Big question about recording..

fenderbass6

fenderbass6

New member
Okay, so my band and I are wanting to record a demo..
I'm pretty experienced in the field of acoustic recording, and haven't had the money/time to get anything big and electric down.. (I'm the one with the recording smarts... Or the lack thereof)

I've recently gathered up some old mics that some friends of mine didn't want anymore..
There's a bass player, three guitars and a vocalist.


I have:
4 Shure sm57's and 1 sm58..
Two small diaphragm condenser mics, and one large.
and an AKG D 1000E I picked up at a flea market.

I also have a mixer with only 4 mics inputs, so I plug this Berhinger 10 channel mixer into it so it can be a 14 input.


I know that there's zero drum mics in the list.. But, I've recorded drums with the mics, making the two small diaphragm overheads etc..

My question is: how/what order do I go by making this more efficient..

It's pretty difficult doing one instrument at a time.. It sucks.
Is there an easier way?

Thanks a lot..

P.s. Here's our current acoustic stuff.. A couple songs we want electric.

http://www2.mixposure.com/Marion_High/
 
Re: Big question about recording..

First good songs you guys, sounds perfect for your age group.

You have a lot of vocal stuff going on which is key to your sound. If I were you I would just lay down the drums, bass and one rhythm guitar in one pass then over dub the rest.
I'm not an engineer so others could give you better tips than me to mic everything up.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

The problem is that everyone is very specific about their sound..

It's hard to do three instruments in one track, as everyone wants me to eq etc their own stuff..

How do the pros do it?
 
Re: Big question about recording..

It's hard to do three instruments in one track, as everyone wants me to eq etc their own stuff..

How do the pros do it?
Click to expand...

What are you recording on? how many channels can you input and record per take?[Channels on the recorder,not the desk/s]
 
Re: Big question about recording..

GoldenVulture said:
What are you recording on? how many channels can you input and record per take?[Channels on the recorder,not the desk/s]
Click to expand...

Well, I have a Alesis Multimix usb 2.0 blah blah blah...

It only has four mic inputs, so that means I can record four mics on four different tracks. Plus the main mix..

The program I'm using can record a lot.. Never used them all though.
The problem is, when I do use all four tracks to multitrack my computer gets horribly slow.. Even when I set the priority. I get this horrible cracky noise and it'll stop recording for about 3 seconds, and then continue cutting out pieces of the mix..

It uses a lot of cpu. It is a laptop and all.

It sucks because I payed **** near 400 bucks just for the luxury of multi-tracking, and I can't even use it to it's full potential.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Save up some cash and find a $25.00 an hour studio rehearse up the songs, just the rhythm section, and record all the rhythm parts in one 4 hour session. The take those tracks to your place and finish the songs one track at a time. That's what i'd do.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Laptops can really suck... I have a 1.6mHz pentium w/ 2 gigs of RAM that won't even reliably record 4-tracks of audio at 44/24-bit for more then 10-15 minutes without crashing. Not sure what's up with that... speaking "laptop" is a whole other language, separate from Macs or PC towers.

All mics are "drum" mics.

Really.

If you know/can figure out where to place 'em...

Frankly, if you wanted a listenable demo and are ill-equipped to make one, you'd probably have been better off dropping the $500 into two days at a $20 an hour demo studio rather then attempting to do it yourself.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Computer wise, ideally you're going to be running, at the bare minimum, a Core 2 Duo CPU (2GHz, preferably even more) with probably 3 gigs of RAM.
I'm running a Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33 GHz CPU with a 1333MHz FSB and 3 gigs of RAM and I get latency down to less than 5ms, no audio drop outs and crackling problems what so ever.
Laptops, due to their slower nature, just aren't ideal platforms for recording. Get yourself a fast desktop computer.

Also, I'm not totally understanding why you want to do 3 instruments in one take.
Many pros just record each instrument individually, so why is it a problem to do that?
So what if it takes longer? The whole point is getting it to sound as good as possible, not cutting corners and trying to get it done ASAP and having a sub par result. It's not a race, it's not a competition, so take as much time as possible to get the best sound.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Well, it's not really the fact that it takes forever etc..
I just haven't really figured out what instrument to start with...

I've heard I should start with vocals, drums etc..

The problem is that our drummer has a hard time working with a metronome, which makes it hard to do the drums first..

I had an idea to just plug a guitar/and or bass into a V-amp and give him headphones. Then record.

Sounds possible..

Another problem is that I'm an obsessive perfectionist. I hate it. I can't have a song out of time. Or out of key. The guys hate it, but I think it works out in the long run.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

fenderbass6 said:
Well, it's not really the fact that it takes forever etc..
I just haven't really figured out what instrument to start with...

I've heard I should start with vocals, drums etc..

The problem is that our drummer has a hard time working with a metronome, which makes it hard to do the drums first..

I had an idea to just plug a guitar/and or bass into a V-amp and give him headphones. Then record.

Sounds possible..

Another problem is that I'm an obsessive perfectionist. I hate it. I can't have a song out of time. Or out of key. The guys hate it, but I think it works out in the long run.
Click to expand...
The drummer is the time keeper, which is why it's usually the best place to start.A drummer that can't sync to a metronome sounds like a drummer that can't keep time,and pretty useless as a drummer. I hope I'm wrong but that would be really hard to work with,given your pre-disposition for timing and key,
I used to mix a band whos bass player would not follow the drummer,so the rest of the band tried to keep in time with him. It didn't work because he was all over the place.It killed the band,in the end.The drummer got sick of him and left.

Oh! and Vocals are usually done last.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

It's hard to do three instruments in one track, as everyone wants me to eq etc their own stuff..
Click to expand...
I'm presuming you know to record all your initial tracks directly and unaffected by any EQ or other effects.[there are exceptions to this,but it is the general approach]Your EQ'ing and effects go in "in the mix", but I thought I might re-iterate it.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

If you dig your drummer and he's part of the band have him play to a click and then edit his tracks to be in sync. I personally think you should replace him, there's no excuse for timing problems for a drummer in my book.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

In today's day and age, drummers have to be able to keep to a click. With metronomes coming out of every direction, there no excuse not to be in time.
If they can't, fire them, find a new one, or just program them.
However, if your drummer has a nice kit, with expensive and clean condition skins and cymbals etc, you can record the drums, and then use them for sample replacement.
In today's day and age, there is so much more programmed drums, sample replacement and triggers going on for drums than many people even realize.
Why do many people not realize? Because as long as it sounds good, it sounds good, no matter how you get there in the end.
If you want to be perfectly in time, as I said, program, or just use sample replacement.
If you're drummer isn't cool about this, just fire them, It's clear you're making compromises for them, so they should be too.
Any anyway, if your drummers kit isn't in top notch condition, often programmed drums just sound better anyway, because digital drums don't wear out over time obviously.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Petrovsk Mizinski said:
Also, I'm not totally understanding why you want to do 3 instruments in one take.
Many pros just record each instrument individually, so why is it a problem to do that?
Click to expand...

Not sure where you get that idea...

Most "pros" cut basics with the whole band playing together... even if we know that most of it will be replaced later for various reasons. It never seems very fair to me, to have the drummer going at it 'for real' while everyone else is just sloshing through their parts.

Personally I like getting at least drums & bass down as a pair... and sometimes score a few hits on the bonus plan, get a keeper vocal, solo or other bits. On the Swampadelica record I did last year, about 70 or 80% of the final stuff was live off the floor.

The only folks who record instrument by instrument are usually people who are ill-equipped to record everything at once. Be it with gear, or knowledge, or both.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

fenderbass6 said:
The problem is, when I do use all four tracks to multitrack my computer gets horribly slow.. Even when I set the priority. I get this horrible cracky noise and it'll stop recording for about 3 seconds, and then continue cutting out pieces of the mix..

It uses a lot of cpu. It is a laptop and all.

It sucks because I payed **** near 400 bucks just for the luxury of multi-tracking, and I can't even use it to it's full potential.
Click to expand...
That's a design issue; laptops eat up a lot of the onboard RAM for graphics, and there's no slots for cards with their own processors.

The other thing is, Windows uses a portion of hard drive space as a kind of 'soft partition' called a pagefile; this supplements the RAM when things get crowded. Unfortunately, this makes the hard drive spin like a top, recalling program info, recording the soundfiles and running all the background processes at the same time. So, of course, in this situation the hard drive is like a 4-way intersection at rush hour, and like a bad rush hour things crash.

If you have a Windows XP SP2 or later, you might be able to create a thumbdrive to serve as a pagefile memory, which you can plug into your USB socket. My advice: have someone you trust reduce the graphics to "almost stone age", and while they're poking around in there, tell them to stuff in as much RAM as your laptop will hold, adjust the amount of pagefile memory used on the hard drive, and have them create the thumbdrive dongle.

As for the 'crackly sound & dropouts' issue: That's a problem with your latency (the lag time between what you've recorded and how long it takes to convert from digital to analog for playback). If you're using the on-board sound card for recording and playback, stop. Anything recorded through your laptop eats up cpu, so the less strain on the processor, the better. A decent USB 2.0 interface will work for a 4-track.

Also, shut down as many programs as you can while tracking; that includes anti-virus. If you're paranoid about catching a bug, unplug from the modem; they can't crawl in if the door's closed. When you're done, just put everything back where it was.
 
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Re: Big question about recording..

this thread(along with a few personal situational..... situations:dunno:) has inspired me to get my desktop back up and running as opposed to the laptop i've been using for the past couple years:)
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Record the whole band as well as it gets with the resources at hand. Make sure you separate out the instruments as much as possible.

Re-record individual instruments, using the previous recording as background for whoever plays. If you can, do that with all instruments. Obviously you can do several at the same time as long as there's real separation.

Now, it is probably difficult to use tracks from the individual runs and mix them with the original one, mainly because of crossover such as that your drums on the individual recordings will have quite a bit of the other instruments on it and if it doesn't match it sounds sucky.

But the main benefit you have from this is that you will know how much quality you lose compared to doing a more careful recording.

In other words: if you end up thinking that the second approach is much better but you can't just take all the individual recordings because the lack the live feel or whatever, then you will know that you better go to a real studio or something.
 
Re: Big question about recording..

Okay guys I've decided to try something..

I started out with the bass and the drums. Giving my drummer a set of headphones that was plugged into a v-amp, and letting him play off my bass.

It was easy for this song, because it's mostly rhythm anyway..

After he was done playing I laid down the final bassline and did the guitar myself. (Guitar section wasn't available) That's why I'm apologizing in advance for my sloppy guitar playing.

We first recorded this song when were about 13 in a studio.. We saved up about 350 bucks for two songs.. This song's no longer on our setlist.. We've changed a lot since then.

Okay, here's the old one from years ago. (it's skippy at the beginning because it's the only CD we have of it... And it's very old and scratched to hell.)

http://www.4shared.com/file/119405280/fdbe1d5c/****mode.html


And here's the one that we just recorded with all my equipment. I realize that you can't hear the bass drum.. It's there.. I just forgot to turn the mic level higher.. This is the rough mix.. Just added some verb on the board and that's it. Oh.. The guitar is my Gretsch going into a V-amp, and I just miked my Ampeg cab for the bass.

http://www.4shared.com/file/119404053/6a2181a0/fmode2.html
 
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