Technique for outdoor festival, on a very low budget.

[wyndrock]

Objective: Record three day music festival, in the mountains.

Limitations: Low/no budget for recording. Six inputs (or less), with ambient mics positioned on and in front of stage. Rack & computer positioned side-stage. Wilderness area.

Gear: Metric Halo Mobile I/O, Studio Cans, MacBook, Ext HDD, Stereo DAT Recorder (simple backup), Small Rented Snake. Mics, Cables and Stands. 100ft power lead. Small tool kit. One camping buddy and one tent.



Normally I would hump in a splitter snake and mic up everything on the stage. This time there's no real budget for recording, so that ain't happenin'...

I'm thinking a stereo pair of PZM to either side, front stage, and maybe a stereo pair of SDC, somewhere out front "dead taper style".

I'm thinking that with all these ambient mics, I'll take a stereo front of house board feed so it would kinda be like "spot mic'ng".

I don't normally work this way. But, we're limited with this particular venue, so...

Your thoughts please.... What would you do?

[huub]

I'd personally just have 2 ambi mics (or a l/r mix of more mics) and then take submixes/auxes from the foh mixer.. Even a separate lead voc and mix without vox could give you a halfway decent result.. possibly..

[mohthom]

From the festival's website . . .

Live from FloydFest 6: It’s in the Mix collectable compilation CD

They DO have a budget, because they're selling your product . . .

[wyndrock]

low budget. low/no budget. but that's not the thing. the thing is; how to get the capture with minimal gear and not leave any holes in the sound quality.

[joelpatterson]

You can do amazing things with just basic stereo sets like you're talking about. I always feel like there's plenty of crowd noise in any case, whevever the mics, and pairs that are too far away (in the crowd) are sometimes morose and puny sounding, I'd much rather, push come to shove, just hear it like the musicians do, onstage with monitors blazing.

[Jim vanBergen]

Hey Lee-

I understand low/no budget..but personally I would really fight for a split into a dedicated 24 track...even minimal k/sn/oh/bass/gtr/keys/vox splits plus ambients...just 'cause you can. Once you have ambient mics in place, getting the deck sound guy to patch according to the festival patch is all you need. This sounds really cool, personally. I bet they will have a sigificant number of tapers at the event.

If a minial split is really not as possibility, I'd work very hard to get my ambients where I want (onstage POV and audience POV), and get a L/R board mix plus groups, knowing that some engineers may not use the groups.

Hope these thoughts help. Good luck!

[wyndrock]

thanks folks. a great bunch of suggestions!

if this happens, i'll be taking the mobile i/o rig and a few mics - maybe a supplemental board feed.

[XLR2XLR]

Whilst stereo out affords little control, why spend days mixing 3 days of material
if you are not being paid for it? That's the problem with splitting everthing plus there is even more to go wrong.

If you use the DAT back up as a master, the splits (even direct outs)would at least serve as a back up if certain bands sound awful. Though I have vowed not to take direct outs without transformers in between (which bumps the price up quite a bit as 24 TX are going to cost quite a bit)

[wyndrock]

the job fell through. ..but it's ok, and it actually works into my plan for the next couple-few years. i have decided to stop providing any services for a fee, until i'm out of school.