directionality - use this to your advantage when positioning the recorder; i.e. close to the bass amp but pointing towards drum kit and vocal PA and pointing away from guitar amp tends to balance quite well.

2. You need to get as much direct sound and as little reflected sound as possible. The best way to achieve this is to keep the volume down in the room.

3. You need to play within the limits of the recorder and its mic to minimise distortion.

IMO single mic recording is more revealing of how well a band is playing than anything else.

Good luck!

Alex

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I've tried various types of recording device to record rehearsals in the last few years: DAT, minidisk, iRiver H340 HDD MP3 player with PZM mics, a Stereo electret mic, a matched pair of phantom powered condenser mics, using a variety of cables, mixers etc sometimes with various Heath Robinson-like configurations. It would usually take up a fair bit of rehearsal time to set up and even longer to get the results edited down to CD.

Then we used some gig funds towards get a zoom H4, a couple of 2GB cards and some rechargable AAs. Now it takes literally a minute to set up the H4 on a cameral tripod press record and the whole rehearsal can be recorded very easily in the best sound quality I have been able to get of all the setups.

I then put the card into the reader on my laptop, pull the CD quality WAV file across and edit in Magix Audio Cleaner 10 (whichwas going cheap in PC world) I can edit a rehearsal down to CD and make copies a lot quicker and easier than before.

I have also used this to record our gigs (the other methods I had tried were too much hassle to set up) and we have used CDs created to make a live demo that has got us more gigs.

[51m0n]

My advice - get a pair of PZMs (pressure zone microphone).

You can record huge volumes with them - the design means they are always in phase regardless of room placement. You stick them on the wall and they use the entire wall as a sounding plate.

Tandy used to do them cheap - they were about £30.00 a pop - which were much more expensive capsules that didn't quite come up to spec, and without doubt the best cheap recording mic solution I have ever heard.

Needless to say they are very few and far between now, but keep your eyes open!

Si

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

[quote name='51m0n' post='62357' date='Sep 18 2007, 09:44 PM']My advice - get a pair of PZMs (pressure zone microphone).[/quote]
I have a pair of "tandy/realistic" PZMs. & they work very well.They are actually balanced mics: you can snip off the minijacks & put on XLRs. Converting them to phantom powering can also be done but is very fiddly.

I used to swear by them ,but as you have to sort out the batteries, cables and recording device I'd always use the H4 these days.

[deksawyer]

For a not-so-bad live recording of The Polis (from a digital camera - a casio I think) check out this;

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUwj5WM3G0Y"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUwj5WM3G0Y[/url]

That's me hiding behind the right speaker!.

A few people have mentioned the Zoom H4; it's OK but the H2 is far better at this sort of thing, especially recording a band rehearsal.

Cheaper as well.

D.