Recording guitar/bass/drums live in living room?

[charlieculbert]

Hey yall. I was wondering if somebody could point me in the right direction on which mics to use on what and where.
We're workin in my living room, which actually has a pretty great sound in my opinion. Not boomy, but not dead by any means.
I've got, a 2 channel interface, a 8 channel mixer, a sm57, an mxl 991/990 package, a digital reference cheap mic, and a CAD KBM412, also have an OLD outboard reverb, old gate, and an old EQ. As many cables as I could need. One pair of Headphones(Extreme Isolation Ex-25).
I'm trying to record bass, guitar, and drums live, at the same time.
Any ideas on placement, what mics to use, etc?
Thanks :D

[cassnate6259]

Speaking from experience, recording drums from a living room is very possible. Your biggest hurdle is going to be the fact that your interface only has two inputs. If you use your mixer, whatever mix you end up creating will ultimately end up as a stereo mixdown, which will of course give you much less flexibility.

Recording all of the instruments live is even more of a challenge since you won't be able to isolate anything and will need more channels. Is there a reason you want to record live as opposed to overdubbing individual instruments?

[charlieculbert]

Originally Posted by cassnate6259

Speaking from experience, recording drums from a living room is very possible. Your biggest hurdle is going to be the fact that your interface only has two inputs. If you use your mixer, whatever mix you end up creating will ultimately end up as a stereo mixdown, which will of course give you much less flexibility.

Recording all of the instruments live is even more of a challenge since you won't be able to isolate anything and will need more channels. Is there a reason you want to record live as opposed to overdubbing individual instruments?

Based on past attempts, the recordings that we've done live tend to sound much better than the ones done individually. Don't really know why.

Just curious, I still wanna try to go live, but if I were to do seperate takes, how would you reccomend doing drums?

[Snatchman]

Originally Posted by charlieculbert

Hey yall. I was wondering if somebody could point me in the right direction on which mics to use on what and where.
We're workin in my living room, which actually has a pretty great sound in my opinion. Not boomy, but not dead by any means.
I've got, a 2 channel interface, a 8 channel mixer, a sm57, an mxl 991/990 package, a digital reference cheap mic, and a CAD KBM412, also have an OLD outboard reverb, old gate, and an old EQ. As many cables as I could need. One pair of Headphones(Extreme Isolation Ex-25).
I'm trying to record bass, guitar, and drums live, at the same time.
Any ideas on placement, what mics to use, etc?
Thanks :D

I know you say you only have an 2 channel interface, but would it by chance have an Adat lightpipe input..?....It would make things a lot easier and you'd have more control over each instrument while tracking..If not, you'll probably have to use baffles to sorta isolate things ( even though the bleed can be advanteous)..Basically with the two inputs, it'll be getting the best mix you can before committing to the two ( stereo) mix..It can be done, as it was done this way years ago with very good ( proven) results!...

[charlieculbert]

Originally Posted by Snatchman

I know you say you only have an 2 channel interface, but would it by chance have an Adat lightpipe input..?....It would make things a lot easier and you'd have more control over each instrument while tracking..If not, you'll probably have to use baffles to sorta isolate things ( even though the bleed can be advanteous)..Basically with the two inputs, it'll be getting the best mix you can before committing to the two ( stereo) mix..It can be done, as it was done this way years ago with very good ( proven) results!...

I honestly have no idea what that is. Care to clarify? Haha.
Alright. I'm not expecting this to come out amazing. Just an EP/Demos for my band. Which mics what you suggest using?

[Snatchman]

Originally Posted by charlieculbert

Based on past attempts, the recordings that we've done live tend to sound much better than the ones done individually. Don't really know why.

Just curious, I still wanna try to go live, but if I were to do seperate takes, how would you reccomend doing drums?

I've had good results doing something like this: I'll get a great submix of the drums from the 8 channel mixer into the 2 channel interface in a stereo pair and let the bassist and guitarist play along with the track using DIs but not recording them..Now you'll end up with a great stereo drum track ( with the "feel" since they all played together..Now you can overdub the guitar/bass player either together with DIs and the reamp, or just one at the time..Remember tho', it all starts with a good mix of the drums since you wont be able to do much individual tweaking once you print to disk..Good luck..

[charlieculbert]

Originally Posted by Snatchman

I've had good results doing something like this: I'll get a great submix of the drums from the 8 channel mixer into the 2 channel interface in a stereo pair and let the bassist and guitarist play along with the track using DIs but not recording them..Now you'll end up with a great stereo drum track ( with the "feel" since they all played together..Now you can overdub the guitar/bass player either together with DIs and the reamp, or just one at the time..Remember tho', it all starts with a good mix of the drums since you wont be able to do much individual tweaking once you print to disk..Good luck..

Awesome! That's actually a really interesting idea. I may try that. How would you recommend miking up the drums? I have kind of an odd array of mics.
Also, I've heard the term "reamp" tossed around alot, tell me if I'm wrong. It does refer to playing back the directly recorded sound through an amp, and micing the amp?

[Snatchman]

Originally Posted by charlieculbert

I honestly have no idea what that is. Care to clarify? Haha.
Alright. I'm not expecting this to come out amazing. Just an EP/Demos for my band. Which mics what you suggest using?

Ok.....If your interface supports Adat lightpipe ( optical signal that carries 8 channels of audio) you could get an external preamp ( ie..Behringer ADA-8000,PreSonus Digimax LT,et.) that has preamps built in..Then you connect the Adat lightpipe out into your interface ( if it has one) and now you have 8 mic pres you can record at once, plus the two inputs on your interface..! ( Now you can record 10 channels at once).Everything on it's on separate track..But....if you don't have one....Back to square one with two (2) inputs.....Not all is lost tho'..With careful planning, using good judgement, good performance and good room, this CAN come out sounding very good even with just two inputs..!

Think about it this way..You ever heard a band playing live that sounded really good..?..Comes from good performance, good mix/and room and good judgement..You'll be basically doing the same thing, but without the " audience"..Git'er done..!

[jruberto]

I'll just chime in from the other side.. simplicity.

Balance your volumes between the instruments till it sounds great in the room, then put up a coincident XY pair (or near coincident ORTF, look it up, not hard to do) -- probably the MXLs, mismatched as they are, and move it around till the playback sounds good to you. A spaced pair might work too with some experimentation. Be aware of phase consistency with the two mics. (pan em hard left & right, then sum it to mono.. if the bottom drops out or if it sounds all "phlangey", you got phase issues, adjust the mics & try again)

It will be a challenge to mix of a bunch of sources on-the-fly, you can probably get a stereo pair dialed in much faster, and dare i say get as good or better results. I dunno, depends on a whole lot of factors. The mismatched mics might yield a weird image. Or it might sound really hip. You won't know till you try, and that's half the fun. (the other half is when you get it right & it sounds great)

I have some rehearsal recordings from my living room made with a mid-side pair (which would be my first recommendation to you, but you'd need a mic with figure 8 polar pattern to do it) that just sound devastatingly awesome.

And yep, that's exactly what re-amping is.