Recording a one man band

[badmark]

This week, I'm going to be recording our singer in his one man band format (1 track will have keyboards on it) for a short cd in my dining room onto a Tascam 424 mk3 4-track, and I was wondering if anyone here had any suggestions or relevant experience! No click track. We were thinking of recording the guitar and drums together and then the vocals afterwards. The microphones I've got are an AT4060 (vocals?), a Groove Tubes md1b fet (guitar cab?), an MXL9000, a Heil Pro35 (kick?) and an SM58 (hi-hat?). I can borrow another 58, and also a Rode NT2a (which we have used as an omni to record band practices). Outboard wise I have a Golden Age Pre73 and an ... um ... Behringer 2200 compressor and a Zoom reverb/fx box. I've added some photos of his set up and the room (please note that "this week" means no time for anything other than ad hoc acoustic treatment!). Mostly I just record my own vocals, so it will be a bit of a learning curve. Clearly, we will be going for a kind of lo-fi feel, but I'd like not to fu*k things up too much!

[fallforward]

You seem to be short a couple of mics here. I am assuming that the room you are recording in isn’t “acoustically gratifying” so to speak. Because my first inclination to a session like this would be

Keys > DI
Guitar > 58
Vocals > MXL

I would then just do an over head pair on the drums, that would also pick up the bleed from all the other stuff which would give you the ensemble sound that he is looking for. The problem is you don’t have any mics of the same model. In a pinch I would say to use the 4046 and the GT as over heads, and the borrowed NT2a in cardiod as a “room mic” though your room isn’t very big, so I wouldn’t suggest being married to using this as it might do more harm than good.

I would also be cautious of micing the kick. I am guessing in this music a real upfront kick sound would distort the ensemble blend. A more boomy and ambient kick sound would most likelt be appropriate, but again I am just guessing.

My main point is, I suggest doing your best to get a good ensemble sound from a stereo pair of mics. Then adding the Keys DI, Git close mic, and Vocal close mic for added detail and clarity.

I just reread your post and saw that you are doing this on a 4track. Do you have an outbaord mixer so that you can submix some things? If not you would have to get real creative and do.

OH L
OH R
Vox
and then the Git into the mic input and keys into the Line input of the channel (you will have to balance the volume on the instruments themselves)

In any end, you should be going at this to just capture some vibe and a good performance, that should be the focus hear, not the gear. Because well... you don't have much gear to focus on! So just make sure you get things sounding as good as possible in the room, because you are not going to be ablet o fix anything afterwards.

Have fun man!
Robby

p.s. I would throw an extra 58 on the cinder block so that you have it just in case you needed it!

[Remoteness]

How did your "one man band" recording come out?

[badmark]

Thanks for reminding me to post! We finished recording the last song (of 5) yesterday, after various interruptions from work and family and summer stuff.

Generally what I did was record him playing the drum and guitar parts at the same time, using the Heil PR35 as a kick/hi-hat mic, going through the pre-73, recorded the guitar cab through the AT4060, then once we'd got a performance we were happy with, recorded the vocals with the 4060 going through the preamp. Having finally flogged my Presonus Tubepre, I bought an LA audio dual preamp off eBay: not much internet information about it, but it certainly sounds better than the Presonus. We did try the Heil mic as an extra vocal track, but it didn't sound right. After a couple of songs I put the guitar speakers on a chair, and that certainly improved the separation between the 2 tracks.

The one track with a keyboard part we put the Crate amp in the kitchen and recorded it with the MXL mic. If I'd had the LA preamp then, I would probably have used the Md1b, but the Tascam 424 mk3 doesn't do phantom powering.

What it does have though, which I hadn't really paid much attention to when I bought it, is 4 tape outputs, so you can bounce your tracks straight out into your DAW for editing purposes without having to do any convoluted kludges. That said, I still haven't figured out why, using Asio4all, Fruity Loops can configure the MBox2pro inputs as 4 mono whereas Reaper only recognizes them as 2 mono + 1 stereo. ITB work involved chopping a minute or so out of one song, plus the usual nipping and tucking.

I didn't make any real acoustic adjustments to the room. It has wooden doors in the corners and lots of books and cds and stuff in a state of randomness, so I figured that would just have to do.

The At4060 is a great microphone. Best £390 I've ever spent!

I've appended a 30 second extract from one of the songs, though i think Raj has posted a couple of earlier mixes up on the website. The e.p. is going to be called "Now that's primitive". I don't know why lol

mark

[huub]

Not bad at alllllllll!

[mixedupsteve]

Nice. It's got a "Detroit" vibe.