Recording rehearsals: simple, low budget solutions that out rank "phone in the room"?

Snags

I might be getting ahead of myself, but tonight is the first get together of what will hopefully be a new band. Realistic goals (get good enough to do some pub gigs and some of the local festivals low on the bill), mixture of covers and originals. Two of us are already committed, tonight we see if it may work with the other two interested parties.

If (when) it does, it occurs to me that it might be handy to record rehearsals, particularly when working on originals. At the moment the two prime movers just use either a phone, or a basic interface/DAW (if at home) to record ideas and then WhatsApp them, which is fine, but is going to either be inadequate, or too much faff, for regular rehearsals.

This is all alien territory for me, and my ideal solution would be something self-contained that we can plonk in the room, hit 'record', then stop at the end of the session and chop up the output later if need be. Doesn't need to be multi-track, properly mic'd etc. it's just for capturing the ideas, and maybe later on having something to help with practice away from the rehearsal.

Priorities are therefore simple, portable (I have enough crap to cart in and out as it is) and cheap - not "cheap for what it is" but actually cheap as it could turn out to be a total waste of money!

octatonic

Zoom portable recorders.
Nothing else is better, I use the H5.

vasselmeyer

I've used one of the little Zoom H2 multi-mic recorders and just plonked it in the middle of the room. They record to SD card and you can set them up for mono, stereo or surround.

WiresDreamDisasters

You could buy my Zoom H6 if you fancied. Bloody epic bit of kit, but I haven't used it in years.

Branshen

Yea, what they said. The cheapest offering is the H1n, which would also do a great job. 

mrkb

You should have mentioned it last week. I use a zoom h4n and it works well, I could have recorded Sunday’s jam so you could hear it back.

Whistler

Likewise, I have been using an old Zoom H2N for years. All the answers above are singing from the same songsheet, the one called experience. Pick the model that appeals to you or is at a good price and off you go.

darthed1981

mrkb said:

You should have mentioned it last week. I use a zoom h4n and it works well, I could have recorded Sunday’s jam so you could hear it back.

Ironically, was thinking of starting a similar thread because I'd have liked to record Sunday's jam!

mrkb

darthed1981 said:

mrkb said:

You should have mentioned it last week. I use a zoom h4n and it works well, I could have recorded Sunday’s jam so you could hear it back.

Ironically, was thinking of starting a similar thread because I'd have liked to record Sunday's jam!

Happy to bring it along next time. I bit I hate is going through 5 hours of noise extracting the songs, and trying to place the mic to get a good room mix.

Stuckfast

If you have an iPhone, check out the new Dolby On app. The demos I've heard are quite impressive.

Musicwolf

Best option is usually to make do with whatever you already own. Now, this is a GAS fuelled guitarist forum, so less of that sort of bollocks - what can you buy?

A simple 2tk recorder, such as the H4n, is good.  Just set up, hit record and forget.  The problem, as has been pointed out already, is that some poor sod (i.e. you) has to then trawl through hours of crap to find the relevant bit.  By the way, you do realise that the rest of the band won't actually listen to don't you?

My solution was actually the Zoom L-12 LiveTrack.  It's a 12ch desk that records to SD card as multitrack.  You use it as your PA desk (it's got 5 aux busses for monitoring, so it's usable live) and the beauty is that each time you hit record it saves the tracks to a different folder which means that when you get back home you copy the files to you DAW a folder at a time and can quickly filter out the crap (you can do some of this by just looking at the file lengths and eliminating the aborted takes).

I used mine to also make demos for the bands website and it's so good that I've now stopped using it as I've replaced it with a Behringer XR18 and a laptop (which is actually a more complex way of doing the same thing) so, if your interested in the Zoom, feel free to PM me.

darthed1981

mrkb said:

darthed1981 said:

mrkb said:

You should have mentioned it last week. I use a zoom h4n and it works well, I could have recorded Sunday’s jam so you could hear it back.

Ironically, was thinking of starting a similar thread because I'd have liked to record Sunday's jam!

Happy to bring it along next time. I bit I hate is going through 5 hours of noise extracting the songs, and trying to place the mic to get a good room mix.

I think the between song noodling was half the fun of the day for me... just whack all five hours up and call it "this did get loud, inappropriately loud, all the time..."

Snags

Thanks all, looks like some kind of Zoom device will figure in my future. Just need to work out which one I actually need!

@musicwolf - thanks, that looks like a great bit of kit, but is way OTT for our current needs (I got accused good-naturedly of being a 'gear head' because I turned up with combo+cab+board ). However, as and when we need our own PA I may revisit that.

@wiredreamsdisasters - I suspect the H6 is also a bit OTT for what we need, but I'll drop you a PM just in case you've had a bump on the head and want to sell it for far less than it's worth.

digitalscream

Best option, for my money, is an iRig Pre, with a phone plugged in at one end and a decent mic at the other.

Chris_J

I use a portable Tascam recorder (dr40 I think) it's pretty much the same as the zoom offerings above but just a different brand. Very useful bit of kit.