recording tips???

[rainsong86]

ok well this might not be the best place to post this question but I believe the people on this forum are really helpful and experienced

my band is looking to record but we don't have much money.. we prefer to record things ourselves, on our own time (no hourly rates involved.. we'd be using our gear).. so what kinda gear should we grab?

we have an SVT Classic with a 4 by 10 and 1 by 15 cab for bass and a Mesa Dual Rectifier with a Rectifier traditional 4 by 12.. all we have as far as mics are a couple Shure SM48's (the import version of SM58).. will these suffice for vocals?.. and we plan on grabbing an SM57 for micing the cabs (what's the most common/effective method of micing a guitar cab?.. also how should I mic the bass stack?).. we can bum a drum mic set off someone I guess but recording drums will pose the biggest problem

I think the best solution would be to use the singer's laptop and rip some recording software (honestly we can't afford to pay 200 dollars for a couple data CDs).. we'd need some interface to go from XLR to the computer.. but how would we record a 5-piece drumset onto the computer???

please offer a bit of time to help me out here.. I will definitely appreciate it even if you can't answer all of my questions

 

[Jeff Dunne]

Re: recording tips???

You aren't going to get the drums onto seperate tracks without spending some cash for an interface.

Get a mixer, premix the drums as best you can, and pray for the best.

Track at a time recording will be fine for the rest of the instruments.

With a single 57, point it at the spot where the dust cap meets the cone on the speaker, and adjust to taste. I'm glad you've got a nice guitar rig, you should get some awesome tones out of that Mesa cabinet, with any good head.

For the bass amp, same thing, but mic one of the 4x10's with a kick drum mic, and adjust to taste.

For vocals, borrow a condensor. Please. You can also try that condensor in conjunction with the kick mic on the bass cabinet for some extra tones to play with.

 

[Nightrunner]

Re: recording tips???

There are tons of ways to mic a guitar cab, but here are some basic suggestions from Huber/Williams' book "Professional Microphone Techniques":

"For a good pickup with a high degree of separation, a mic can be placed at a distance of two inches to one foot. . . When miking at a distance of less than six inches, microphone and speaker placement becomes slightly more critical. For brighter sound, the mic should face directly into the center of the speaker's cone--right where the center starts to flare out. This usually produces the sweetest tone. Placing the microphone off center to the cone produces a mellower tone while reducing amplifier noise. In addition, angling the mic so the sound pickup is somewhat off axis can result in a darker tone."

That's a basic example of a few approaches to using one SM-57 or similar cardioid dynamic mic to record a guitar cab...

Maybe check out this thread for tips on acquiring some recording gear & a few ideas about miking drums:

https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=82148



Hope that helps a little! Recording is very involved-- :headache:


--Nightrunner

 

[rainsong86]

Re: recording tips???

yea see that's the biggest problem guys.. recording the drums.. the guys we met who told us they'd charge us 40 dollars an hour to record our album had a computer interface with at least 8 inputs so that there'd be separate tracks for the drum mics.. all we have as far as a mixer is a PA.. but that's amplified.. is there a way to use that to get a drum mix?

 

[xerxes]

Re: recording tips???

dont mic the bass amp, record it direct....

 

[Nightrunner]

Re: recording tips???

yea see that's the biggest problem guys.. recording the drums.. the guys we met who told us they'd charge us 40 dollars an hour to record our album had a computer interface with at least 8 inputs so that there'd be separate tracks for the drum mics.. all we have as far as a mixer is a PA.. but that's amplified.. is there a way to use that to get a drum mix?

Depends on if you have more than one stereo bus... If you're using the PA as sound reinforcement and it has separate monitor level controls for each channel + the actual channel faders, and it has one or more monitor out + the main stereo outs, then with some creative routing you could mix the drums for recording...

Not ideal, but it could work! I remember the days of making one-take stereo recordings of my band through a PA mixer... Very live sounding.



--Nightrunner

 

[GuitarStv]

Re: recording tips???

If you want your recordings to sound even close to professional it's going to cost you, especially if you want to record everyone all at once while practicing. I would look at getting an sm57/beta 57 for each guitar cab, do the bass DI, get at least 4 mics for the drums (sm 57 for snare, sm 81 as overhead for cymbal and hihat, sm 57 toms, beta 52a for kick), and get a mic that the singer likes (dynamics are better for recording while playing with everyone else, but you might like the sound of some LDCs). All those mics will require preamps, so you could look into somthing like the PreSonus DigiMax mic pre (with 8 preamps with inputs for DI bass). Then you're going to want to take those signals and put them in your computer, which you can do with somthing like an M-audio delta 1010 . . . (8 analog inputs to your computer). You should be able to set this up for just under 2500$ . . .

 

[xerxes]

Re: recording tips???

man micing a guitar cab is so friggin easy for me! all i do is put an sm57 about 2inch's lower than center of the speaker and about an inch from the grill.....sounds really good too....