Live recording

andy_k

Decided to have a stab at getting a gig recorded, first time playing this particular venue, and I'll give a little background info.
5 peice punk covers band, singer owns PA/ analog mixer, I have an RCF m18 digital PA which we are trying to get used to.
Drummer plays in other rock bands, so likes to have mics on everything.
Bass usually just DIs into the desk,
other guitar usually uses JCM 900 half stack, this time he used 1x12 laney combo with Marshall guvnor pedal on all the time, mic'd. also does backing vox
I (Gtr 2) use a 50 watt code, with a 100 watt Katana for backup, this time, code was mic'd, Katana was on for monitoring and I took a line out for recording.
setup was a bit stressful and chaotic-small L shaped area for stage, and some people wanted to swap the band around, which I didnt want to, we rehearse every week in same format, and it gets hard to hear anything sometimes, we swapped bass around once before--didnt work at all.
Anyhoo, I set up a pair of Rode condensors for a good OH of the drums, took separate aux outs of the M18 for Bass, Gtr 1 (mic), Gtr 2 (mic), a vocal return from the analog PA for twin vox, and a send from the mic'd Kick drum, so thats 7 tracks into a Zoom R16, which has 8 input. I used the 8th for a line out of my Katana.
Didnt get much time to get good levels, but I thought it looked acceptable. Our sound man is a bit of a novice, so its hard to get him to go out of his comfort zone so I let him concentrate on the FOH sound, and concentrate on keeping the singer happy.
I hit record and tried not to screw up the solos ( failed sometimes).
Got home late, and loaded all the tracks into Reaper, 2 sets, 8 tracks recorded onto SD card.
Saw straight away that some of the  levels were way off (Gtr 1 had to be turned down 18DB to sound anything other than loud static)
everything else was turned down by about 6 db to get some headroom, but the quality of the tracks was ok.
I thought long and hard about how to mix this, whether to edit it down to one set, so I could chop out the songs that I played badly on, and to try and even whether to try some overdubs, but then I thought-life is too short, nobody cares, its punk anyway.
So, I decided to build it all around my OH tracks, with my kick track used to feed a Slate trigger track, wih a clean kick sample. I used the OH tracks to feed a second sample track with a clean snare, 
The guitars were panned separate Left and Right, and the vocals were left in the middle.
I did a rough balance, based on a couple of tracks, and used ProQ3 and reacomp on every track-to smooth it out a bit.
Final mix was sent through Slates Air eq, and the mastering plugin FGX, and bounced out to MP3.
uploaded to out soundcloud, and our FB page this morning.
I might go back in and tweak a few things, if I get comments, but I think I'm happy with the results, given that there were a few mistakes made in the set up, but it was a good learning experience.
sorry for the long explanations, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated--tracks arent seperated but you can skip around it on soundcloud.
cheers
andy k

Stuckfast

It does the job for sure, sounds like a really good fun gig!

Like you say there are probably things you could do to refine it a bit more but it gets across the punk energy.

The guitars are a bit indistinct, and the one on the left sounds a bit fizzy. Some EQ in the mid-range might help them cut through a bit more or perhaps they could just be a bit louder? Likewise the vocal tone is a bit dull and could do with some upper mid boost to give it some edge.

andy_k

thanks, good points, LH gtr does sound like a chainsaw, this mix is to get some ideas from the other guys, but it is what it is, cheers
andy k

guitartango

Nice Jam cover @andy_k ;

mrleon83

I like it, sounds good ! Did you record video too? would be cool to combine it with visuals..