Our band wants a demo

Phil_aka_Pip

We could spend money on a local studio, or:

As I have a digital recorder that can record 8 channels at once I thought we could take it to our usual band practice place and do a recording, with spending some band kitty money on a few bits of kit we don't already have.

I thought of:

• kick drum mic, snare drum mic, 1 condenser mic for drum overhead
  
• passive DI box for bass, he uses his usual amp to monitor
  
• hang my SM57 over the other guitarist's combo
  
• use my Palmer PDI-09 with my AC30
  
• monitor lead vox & BVs via headphones and hear the acoustic spill from drums & backline
  

Any reason why this won't work?

  

monquixote

That's what I'm doing with my current band and our demo is sounding pretty good.

The only thing I'd suggest is record the vox afterwards. 

Phil_aka_Pip

monquixote said:

That's what I'm doing with my current band and our demo is sounding pretty good.

The only thing I'd suggest is record the vox afterwards. 

Thanks Nick. That occurred to me too, but I wondered whether the vocals people would be able to do it without playing their instruments at the same time. Natch, that doesn't stop us from recording everything at once, then recording the vocals afterwards while letting them play their instruments without actually recording them.

monquixote

Phil_aka_Pip said:

monquixote said:

That's what I'm doing with my current band and our demo is sounding pretty good.

The only thing I'd suggest is record the vox afterwards. 

Thanks Nick. That occurred to me too, but I wondered whether the vocals people would be able to do it without playing their instruments at the same time. Natch, that doesn't stop us from recording everything at once, then recording the vocals afterwards while letting them play their instruments without actually recording them.

It sometimes helps to have the vocals in the room to help everyone know where they are and then re-record them afterwards.

Phil_aka_Pip

I'm sure you're right. My recorder has 8 "ghost" tracks for each real track, so doing that is entirely possible AND keep the original

randomhandclaps

Although I think Monq has a valid point if it's a demo for live stuff then I don't see any issues with your original plan.  Really whatever makes each person feel the most comfortable is ultimately best.  If you have the space though I'd set up facing each other so you don't have random loud waves from the kit clipping your vocal mics.

PolarityMan

I wouldn't personally sing if you are going to overdub the vocals.you'll still be able to hear the vocals through all the other mics. You can hear the effect quite cleat on one of the demo vids my band made. In this track we recorded all the music through a spaced pair of condensors the whole band at once with vocals sung unamplified

PolarityMan

1:10 ish is a good example of what I mean.

digitalscream

Spill between the mics is the only problem you're going to have if you record it live.

An alternative is to record it as you would in a studio - everything separate, then mix it appropriately afterwards. The only problem then will be the drums; getting the mics right on an acoustic kit can be a lot more difficult than guitars etc; we cheated on our album and used an electronic kit, with samples from a mix of EZDrummer and BFD3. Then again, everything else on our album was recorded dry at our various homes and then reamped using the Eleven Rack. Total cost: £500 for mixing and mastering (still cheaper than doing one or two songs that way at a studio).

Then again, our drummer and I tried a little experiment with the Recorderman technique. We ended up with four mics - room, kick and two crappy pencil condensers equidistant from the snare, with the direction tweaked for the best stereo image. It actually worked pretty brilliantly for a first attempt, but it wasn't album-quality.

PolarityMan

We used recorder man plus spot mics on the snare, hat, bass drum and all the toms all recorded by me. While I learned a lot and would definitely do things differently the result was easily good enough to use. But you obviously need a good room. Even with mates rates just the studio hire to track all the instruments was probably over £500 you mentioned with mixing and mastering on top. The result is always going to sound more high fidelity recording each instrument in isolation and double/quad tracking etc but some bands prefer to sacrifice some mix quality for the vibe you get playing as a whole band. Probably the best approach is highly band and genre dependent.

Danny1969

The amount of spill depends largely on how big the room is and what kind of baffling you do. I record bands all playing together quite often, it's my favorite method of recording but you do need a largish room and some means of minimizing unwanted spill. We tend to use screens between the amps and drums, here's some typical pics 

I like the feel you can capture when at least the backing track is done live .... because that's the way a lot of timeless recordings were done. The drums, bass, and rhythm is recorded together as a unit and then the vocals, harmonies and solo's are added after.  

I feel I can hear something in recordings when they are done like this that I don't hear when we track things separately to a click. I'm probably imaging it I know but I still prefer to do at least the backing track live. 

In terms of cost you might be surprised how cheap recording can be when it is done live. This cover of Tubular bells was one of 3 songs recorded by me live in half a day at a cost of £100 to the band

There's no edits or overdubs, that video is being  taken as they are playing it, all live and almost nothing needed post production, just very small amounts of EQ and compression 

In terms of having a bash yourself though I would try use 2 channels for drum overheads, one for kick and one for snare. One of the easiest ways to keep your kick and snare in phase and central in the overheads is to use the recorder man method mentioned by @PolarityMan  ...... google recorder man drums for simple instructions. 

The baffle off the guitar amps and mic and di the bass. Record together to nail the backing track and then overdub vocals and any extra bits. 

wave100

Definitely second Danny's advice above, my band hired a studio for a day and recorded as many backing tracks as we could in the one day then did vocal and lead overdubs at a friend's project studio at our leisure, and I mixed it at home. You get the benefits of the studio's space and equipment and the engineer's experience for the drums, which are the hardest bits to record well! Ok you do get a bit of spill, but many engineers believe that a bit of spill helps get a "live" feel for the recording. We also used the same studio where we rehearse so the rest of the band weren't too intimidated by the environment (some of them were first timers at recording).

I think the OP's idea of spending the money on kit and doing it all himself is a good idea in the long run, but if he wants results in the short term it's definitely worth going the studio route.

You can our results here.

Phil_aka_Pip

We tried (just for the hell of it really) this mate's Boss Micro-BR in the place where we normally practice (schoolroom, echo-y as hell). I didn't think the results were good enough to give out to people who we want to hire us. I was surprised that the results were as good as they turned out, in that the recording tells you who's out of time or out of tune, and gives you some idea of whether the arrangement is any good, so it wasn't a complete waste of time, but I have yet to persuade the bandleader that he's not going to get any gigs by letting potential hirers hear those recordings. Actually what he said was "Well YOU said pub landlords won't listen to the CD anyway they just ask for one so they can turn down people who try to get a gig without one". In which case we might as well give out blanks!

wave100

well CDs are pretty old hat these days, Soundcloud and Facebook are where it's at, or so the young folk tell me!

;-)

Phil_aka_Pip

@wave100  you may be right, but does a club owner or pub landlord log on to hear a band that's touting its wares for a gig? tbh I don't rightly know the answer to that, the last time I was doing this they were asking for a cassette!

wave100

I think they are more likely to check out a link on the internet than put a CD in the drive, might depend on the promoter mind you. You could always ask them which they prefer of course. All of my current band's gigs have been got through the internet, we didn't even burn any hard copy...

Phil_aka_Pip

wave100 said:

I think they are more likely to check out a link on the internet than put a CD in the drive, might depend on the promoter mind you. You could always ask them which they prefer of course. All of my current band's gigs have been got through the internet, we didn't even burn any hard copy...

fanx mate

BTW we also tried close miking everything, in the same room as we recorded with the Boss Micro-BR. I have not heard the results, but I am told they were no better, and in some cases worse. This surprises me, but if true, I can't argue with it.

Blacksheep

wave100 said:

I think they are more likely to check out a link on the internet than put a CD in the drive, might depend on the promoter mind you. You could always ask them which they prefer of course. All of my current band's gigs have been got through the internet, we didn't even burn any hard copy...

I know a few lanlords who ignore CDs. Mainly because they've come a cropper in the past with bands who present a faultlessly recorded CD then turn out to be less than sparkling as a live act. Turning up at the venue with an iPad that has live footage has worked well for us in the past.