How to record a live band?

[brian123]

How to record a live band?

I am new at recording a live band. I have a matched pair of Octavi mc-12 small condenser microphones, An Audix -5 microphone dynamic microphone and a large diaphgram Studio Project C-1 microphone in my mike cabinet. Do I have enough mics to make a decent live recording of a band who plays classic rock? I will be a recording a singer who plays electric guitar, another electric guitarist, a bass player and a drummer at bar thru the bars pa system. What cables and extras do I need? What cables do you use from the Pa system out to the Korg 3200? Where do I place the microphones? Do I just let the Korg record a 45 minute set. Then stop the machine when the band takes a break. And push record when the band starts the second set.

I always hear how live recordings sound great thru the board. Can I set the Korg to record thru the board? My only experience recording is using a matched pair of Oktavi mc-12s overheads on a drum and then overdubbing electric and acoustic guitars and vocals . Never recorded a live band playing in the room. Should I first just record their band rehearsal to get some experience, then maybe later after recording a rehearsal and getting to know the band better record them at the bar.

I barely know the guitar player. I only been to one of their gigs.This was last week. I know the guitar player because I went over to his apartment 6 years ago with my guitar and jammed. I worked with him at a job 6 years ago. But had not seen him for six years till I saw him at a music shop. I don't know the rest of the band but got introduced to the singer last week.

I know I would have to work with their soundman and a sound rehearsal. Would they they think I am interferring and getting in their way? Or would they be grateful I showed an interest in the band and glad I recorded them ? They can play back the recording so they can listen for what they did good and their flaws? I'm a little afraid of asking them.

My motivation is to take the Korg to the next level. It has been collecting dust and I feel it is long overdue to use it for what it was intended for and learn some new skills. I think the band would benefit from hearing themselves on digital too. How do I go about doing this?

 

 

chord

[Coaster]

Oktava mk-012?

 

audix i5?

 

i record live bands as a large part of my income. you are in a world of hurt if you think its anything that is simple or easy, like making toast with a toaster or using any other simple appliance.

 

getting results requires extreme preparation, skill, money, equipment, and luck.

 

a splitter with lifts and a 16+ track 24bit recorder is a good start, good vox mics and a handful of 57's. set up some lincoln box mics for in-time ambiance/crowd mics = you need these.

 

toast is for toasters; board mixes are for punks.

[brian123]

I have a Korg 3200. 24 bit.32-track digital multi-track recorder

The D3200 provides studio-quality sound with 64-bit internal processing, 24/16-bit recording and

playback, and 48 kHz/44.1 kHz uncompressed recording.

When using 48 kHz/44.1 kHz sampling and 16-bit depth

?1

When using 48 kHz/44.1 kHz sampling and 24-bit depth

?1

*16 channels is the maximum, combining 12 analog inputs, + 2 digital inputs (S/P DIF L,R), + 2 Session Drums (L,R).

**12 channels using any combination of analog inputs, digital inputs and Session Drums.

? XLR input jacks with +48V phantom power, analog inputs, dedicated guitar input jack,

and digital connectors

To maximize the bene?t of the D3200

[Coaster]

the korg d3200 only records 12 tracks at a time and only has 8 mic pres. you probably cant do a full blown rock setup with that, although you could do a reduced setup and it would be ok.

 

your mics are ok, might want to look at rode nt1000, cad m179, shure sm57, sm58, at4041.

 

you could make an 8 channel splitter if you have some skill and patience. i made a 12 channel one out of an old medusa, it took around 40 hours.

[brian123]

You seemed very skilled perhaps you could tell me how to construct a 3way splitter from a medusa. What is a medusa? Perhaps this book would instruct me to build a splitter http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Projects-Musicians-Music-America/dp/0825695023/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293648182&sr=8-1

this looks like a good book for live recording http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0240808916/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

[Bobby1Note]

Brian,

 

With all due respect, you said you barely know the guitar-player, and you don't know the others in the band. Don't you think you should get to know them a little better, and discuss your recording project with them beforehand, before sinking dough into this project? I certainly wouldn't assume that the sound-guy is going to give a stranger, complete access to his board, just so he can make a recording.

[Coaster]

are you sure you need a 3 way splitter? are you already using a 2 way splitter for monitor world?

 

there are many ways to build a splitter, you could make a regular snake type splitter (a medusa is a regular snake) but a more flexible solution would be to use a rack panel and greenlee punch. this way you wouldnt need to have permanent tails; the split would be a panel and you would patch mic lines to the panel, and whips to the panel to go to foh, monitor world, and the recorder.

 

if you get much more fancy than that you may need transformers but i think you will be fine without them.

 

or, maybe you could just make 8 wye cables to start with; two male and one female xlr on a wye cable made from 18" if install cable. that would be cheap and you could try out some concepts without too much hassle.

 

where in the world are you located brian123?

[trevcda]

In the interest of using what you've got...

Depending on the FOH console, you could take balanced XLRs from the eight sub group outs and feed them to the first eight inputs on your Korg. Find a couple of preamps and run two crowd mics into the next two channels. Properly assigned, that will give you eight individual tracks to EQ and mix along with the stereo crowd channels with room for overdubs if you felt inclined to add them. Think guitar on one, bass on the next, drums on the next two, etc. This is dependant on the board operator and thier willingness to allow you (and your potential for inducing bad grounds, clicks and buzzes) to patch into thier system. I also use a ART MDM8L to add brickwall limiting to those eight channels. This is really handy when I'm the baord operator and I don't want to babysit the levels into the recorder while I'm mixing a live show. I've gotten tracks that were way more than sufficient for playing around with and reveiwing with the group. Nothing I'd sell, not that I haven't heard much worse recordings being sold professionally. This suggestions is for something to play around with. Getting your feet wet so to speak. If you're thinking of making money at doing something like this re-read this response to your original post:

 

 

I record live bands as a large part of my income. you are in a world of hurt if you think its anything that is simple or easy, like making toast with a toaster or using any other simple appliance. getting results requires extreme preparation, skill, money, equipment, and luck. a splitter with lifts and a 16+ track 24bit recorder is a good start, good vox mics and a handful of 57's. set up some lincoln box mics for in-time ambiance/crowd mics = you need these. toast is for toasters; board mixes are for punks.

 

[brian123]

I'm pretty sure the band is using a 2 way splitter. I lifted the following from Recording magazine Jan 2011

"You will need a 3 way split in addition to the FOH and monitor legs,the splitter will also feed the mic lines to your recording gig."

 

The brand new issue of Recording magazine Jan 2011. The cover story is Live Recording. Working with the Soundman.

"The article states the 4 essentials are

1. mics

2. pres

3. recorder

4. headphones

"Bose noise cancelling phones are the best. Before I had to monitor at painful volumes."

 

Some of the points of the article

 

"Stereo miking approach works well with acoustic performances. Stereo miking does not work with PA systems amplifiers"

 

"Board tapes are notoriously bad. The live sound mix will often omit musical elements already loud in the room, In smaller indoor venues drums and guitar amplifiers are loud on their own and therefore are downplayed in my mix. So the mix will have loud vocals and soft guitar and drums. Yuck"

 

"As for using more preamps,the truely budget approach is to share the front of house console pres. The real challenge is getting an ornery sound engineer to play along. Not only must the engineer allow you to patch cables into his console,he has to oblige your requests when a preamp gain setting is less than ideal for your recorder. This can be real drag. The imput levels to your DAW might be semi-pro,and the FOH engineer will have to keep the preamps low,making for noisy,less punchy,poorly gained staged sound mix. Best to be a simultananeous FOH and recording engineer, or have a positive relationsip with the soundman already established. If working with someone new bridge the gap contact them in advance take them out to lunch and ply them with food to get them interested. "

"The best solution is multitrack every microphone and mix later in the studio. If it is a small venue you might need to add mics to capture sound sources needed in the live sound mix."

 

 

Recording with a 3 way split

 

"Recording with a split. Splitters allow you to split an audio signal into multiple,yet completely isolated outputs. Usually intergrated into a microphone snake, splitters multiply microphone outputs so they can be used by at least two destinations,for example at the front of the house console for an audience mix ,and onstage monitor desk for musicians monitoring.

You will need a 3 way split in addition to the FOH and monitor legs,the splitter will also feed the mic lines to your recording gig. Contact the venue well in advance to see if they have a 3 way split and if an extra cost is associated with it." http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Split83way/ Once you have acquired a split you will need enough preamps to record every source. You will need at least 4 imputs for audience and room mics. You will need as many as your imput demands.

In some cases it might be easiest to use a spare sound console for preamps,connecting to your recorder using direct outs or inserts.

 

 

I'm in Iowa

chord

[Coaster]

you dont need a 3 way split. you could just intersect their feed to monitor world and split that with a two way split.

 

if you are not best friends with the FOH/MON techs you cannot do this; if ANYTHING goes wrong it will be your fault and they will rip your splitter out without delay, even if it is in no way your issue. i've had it happen. dont do it.

 

when i am in that situation i play it by ear; sometimes i setup my own mics/stands alongside theirs and tap vox off the FOH board, sometimes i tap everything off FOH board.

 

there is currently one situation i am in repeatedly that i cannot use my split snake due to the foh/mon techs not being up to par enough to handle what they need to do. they still run into bad lines, ground buzzes, faulty wireless setups (shure ULX, decent rigs, operator problems) and i need to stay out of their signal path lest i catch the blame.

 

be careful.

[jwlussow]

 

Brian, With all due respect, you said you barely know the guitar-player, and you don't know the others in the band. Don't you think you should get to know them a little better, and discuss your recording project with them beforehand, before sinking dough into this project? I certainly wouldn't assume that the sound-guy is going to give a stranger, complete access to his board, just so he can make a recording.

 

 

 

Indeed. Brian tread carefully and make sure the ENTIRE band agrees to have you do this. I

[brian123]

Coaster Are you saying don't use a splitter. The gig is New Years night this Friday at 11pm. Soon I will ask the band if I have their permission to record them. I won't pop the question until I am confident on the right approach. But I need help to determine a risk free nothing can go wrong approach to recording the band. Spinal Tap moment. By the way I have a Presonus $90 pre amp to record the audience it has only one imput. But I suppose I could use the preamps of my Zomm 1266 hook it up to the Korg to give more preamps. I suppose the voc could come from the board and di the bass and put a mic on each of the guitar players. Probably should mic the kick drums . It might require more mics than I have. Forget about a board recording they suck.

 

 

The following was discussion in another forumn on this topic. I believe this person has the answers to recording the band. Do you agree?

 

 

 

 

 

"You ask some good questions.

"My first question for you is who wants the band to be recorded, and are those people in charge enough to allow you to do what will be needed?

 

My second question is, if the band wants the recording to happen, does the soundman also want this, and will he cooperate (does the soundman do what the band tells him to do, or does he do what he wants, how he wants)?

 

One might record from a separate mixing board by taking the master L/R outs from the mixing board (you are taking the soundman's mix) and just recording that L/R stereo pair. The main issue with this is that many soundmen use the combination of live sound created by band's on-stage amplifiers and what comes out of their PA speakers to create a good sound for the audience. In these cases, what comes out of the mixing board will have the vocals too loud and the guitars too soft.

 

Some mixing boards will allow a line out output to be captured for each line being recorded, while still routing their signal to the main output of the mixing board (which goes to the PA), with that line out being routed to an external multitrack recorder. This option can be ideal in that it will allow the soundman to do everything he normally does for making a gig's live sound work properly, allow you to leverage all the separate mics (and mic cables!), but still give you a multitrack recording on which you can apply the correct volume balance for all tracks, and apply effects such as compression and reverb (in moderation) to just the vocals. So you might want to find out what mixing board your band's soundman uses, figure out if it's technically possible to get a separate line out for every line routed to your multitrack recorder, and if so, figure out how to "socialize" this idea with whoever is in charge.

 

If you can't use the method of the previous paragraph, then you might need to acquire enough mics and mic cables to cover all the band members. This would include 3 for the drum kit (2 overhead condensors and one dynamic mic for the kick), 1 for the lead vocalist, and 1 each for the 2 guitarists and bass - that's 7 lines of input if I didn't leave anything out (such as mics for any backup vocalists). To this you will need to add mic stands and mic cables. Depending on the guitarists' amps and how they create their sound, you might be able to use a 1/4 inch cable to a "line out" or "send" output on a guitar amp instead of a mic, but this might cause you to lose some of the essence of that guitarist's sound - with one of my band's guitarists, a line out works fine, but the other needs a mic in front of his speaker cabinet. Recording a bass is trickier - I'll let others chime in on that "

[Coaster]

i'm saying only use your own split where you are an active high ranking member of the crew. in your situation i would not do it this weekend.

[brian123]

Ok but lets get ready for the next opportunity comes along. I was wondering if there was a way to record without using a split without being a active high ranking member. Someboy in the forum suggusted I could find out find out what mixing board Eric's band's soundman uses, figure out if it's technically possible to get a separate line out for every line routed to your multitrack recorder, and if so, figure out how to "socialize" this idea with whoever is in charge. See the above statement from brian 123.

[brian123]

How about just doing a board out recording with Left and right outputs from the board to my multitrack. Is this asking too much from the soundman to do this? Will it cause problems or is it risk free. I am just dying to get some experience and test out my Korg on a live recording.

[trevcda]

Whatever you do I suggest that arrange it well in advance with the soundtech at FOH and know exactly what you're doing. If somebody came up to me the day of the show while I was trying to get things set up, I would almost certainly say no, unless everything else was going perfectly (yeah, right) and I were far enough ahead of the game. Above all else, it's just common courtesy to do so. You may luck out and get someone who has the experience, the time and most importantly the willingness to help you out and perhaps teach you a thing or two. If you do, respect their boundaries and know when they're too busy to help you. If you do get the go ahead, consider getting some sort of electrical 1:1 isolation for your feeds, to help avoid introducing any problems into their system.

[IsildursBane]

 

Ok but lets get ready for the next opportunity comes along. I was wondering if there was a way to record without using a split without being a active high ranking member. Someboy in the forum suggusted I could find out find out what mixing board Eric's band's soundman uses, figure out if it's technically possible to get a separate line out for every line routed to your multitrack recorder, and if so, figure out how to "socialize" this idea with whoever is in charge. See the above statement from brian 123.

 

 

Why don't you just try getting the hang of recording a band in your studio first? You can set up the whole band in your studio and record them "live" that way, without having to deal with all of the challenges the come along with doing a live location recording. Once you're good at recording in the studio, then try expanding to location work.

 

-Dan.

[MarkGifford-1]

I would just use the pair of Oktavas at the console, or the best-sounding place in the room.

 

You can find audience tapes of jam bands that sound very nice, if the band/PA are good.

 

Seriously, you're 2 days out, have no gear and haven't even asked the band's permission... You have neither the gear nor the experience to do anything more elaborate, and this is something you can't do halfway and expect any usable results.

 

Good luck,

 

MG

[twostone]

 

How about just doing a board out recording with Left and right outputs from the board to my multitrack. Is this asking too much from the soundman to do this? Will it cause problems or is it risk free. I am just dying to get some experience and test out my Korg on a live recording.

 

 

Maybe Andy can chime in he's a old school analog guy and did some great recording with direct to tape recordings like you mentioned and maybe he can give you some pointers using the tape out option.

Back in the day a lot of live recording was done direct to tape application.

I've did a few of direct to tape application using a DAT machine which yielded so usable results.

I'm know pro but it got the job done.

[Richard King]

http://soundcloud.com/richard-king/wooden-ships

This was recorded last month using a total of 15 inputs. I recorded the whole evening (3 sets) with the hopes of getting 8-10 songs (they do fairly long versions of songs) that could be released on a CD. I split the band's vocal mics (3) and my kick mic using an ART S83Way. I used two Contryman Type 85 direct boxes for bass and an electronic drum box (only used for misc effects), and my mics for 3 guitars and drums. I remained close enough to the stage, actually was just off stage left, that I didn't need a snake, but simply used a bunch of 25' mic cables that normally would have gone to my snake. The mics ran into a Presonsus Firestudio and Digimax FS. Recording was done with Reaper. I cleared the recording with the band about 3 weeks before it happened. They are now trying to raise the bucks to do the CD's (I will only release the recording after royalties are covered). We ended up with more than enough good material.

 

This was my first location recording rig (1976 or so):

 

This is my latest (after being out of recording for over 30 years):

 

Here's a spur of the moment, handheld, no lighting, video from that same night (different singer). You can see my rig for a couple of seconds at the end right behind the drummer.

 

[video=youtube;o2OqvA5U6wE]

[Richard King]

Here's a Minneapolis band from 1976 using the rig in the picture above.... http://soundcloud.com/richard-king/it-doesnt-matter-rock-n-roll-woman I wish I could go back in time with my current rig.

[agedhorse]

With 2 days and virtually zero recording experience, throw up a couple of mics somewhere YOU THINK is an ok sounding part of the room, push record and hope for the best. It will likely be better than anything else you are comtemplating given your experience and technical knowledge level.

 

Take the time to learn how to do it. Winging it on the job will surely make you look like an even bigger fool than you may be... and in front everybody too.

[Coaster]

here is a location NOT to place mics. the audio section of this camera sounds surprisingly good, but i can hardly hear the vocals or drums and believe me; they were {censored}tastically crystal clear and loud in the room.

 

this was one of my most memorable shows of late and i am VERY PROUD of how well it went with me at FOH. i was nervious with about 50 of my soundguy peers standing behind me watching/waiting for me to make ANY MISTAKE AT ALL.

 

[video=youtube;kteQ6morP_U]

[StratGuy22]

2 nights away from most bands biggest gig of the year is no time to wander in with zero experience and a handful of big ideas. I can't see many people bending over backwards to help you out, and they won't have any time for you to bounce ideas off of. I imagine you would be in the way, more than anything.

 

Heres what I do, I just throw one of these up. It grabs video as well, just not good in low light.

 

Terrible, in low light, actually.

 

 

Here's a band I did... I was mixing the sound as well. WYSIWYG

 

[Crownman]

Take your zoom unit and ask the soundguy for a board feed. That might or might not get the best results but it'll be the easiest way to do it without what I forsee to be a big cluster{censored}.