Members wheresgrant3 Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 I play weekends in a popular local cover band. We've built a great name and following locally all without a demo or press kit. Now we are setting our sights on cities and clubs away from our back yard (2-3 hrs away) . About 6 months ago we spent $1000 on some studio time and came up with some horrible, 'wooden' sounding demos. The studio engineer didn't really know what he was doing and the result sounds very amateur. We're a live band, and a multi traked recording was not a good representation of our sound or the show we put on. Frustrated, I took a minidisc recorder to a recent club gig. Using a single mic, I captured some live clips then using Sonar and a bunch of fx plug in, tried to 'dress' these up as best as possible. The result is this 'sampler' of live clips. I agree the sound quality isn't the best. The mic was an SM58 suspended from the ceiling directly over the crowd, about 5 feet out from our PA. However I do believe that the best representation we can offer new clubs is how we sound live. Two of my bandmates disagree and want to spend another $1000 to jump back into the studio to re-record our existing demos. I'm just looking for opinions here. Positive or negative. Would these clips hold up for larger club bookings and possibly booking agents? If most of you say... "Nice try, but the quality sucks" I will understand. I'm just looking to avoid the same debacle we experienced last time... a $1000 spent and no usable demo. Demo Clip . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kayak Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 I listened to the whole clip. If it were my band, that would not be the quality that I would want to present as a demo. That doesn't mean I would give up on the concept. The next thing I would try is to record one channel as a direct feed off the board, and the other channel simultaneously with a room mic like you did before, but I would try to place the mic a little farther back in the room to pick up more of a blended sound. Listen to the result, play with blending the board feed and the mic feed. Be VERY critical of whether or not the vocals are "on" for that particular song. Be prepared to record several different shows, perhaps playing with mic placement, and pick the cream of the crop from all the recordings, a song from here, a song from there, etc. It may waste a little time, but that's better than wasting $1000 AGAIN! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members digwhisper Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 Man this is why I love having a drummer with an electronic kit. On cable snake from board to recorder and we get the whole live feel on studio quality sound. How's this for an idea, why don't you look around and try to find someone who will do a remote recording for you? I don't know about the area you're in but if you ask around at the recording studios you may find one that would do an onsite remote. I've done a few of them and they can work wonders for a demo. The sound quality is high but the live feel is important. Plus, so many bands go in and do the studio perfect demo and they never sound like the band. Instead they get the super glossed impression that the engineer thinks they should sound like. For a $1000 you should be able to find someone to do a remote. One good place to look is local colleges or universities. Many of them have A/V departments that have the gear to pull it off and can be quite affordable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Scodiddly Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 If I only had $1000, I'd look for somebody to do a high-quality live recording. The clip sounds like a 58 hanging from the ceiling, yup. Maybe put a few hundred towards hiring a really good PA and sound guy, and have him/her make a board recording along with a stereo mic of the speaker sound. I'd definitely steer away from having a novelty tune for the first clip - imagine you're a club owner with a stack of demos to get through, and you're going to toss all the ones that don't sound "pro" within the first ten seconds. And pay attention to the backup vocals... some intonation problems in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GCDEF Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 Since you asked... The first thing that struck me was how off key the singing is. After that, not much else matters. Honestly, I couldn't get half way through it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Keith2 Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 I don't think you're way off, you live demo shows you're a fun party band. How about this D2424LV It's only $100 more than the studio. Keith Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wheresgrant3 Posted December 30, 2004 Author Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 Thanks for everyone's response. At least it's given me the confidence to try again. Maybe rent some better mic's. My bass player knows a guy with a portable recording rig. I'd rather give the $1000 to him and see what he can turn out. I still think live is the best option. The crowd shows an elemnt of participation a studio demo can't show. It's a frequent complain of the club owners I speak with.... they get a well groomed, great sounding demo and the band shows up, and they are like... "Is this the same band on the demo?" The only thing worse than a studio demo for a cover band... is a studio demo, with a crowd overdubbed in the mix. (Don't laugh... I've heard one, and it was very obvious, and very blanant. ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members J Kylez Posted December 30, 2004 Members Share Posted December 30, 2004 What I've done in the past is do a live multitrack. Fortunately I have 16 tracks to work with. Take a direct out from the board on each channel and mix it during the week. I find these make good demo's. It's essentially live tracks with some post production. See if you could find a local home studio person to do this for you. It would probably cost you far less than the $$ you are talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.