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A ghetto "From the Basement"


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My band and I would like to record a live performance to post up on our website/YouTube from our rehearsal space. The sound in there is actually decent from our drummer's dad having put up some acoustic foam and the shape of the room allows for a surprisingly good sound. Obviously we probably won't get nearly as close to the greatness of Radiohead's "From the Basement" videos, but to get a simple clean performance with simple mixing/panning, and in a not so huge room, would it be more beneficial to go simple with the micing, say just the two vox, then mic each guitar amp and then just two overheads and maybe a kick mic for the drums, and then bass direct in. Or should we just go with full four mic on the drums. I would imagine that phase would start to become an issue with so many mics that may be in somewhat close proximity.

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i think its essential that you also mic the snare. so you can lay the basic ground for the drums with bass drum and snare.

mic the amps close and make sure that the speakers don't point to each other and that they also don't point in the direction of your overheads and as shouldn't the pa speakers for vocals.

 

great would be if the singer(s) use headphones so the vocals would not need to go over the pa. bass direct is also good, but you need to hear it in the room so the signal will bleed into the other mics.

if all of you can roll back the volume would be also a plus...

 

most phase issues can be treated later by inverting one of the conflicting tracks

 

and yes with all precautions there will be still some bleed over of the different sources in the mics, but with precautions it will be far less and will not make much trouble at mixing stage

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You're mutitracking and mixing later?

 

I'd go everyone with phones. Everybody's used to seeing musicans with phones. It'll give you that "in the studio" look. :)

 

 

Bass DI through a Bass Pod of a SansAmp, etc. but if you have to use a bass amp put it with it's back facing the kick. That' keep its attack centered in the Overheads., tight guitar amp mikes (smallish amps), amps with backs facing the drums and a short gobo (pillows/sleepingbags/etc) between drums and amp backs. One amp each side of the drums to balance the bleed into the stereo overheads. Try to match amp volumes so bleed is equal. Singer looking into the face of the drummer but from across the room to get max rejection in singer's mike. Pad up the wall behind singer to kill the drum bouce off the wall.

 

The idea here is to "mix" the bleed.

 

Record to Pro Tools etc. Mix later.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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We've spent the past few hours cleaning up after enlargemope and others like him. Quite a heavy amount of spam came at us this morning. Sorry guys.

 

Oh, BTW - I would strongly caution you guys NOT to click on any of those links. You never know what your computer could catch...

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A DIY recording of a live band and have it videotaped can take days to setup and do right where you have something actually

worth listening to and watching on You Tube.

 

Sometimes the easiest is the best. The more mics you use the more expereince you'll have to have setting them up,

playing "into" them at correctly and then mixing up something that sounds good worth posting for all to see. You may get your jollies off

seeing yourself but having others attracted to it and doing more than pat you on the backi for a filed attempt isnt easy.

 

My suggestion is get a hand held digital recorder with stereo mics and place it on a stand in front of the band.

Record all your stuff and keep listening to the tracks. When you can get a great recording from that little unit then

you can move up to something more complex.

 

If you want a video, you really need a recorder that takes line level inputs. Most consumer stuff will a built in

mic is going to distort badly with with a live band. they usually have built in compression and sound pumpy too.

 

Some cheaper cam corders have Mic inputs. I've used many with an attenuator plugged into it to drop the

levels down to line level. I then connected it to the DAW or mixing board and recorded that way. It also had a

headphone jack so I could tweak the levels so I wasnt getting distortion.

 

You have to learn lighting techniques too. Bright lights, shiny instruments reflecting the light back and shaddows

can be a bitch for a good looking video. All those techniques need to be learned.

 

Another option which I use is to mic the entire band, record the audio to multi tracks at the same time you're

recording mono to the cam corder. Then you mix the music in the daw, import the video into a program like

Sonar Producer and replace the mono scratch track from the camcorder with the filly mixed and mastered track.

This will give you the best audio. If you want multiple cam corder tracks then you have to get into more complex video mixing

techniques and get a higher end Editor program. Also audio replacement involves time stretching the misic to sync with the video.

A DAW and a cam corder have independant clocks for recording and may not run at the same speed. If one clock varies in time the

video and audio time will be off and the lops wont move with the words.

 

Heres an example of what can be done with a cheap cam corder with everything mixed through a mixer and

recorded straight to the cam corder, The songs werent great, it was just some warm up jams but it at least gives you

an idea what to expect with a stationary camera. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1682170/Someday%20-%20Catch%20The%20Rain.wmv

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Sometimes the easiest is the best. The more mics you use the more expereince you'll have to have setting them up,

playing "into" them at correctly and then mixing up something that sounds good worth posting for all to see. You may get your jollies off

seeing yourself but having others attracted to it and
doing more than pat you on the backi for a filed attempt isnt easy
.

 

 

Sure it is!!!!

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The problem is that the best place for the camera often isn't the best place for the microphones, which leads to compromises when relying on the mics that are built into cameras. A camera with a line input would allow you to use the feed from a DAW or mixer instead, which is a great solution to that problem. Balance the mix at the board until it sounds good to you on a test recording to the camera, then do a few takes and edit it all in Vegas or iMovie or whatever. One great thing about Vegas is that you can send it multiple feeds / sources and record a ton of things simultaneously - IF your computer's fast enough. Multi-camera, multitrack audio - it will do both at once, then let you edit both. Anyway, back to the cameras...

 

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of inexpensive cameras out there with line inputs. Probably the most affordable option is the Zoom Q3HD, which has a audio line input, as well as HD video capability. It's only so-so in low light though, so you'd probably need some additional lighting in the basement.

 

As far as the instrumental miking, I would go with whatever sounds best to you, but if you're trying to get a nice balanced mix, at the end of the day, you'll probably want more microphones up instead of less, and I'd definitely rather have four mikes on the kit instead of three. Kick, snare and stereo overheads should do it. Take the bass direct if you can; a bass mic too might be nice, but if you're worried about having too many open mikes, direct alone is fine for bass. I'd want to mic up the guitar amps obviously, and the vocals need to be miked up.

 

Are you going to be doing this in front of a small audience ala a house concert, or will you be doing it as a "live in the studio" type recording? If you have an audience, you'll need a small PA to get the vocals heard by them. Also, you'll need to get those vocal mikes sent to the main mixer that you're using for your audio feed to the camera's line input. You can use "doubled up" mikes (two mics per singer) and route one to the PA and one to the recording mixer, or you can use a single mic and a splitter to send the output to two places.

 

Of course, you can also just use an aux send on the main (recording) mixer to feed an amp and PA speaker so that the audience can hear you. You shouldn't need to run anything other than vocals through the PA.

 

If it's a "live in the studio" type thing, then it only matters that you get a decent mix and that you can all hear clearly. Wear headphones and use whatever monitoring you need in order to hear each other, but outside of that, let the microphones capture the audio for the video - it doesn't have to be screaming loud in the room. Actually, that last bit is probably true either way - resist the temptation to play too loud and it's going to sound better than if you play too loud for the room.

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