Help - Live recording in studio

[Zool2107]

Hello!
We've bought some recording equipment with my band to have our rehearsals and demo recorded, and we're offered to the other local bands that they can record their demo at our place for a very low price.
So there is a hardcore band, and I showed them one of our recorded rehearsal, and they said that they want that sound They want to sound raw, unprocessed and dirty so they want to record live with everything played at once. We can do that, my only problem is that they have one guitarist, and I don't know how to record him (we have 2 guitars, and other bands have 2 guitarists too, but we recorded them spearately).
Should I put 2 microphones on the cab and pan them left-right, or should I split the guitar signal and use 2 amp/cabs and pan those to the sides, or should we record the whole thing, and then the guitarist would do an overdub to have multiple guitars that can be panned?

I would appreciate suggestions on the mics too We have the following mics:
Audix D6
Audix i5
3 x Sennheiser e604
2 x Beyerdynamic Opus 83
Shure SM57
Shure SM58
Shure SH55 (maybe usable for mono room mic?)

I'm plannig to use the SM57 and SM58 on the guitar and the i5 on the snare. Or would it be better to use the SM58 on snare and the i5 on the guitar?

I've also tried the 4 mic setup on drums - recorderman style - but I fear that there would be too much bleed from the guitar/bass in the overheads, and not enough toms (btw I don't know how much toms their drummers use in their music, they play very simple and straightforward music).

We have a 5 piece tirgger set, so we can record trigger signals on the drum, so I can trigger some samples during mixdown (if that matters).
Unfortunately we cannot buy additional mics before they come to record, so we have to work with only these mics.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion!

 

[Zool2107]

I've uploaded one of our live recorded song. This is made with the 4 mic recorderman style drum setup. There are lot of errors in the playing (timing, off key notes and so on) we just quickly made it to test the gear and setup
Here is the link: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=809825&songID=6740591

 

[Djabthrash]

I've uploaded one of our live recorded song. This is made with the 4 mic recorderman style drum setup. There are lot of errors in the playing (timing, off key notes and so on) we just quickly made it to test the gear and setup
Here is the link: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=809825&songID=6740591

When i heard the first seconds of it it was clearly hard to tell it's a "live rehearsal" recording... Then during the "quieter" part you can hear more "ambience stuff" that tells you it may be some live recording.

 

[wishtheend]

Capture the DI while tracking the whole thing live. Then have the guitarist do an overdub track while capturing both the cab mic and a DI signal. These leaves you the DI option for both takes so you can beef up the tone, and be able to pan differently (maybe DI tone 100% L/R and bring the mic tone in a bit)

When going over the songs, I would try to find places where it may sound cool to either center pan the original take, or drop out one side of the two takes. Even though it's just one guitarist in the band, it can really add to the impact and punch of a single riff that was panned mono, to kick in dual-tracked and panned wide.

I'd stick with the 57 on the guitars. The overdub track should be done with the same settings as the live take since it pretty much double the original part. Since you have the DI, I would try to just place the band in the room with enough separation, and only use enough volume to play together. This will help get some guitar out of the OH, plus the DI will for sure give you the option of no-bleed in the guitar tone. I would DI the bass if possible. If the band insists on the bass amp being heard while they play, capture the DI anyways.

Also, not sure how many inputs you have - but if you can capture the triggers, do that at least for the option of sidechaining a gate on the toms. I don't think sample replacement would work for this kind of sound. Do your overheads as a spaced pair, and just roll out to about 300hz. Leaves some toms and meat, but you shouldn't have any bass guitar in there. Main thing, is just use enough volume so the band can hear one another and stay together.

 

[Zool2107]

Capture the DI while tracking the whole thing live. Then have the guitarist do an overdub track while capturing both the cab mic and a DI signal. These leaves you the DI option for both takes so you can beef up the tone, and be able to pan differently (maybe DI tone 100% L/R and bring the mic tone in a bit)

When going over the songs, I would try to find places where it may sound cool to either center pan the original take, or drop out one side of the two takes. Even though it's just one guitarist in the band, it can really add to the impact and punch of a single riff that was panned mono, to kick in dual-tracked and panned wide.

I'd stick with the 57 on the guitars. The overdub track should be done with the same settings as the live take since it pretty much double the original part. Since you have the DI, I would try to just place the band in the room with enough separation, and only use enough volume to play together. This will help get some guitar out of the OH, plus the DI will for sure give you the option of no-bleed in the guitar tone. I would DI the bass if possible. If the band insists on the bass amp being heard while they play, capture the DI anyways.

Also, not sure how many inputs you have - but if you can capture the triggers, do that at least for the option of sidechaining a gate on the toms. I don't think sample replacement would work for this kind of sound. Do your overheads as a spaced pair, and just roll out to about 300hz. Leaves some toms and meat, but you shouldn't have any bass guitar in there. Main thing, is just use enough volume so the band can hear one another and stay together.

Thanks for the response!
I will use a speced pair as OH, and close mic the toms/snare/bassdrum. I can record the triggers too, we have 16 inputs. I'm plannig to roll off the OH more drastically, around 5-600 Hz - but first we have to do the recording to see how much rolloff needed.
It's a good idea to record the DI signal on the guitar, so after the overdub and reamping I will have 4 guitar tracks and I think that would be enough

The volume level would be another thing to consider, because I don't want too much guitar bleeding into the drum mics, but if the amp is turned down too much, then I have to use lot of gain on the 57 and there will be more drums in the guitar mic. So I think that will be a thing we will spending some time experimenting with.

I don't know the songs yet, but the thing you wrote about center panning and muting one side is a good idea too. Maybe I will use one of the vocal mic as a room mic, so maybe that could be used too as a kind of effect or something

 

[Sloan]

Just take that one guitar track and buss it to a track with a slight delay on it. Pan both tracks opposite L & R just like a double tracked take.
Quick, easy, works.

 

[beyond dead]

why not record guitar/bass di then reamp later? ive reamped with a shitty di plugged in backwards before with decent results. just use a amp sim on the channel strip. if your audio interface has instrument ins, you could use them for guitar bass. then you would have no bleed in the OH`s.

 

[matt youwin]

If you want a quick fix then just get the guitarist to re-track a second guitar part once the song has been recorded, then pan each guitar hard left and right. Will sound better than double micing and panning, or delaying and panning.

But otherwise, go the DI option

 

[Zool2107]

Thanks everyone for the posts! I think I will use 2 mics + DI + overdub. More is always better than less