Recording Forum

[Pine Apple Slim]

But you need a decent demo of 5 min of so of your best stuff to ever get a gig. Its frustrating.

I play in 2 little groups and both are in desparate need of a short demo to ever get out of the garage.

You try to do it live, and the room sucks, you cant get the mix to sound right. You spend the whole rehearsal futzing with mic placement and gain staging and by the time you come upon a half decent mix, your're exausted and your playing sucks.

You try to do it a track at a time and you loose all the energy and feel that makes you sound unique and special. 

The professional studios around here usually charge $600 or so for a 3 song demo, which dosnt include mastering or hard printing to any media, and limit you to 3-4 hrs of recording time. But thats prob what were gonna have to suck up and do. One group has some commercial potential, its oldies 60s rock so if we got a few gigs we could make our money back pretty quick, plus the members are older and have some independant finacial means. THe other group is original music, kinda Americana, led by a 20 something singer/songwriter. Not much real commercial potential for that around here, other than getting in a showcase or something. Plus these guys are younger with less disposable income.

Heres the line up for the 2 groups:

The 60s band: 2 acoustic guitars, sharing voc and lead guitar duties. P bass. Good drummer with a small kit who can fit in with the scaled down acoustic vibe. This group has penty of mics, decent recording equipment at our disposal, but the rehearsal space is small and the live recorded sound just sucks.

The Americana Band: Acoustic guitar singer-sonwrither, elec lead guitarist, myself on bass, upright or sometimes Pbass. No drummer yet. We would prob add a little simple percussion to the demo, in hopes of eventually finding a drummer. This group only has a very basic computer rec set up, audacity, and a 2 ch usb mic interface. I do have an old 4 track Tascam cassette we could use. The rehearsal space is a little bigger, but its a hard room and would prob need considerable treatment to get a decent live recording.

One idea Im kicking around is when the weather warms up, set up outside(we got 1/2 decent PA eq) like it was a private garden party or something, invite a few friends and get someone to videotape us. But if we go to that trouble, we need to make sure the videographer has good sound on his camera and knows something about editing it down to demo length.

I guess Im just venting, or asking for ideas. I hear some recordings posted on here done at home that sound really good. Maybe we just suck, I dunno. 

[Guit-mangler]

I've used a little Tascam DR-05 to capture my band live, it's the little jobby with the two condenser mic's on top.. And if you place it well, it does a great job for live sound. After slight EQ tweaking, it does a damn good job. I use Reaper to tweak it.... I've not got anything online I've recorded with it, though.. PM me and I can send a sample I've done at a gig..

You can usually pick up a DR-05 for about  $100..

[Rudolf von Hag…]

just look that your demo has the kind of energy people expect from your style music,

and that it doesn't hurt in the ear when people turn up the volume knob,

but kicks in the arse, that of course only when you don't do elegant ballads.

[Pine Apple Slim]

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Guit-mangler wrote:

I've used a little Tascam DR-05 to capture my band live, it's the little jobby with the two condenser mic's on top.. And if you place it well, it does a great job for live sound. After slight EQ tweaking, it does a damn good job. I use Reaper to tweak it.... I've not got anything online I've recorded with it, though.. PM me and I can send a sample I've done at a gig..

You can usually pick up a DR-05 for about  $100..

---

The guitarist in the 60s band has one of those. But its been real frustrating getting a good balanced sound with it in our tiny rehearsal space. The room is small and the acoustics just suck.

If we do the set up outside thing, we'll try it again.

[Pine Apple Slim]

Next week at the Americana band practice, I think Im gonna drag out the old Tascam 4trk cassette machine.

We can close mic the voc, 2 guitars, and the bass and maybe get a hot enough singal that bleed over wont be too bad so we can do a quick punch in and out to fix any little flubs. I can play pbass and close mic the amp, put the rhyhm guitar thr an acoustic amp and just have voc in the pa. Spread everybody out as far as possible. But Im worried about tape hiss. Anytime Ive transfered something from it to computer, (audacity) the final digital mix was pretty noisy.

Still, it might be worth a shot.

[Guit-mangler]

---

Pine Apple Slim wrote:

Next week at the Americana band practice, I think Im gonna drag out the old Tascam 4trk cassette machine.

We can close mic the voc, 2 guitars, and the bass and maybe get a hot enough singal that bleed over wont be too bad so we can do a quick punch in and out to fix any little flubs. I can play pbass and close mic the amp, put the rhyhm guitar thr an acoustic amp and just have voc in the pa. Spread everybody out as far as possible. But Im worried about tape hiss. Anytime Ive transfered something from it to computer, (audacity) the final digital mix was pretty noisy.

Still, it might be worth a shot.

---

Actually, you might want to try using the old cassette machine and and the DR-05.. Audacity can be a bit rough. Once you have it on both machines, try downloading Reaper (the full functioning trial run) and sync both recordings on the computer. If you dump the cassette run one track at a time and have the DR-05's room recording, you might end up with a very usable recording. The reason I suggest Reaper is it's free and has a butt-load of filters you can use to clean up the recording and flesh it out... I know it can be a PITA but running it like this would give you more sources to even out the recording.. I would suggest if you do this, have the drummer give a loud hat hit, or snare to give you a reference when syncing the recordings.. 

[VTEC_Dreams]

I was in a band years ago that was *known* for it's live act. The music was great, in my opinion, but the live show was like a freaking circus, and we had quite a "show". So, when we decided to do a recording, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to "capture" that.

The way we figured it out was to track the guitar and drums at the same time, with the singer singing along live during the recording, but with no mic. That way, we could still "work" off of each other, but without any mud in the recording. If he was heard at all, it was okay because it added to the "live feel" of the recording. Also, the bass player played his part the same time, direct in, but with no record button pressed on his line.

So, After the tracking for the guitar and drums were done, the bass and vocals recorded their parts, at the same time, with the drums and guitars going through good headphones. Sure, they had to do their parts twice, but it worked *really* well. We managed a pretty solid mix, and all of us were involved in the whole process, with each take being done more or less together. It didn't take that long (two long afternoons for four tracks which were about 6 minutes a piece), and overall we were very pleased with it.

After the bulk of recording was done, we added backing vocals, guitar solos, and even invited a ton of people over to our space to record a "chorus" section thing with clapping and yelling and beer and shenanigans. It was awesome!

The advantage of doing it that way was that we definitely got to keep the "feel" of the music, and also got to keep our tempo changes, dynamic changes, and "mood" changes in tact without having to do basically any post production. It was essentially one huge cut with lots of stuff going in and out throughout. 

In our group, the guitar and drums were sort of the meat and potatoes of the group, and that's why we did it that way. Depending on who "leads" your band, you might try just recording that person plus the drummer, if for no other reason so the rest of the band has a beat to play with.

Let us know what happens either way.

Good luck!

[WRGKMC]

$600 is cheap.

Look at it this way. With $600 may be able to purchase some recording gear good enough to make a demo. But its like someone whose never played an instrument buying a $600 guitar. That doesn't make them a rock star any more than handing a hammer to a person makes them a carpenter capable of building a house.

Any musician knows that amateur has to spend at least 2 years wood shedding, learning how to play that instrument, then another year or two playing with other musicians in a band till they have something worth listening to others are willing to pay to hear.

Lets say that amateur had the gift beyond all others and he spends 40 hours a week and gets up to speed performing in two years band and all. If he was to recoup his time invested at minimum wage, you're looking at $30,000.

Its the same thing for recording. Just because you have the gift at playing an instrument, tweaking an amp or PA to make it sound decent, it doesn't make you a seasoned audio engineer capable of recording even demo quality recording. Some of the experience as a player does transfer over. The ability to hear tones and know when a mix is half way decent. But the rest has to be learned. It takes time and a whole lot of patience.

Once you get a couple of hundred recordings under your belt it gets easier, but you have to have a passion for it and do it all the time. It costs money or both gear and time invested. If you don't have the ability to sacrifice both, you may be better off just having it done. If your goal is to be a performer, having it done lets you stay focused on playing, not learning a new trade that can take years for you to become proficient at.

If you like recording and see it as a path, and you have the patience and passion to learn, then by all means, go for it. The cost of decent gear never being so low, and with the aid of the internet, there are may short cuts to learning what you need to know.

Poor schmucks like myself had to walk to school up hill both ways. I had to learn most of what I know decades before the PC and internet were around. Just getting your hands on a 4 channel multitrack back then was a major feat and still it cost a couple of grand. Its a good thing I got into electronics as a profession instead of continuing as a performer full time. Repairing the gear full time gave me access to all the latest gear, and when someone couldnt foot the cost of repair and wanted to sell, I was at the front of the line for purchasing it from them. I still had the cost of parts on top of that so it was still expensive.

[Pine Apple Slim]

<<<Just because you have the gift at playing an instrument, tweaking an amp or PA to make it sound decent, it doesn't make you a seasoned audio engineer capable of recording even demo quality recording.>>>>

See thread title

[Pine Apple Slim]

---

VTEC_Dreams wrote:

I was in a band years ago that was *known* for it's live act. The music was great, in my opinion, but the live show was like a freaking circus, and we had quite a "show". So, when we decided to do a recording, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to "capture" that.

The way we figured it out was to track the guitar and drums at the same time, with the singer singing along live during the recording, but with no mic. That way, we could still "work" off of each other, but without any mud in the recording. If he was heard at all, it was okay because it added to the "live feel" of the recording. Also, the bass player played his part the same time, direct in, but with no record button pressed on his line.

So, After the tracking for the guitar and drums were done, the bass and vocals recorded their parts, at the same time, with the drums and guitars going through good headphones. Sure, they had to do their parts twice, but it worked *really* well. We managed a pretty solid mix, and all of us were involved in the whole process, with each take being done more or less together. It didn't take that long (two long afternoons for four tracks which were about 6 minutes a piece), and overall we were very pleased with it.

After the bulk of recording was done, we added backing vocals, guitar solos, and even invited a ton of people over to our space to record a "chorus" section thing with clapping and yelling and beer and shenanigans. It was awesome!

The advantage of doing it that way was that we definitely got to keep the "feel" of the music, and also got to keep our tempo changes, dynamic changes, and "mood" changes in tact without having to do basically any post production. It was essentially one huge cut with lots of stuff going in and out throughout. 

In our group, the guitar and drums were sort of the meat and potatoes of the group, and that's why we did it that way. Depending on who "leads" your band, you might try just recording that person plus the drummer, if for no other reason so the rest of the band has a beat to play with.

Let us know what happens either way.

Good luck!

---

Thanks. That seems like an approach that could work. Esp in the 60s band where we have a drummer.

We could sing unmiced and play one guitar unmiced, and record 2 tracks, the other guitar and the drums. The 2 guitars and the drums is the core of the band. That might capture some of the live feel. The we could go back and add the rest. We have one of those digital multitracks in the studio, but it can only do 2 tracks at a time. Its been hard to get a good room mix using it trying to record eveybody. Might could even go direct with the guitar, (Martin or Eastman with decent blender type pickups system) so the only live mics would be on the drums. The drummer has a little submixer, so we could possibly multi mic his kit.

The other band, dosnt own nearly as much good equipment, no condenser mics or a multitrack (other than my old cassette). The songwriter is planning on getting some software besides Audacity to lay down some basic guitar/voc tracks on his own. I may suggest Reaper. I have Mixcraft on my laptop and have played with it a little, it seems to work as good as anything for basic 2 track recording. Its touted as a Garage Band clone and has nice drum looping features. THe effects arn't that great but there is a wider selection than Audacity and seem to be a little higher quality and some are somewhat usable.

 Would Reaper be as easy to use or easier? You've said it has good syncing features, how about hte effects that come with it, usable for simple stuff like light reverb, some decent mic preamp emulations?

[Rudolf von Hag…]

we do not know what your demo is for,

but I can tell you that I receive demos made with dictaphone,

and I still hear if the music is good or not

[Pine Apple Slim]

Demo is for local watering holes, coffee shops, booking agents for local
podunk festivals and street fairs etc. Not looking to set the world on fire, just 5-6 min of "here this is what we do".

[Pine Apple Slim]

And yea, I'd settle for a damn iPhone video if we had someone competent to do it so we could forget about it and just play.

[relictele]

A) I sympathize with your plight.

B) No mention of a DAW although you mention tracking.   If you need to go cheap i.e. free using your own DAW/mic could you play the song(s) more than once as a group to keep the vibe but record only one instrument per run through and combine the various instrument takes thereafter?

C) Jealous. Would love to be in either band as you've described them. I moved recently and despite the size of the new city the music scene is disproportionately dead.

[Jkater]

---

WRGKMC wrote:

$600 is cheap.

Look at it this way. With $600 may be able to purchase some recording gear good enough to make a demo. But its like someone whose never played an instrument buying a $600 guitar. That doesn't make them a rock star any more than handing a hammer to a person makes them a carpenter capable of building a house.

Any musician knows that amateur has to spend at least 2 years wood shedding, learning how to play that instrument, then another year or two playing with other musicians in a band till they have something worth listening to others are willing to pay to hear.

Lets say that amateur had the gift beyond all others and he spends 40 hours a week and gets up to speed performing in two years band and all. If he was to recoup his time invested at minimum wage, you're looking at $30,000.

Its the same thing for recording. Just because you have the gift at playing an instrument, tweaking an amp or PA to make it sound decent, it doesn't make you a seasoned audio engineer capable of recording even demo quality recording. Some of the experience as a player does transfer over. The ability to hear tones and know when a mix is half way decent. But the rest has to be learned. It takes time and a whole lot of patience.

Once you get a couple of hundred recordings under your belt it gets easier, but you have to have a passion for it and do it all the time. It costs money or both gear and time invested. If you don't have the ability to sacrifice both, you may be better off just having it done. If your goal is to be a performer, having it done lets you stay focused on playing, not learning a new trade that can take years for you to become proficient at.

If you like recording and see it as a path, and you have the patience and passion to learn, then by all means, go for it. The cost of decent gear never being so low, and with the aid of the internet, there are may short cuts to learning what you need to know.

Poor schmucks like myself had to walk to school up hill both ways. I had to learn most of what I know decades before the PC and internet were around. Just getting your hands on a 4 channel multitrack back then was a major feat and still it cost a couple of grand. Its a good thing I got into electronics as a profession instead of continuing as a performer full time. Repairing the gear full time gave me access to all the latest gear, and when someone couldnt foot the cost of repair and wanted to sell, I was at the front of the line for purchasing it from them. I still had the cost of parts on top of that so it was still expensive.

---

WRGKMC, you really know your stuff and I appreciate how you share and help others. Thanks!

[WRGKMC]

Thanks, I just try to put a little common sense in there and put things into perspective. I just read allot of posts by musicians who get discouraged after their first few attempts at recording. If you were learning to play a song on a guitar for the first time, its may require you playing that song a hundred times to get good at it even if you have an instructor teaching you to play it properly.

Its no different for any other trade including audio recording. Even if you go to a recording school and are trained in the field, it requires more than a diploma, it requires a dedicated work discipline that leads to experience. With that experience you can begin to perfect your abilities and develop lines of approach to a project that are both good and unique. 

When you do it on your own, It takes a good deal of blind faith in the beginning. You have no one to tell you if your methods are the most proficient or correct.  You hear many say the end results are all that matters, but that's only a half truth. Knowing the rules and breaking them for a desire effect is much different than stumbling around and getting lucky on occasion. Yes, both music and recording are arts requiring freedom of expression, but its also requires some foundation to build upon. 

Once you get the basics down you can create repeatable results that can be used as tools in a larger and more intricate projects. Start simple and refine what you do as you go. If you find something that works well, document what you did to get there and you can reuse the method with added variations. 

Musicians do this all the time weather they know it, or are willing to admit it. They see another player playing live or hear their recording and they analyze it to death then take what they hear and apply it to their own playing. This is more difficult for recording because few musicians spend any time at all in a pro studio so have no first hand experience to build upon yet one session in a pro studio could save them years dorking around with a beginner setup. So, as I say, If you're a performer, and have never recorded in a pro studio before, its worth every dime you spend on it "If" you aren't blind to the efforts by others putting their experience into the process.

I'm presently completing a set of recordings for a local band. I didn't get one call from them to sit in on a mixing session. Part of this is they trust me to do good work, but it also shows their lack of passion for learning. Its not to say the mixing process is exactly entertaining. Much of it is totally boring. But when you've gotten the mix close to being done and you're adding the smaller refinements, a musician can learn more in one hour the decades of struggling on their own. Just soloing the results of their own playing will expose every playing and tonal flaw the engineer has to deal with making their parts fit into a mix. With that knowledge it can make the performer more aware of how tight their performance and tone must be to go a step beyond amateur and often build upon that experience with them for the rest of their lives.

[VTEC_Dreams]

Well said, sir.