A weekend recording

[Beech]

Well, I promised to give an account of the event so here goes:

The venue was the Sportsmans in Dublin, which used to be a fantastic music venue in the 70s and early 80s. Since then it has gone through a number of changes but to make a long story short, the manager decided to try live music again (what a concept ). There booked three of the bands that used to play in it's hayday, Friday to Sunday. This had also been done last month and I happened to do a stereo mic into a laptop of the Sunday show of a band called Stepaside who were old friends of mine. That turned out amazingly well!

Anyway, this time I was commissioned to multitrack a couple of the bands so I decided to stay there for the weekend! The three bands were:

The Bogey Boys
Full Circle
Stepaside

The venue is not as large as it used to be but there was probably 400 people on average, scattered between outside and inside. The PA mixer was onstage unfortunately but that was not my call.

I know the PA guys so we decided on using hired BSS active splits. Mics were:

Akg clip ons for drums
Akg 535 for overheads
58s for vocals and guitars
DIed bass and keys
Soundfied mic for out front of stage hanging from ceiling
Rode NT4 stereo for crowd noise
Akg S300 with ck93 shotgun mounted beside me so I could experiment with aiming it in different directions.

The recording was onto Pro Tools 5 on a G4 @ 24/44.1k to two removable SCSI drives. I never needed more then 22 tracks so two 192 interfaces was enough.

The mic pres and compressors were loaded into small racks because one of the reasons for doing this gig was to see how compact and easy to setup I could make the system. It did fit into a Subaru Forrester but it was heavy!

The rest of the gear consisted of (from top to bottom)

ATI 8MX2 (drums)
1178 (vocals)
Al Smart C1 (vocals)
Soundfield MKV processor (stage)
Presonus Digimax with AES option (room)
API 3124 (guitars, keys, bass)
GML 8304 (vocals)
Focusrite ISA 115 (audience mics)



My 6 year old son Adam came on his first gig.

My 5 year old daugher was also allowed to drop by!


A couple of the bands who by the way were all great, particularly the Bogey Boys. They got together especially for the gig and I really hope they do it again.

That's about it. I'd forgotten how loud and hot it could be when you're right up there on the stage but it was great fun and I will hopefully post a mp3 when mixing is complete. I think I promised to give an opinion on the ATI mic pre but I'd like to hear all the bands before I do that.

By the way, is there a way to place images in the middle of the post instead of at the end?




Daire

[joaquin]

COOL Beech!!! Thanks for the post. Please do post a Mp3 when you have a chance.
PS. Did you monitor sound at all before the gig? How did you go about mic placement with the FOH guy? how did you like the BSS active splits?
Thanks again.......................Joaquin.

[Beech]

Sorry, I forgot to mention monitoring! It was very basic really, as I was onstage directly behind the PA stack. I took the stereo out of Pro Tools into a Mackie 1604 and used cans. A less then perfect solution really but it will work for making sure signal is 'getting there'. However, since I did three nights I was able to listen back the day after to quality check. I learned a couple of lessons straight away.

Use my mics in future.
Use my mic cables in future
Try and cajole the PA sound guy into not have his system anywhere near the feedback zone. I tend to take these things for granted but when doing a small gig there are no guarantees.

The BSS splitters worked out fine although in future I must remember to get the hire company to put them in a shallow rack. Much easier to plug and unplug.

I let the sound guy do most of the miking up. Mind you, never allow a SM 58 to be hung from the top of an amp! Not a good practice but I've seen it being done.

[joaquin]

Originally Posted by Beech

Try and cajole the PA sound guy into not have his system anywhere near the feedback zone.

Originally Posted by Beech

Mind you, never allow a SM 58 to be hung from the top of an amp! Not a good practice but I've seen it being done.

I believe that to be one of the most common misconceptions around small clubs FHO guys. It's due probably to the round grill that give the impression of an Omni mic!?, or may be because there's unually not enough stands and banged 58's are always in herds at hardcore Rock venues!?
What troubles did you have with cables?

[Beech]

He he Joaquin, I believe you could be right on both counts . I had only one cable problem and that was on the first night. Unfortunately I only noticed it the next day. The floor tom on one of the kits sounded suspect. However, I dont think it's the end of the world.
I approached this project sort of like recording a rehearsal so I used the Soundfield mic to do an overall pickup of the stage, then blend in the close mics as necessary. It works well in a small club environment.