Recording at the rehearsal space (full volume)

[Genius Gone Insane]

I recently recorded some guys in their studio (untouched) for free as a favor. The only difference was that we turned the bass down a tad, and cut the PA (no kicks or vox coming out).

I just threw some mics out in front of everything, full volume, bleed and all. They just wanted something to put up on their Myspace page. It actually didn't turn out that bad, though if I could go back I'd have placed the OHs differently and put the singer in another room for sure. Also put something in between hi hat and guitar 2 would have made it worth mixing...anyway

So have any of you done this sort of thing? And tips/secrets you want to share?

 

[moose209]

Great Topic!

Some of the best recordings I have ever done, and collegues of mine were in that exact situation. The performances are usually fantastic as the performers are comfortable and relaxed.

Like you say, bass needs to be quiet(er) as in comparison to everything else we have major deficiencies except at 90dB or so. So they only way to deal with it is to appreciate it, and accept in my opinion. Instead of recording individual instruments record the band as a whole.

Although you may be placing a mic to capture guitar, apreciate the spill from other instruments and to try to use it to your advantage, alla jazz band recording scenerios. I really learnt a lot from MIXING WITH YOUR MIND by that geezer Mike Stravou - way too much time in excellent facilities that dude! The main thing being - Put everything close together, because at least then the spill will be only a few milli seconds late rather than 50 or 100 hundred milliseconds.

That being said it can be hard to get a bad sounding room to sound good, and a kick tunnel can clean up the bottom end of the track a treat along with DI'ing the bass. It will be hardest for the bass player as he will have to be quiter and he may not understand why until you have done a take a fulol volume and shown him that he is louder than everything else in all the mics!

When I recoreded at the BBC for a live session, we did the vocals in another booth, but fuck, everything at full whack in a well treated room everyone about 3 meters away from eachother so the delay was just inside 30-40 ms that rocked man - the drums sounded huge cause they where in everything and so did the bass.

Experiment but keep the basics of audio and gain structure in mind at all times, still I am turning into somewhat of an audio nazi so prehaps I may have lost the plot completely in this respect, but isolation only leads to removing the soul of music that is all about soul. (Metal btw)

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

Ive been doing similar recently. We tracked the band live in the rehersal room and then replaced the bass guitars and vocals. The rooom we used was huge!! Seriously big and we had a few gobos around as well which were really useful.

Through taking advantage of the room and using the gobos we got a drum recording with practically no spill from anything else and have ended up with a pretty decent result.

Im working on something at the moment wherem the drums were tracked in a rehersal room. Basically we sent the drummer click and guide guitar through is headphones and got the drums down. Much smaller room this time but again its all sounding really good so far.

 

[prowlergrig]

Put everything close together, because at least then the spill will be only a few milli seconds late rather than 50 or 100 hundred milliseconds.

can you elaborate on this a bit - how should the amps be placed in relation to the drums, etc.

i find all this very interesting, any other insights would be appreciated

 

[Glenn Fricker]

I've only recorded one project like this. Unfortunately, we had to keep throwing takes away because the lead player, nicknamed "Lightning Fingers" because of his inhuman skill with a guitar turned into "butter fingers" for the day. I even made up a "mistake chart" for him... every time he screwed up, another tick would be added. The page was pretty full by the end of the day.

He works in a local music store, and some six years later, I still have clients of mine walk in there and ask for "Butter Fingers." It drives him up the wall.


-0z-

 

[egan.]

The main thing being - Put everything close together, because at least then the spill will be only a few milli seconds late rather than 50 or 100 hundred milliseconds.

Unless your room is 34 meters (113 feet) wide you'll never achieve a difference of 100 milliseconds.
3 meters would actually be a difference of 8.7ms

Not trying to be a know-it-all but it's worth having the math right.

You need to be very careful of phase issues in a situation like that and get creative w/ source/mic/baffle placement to make it work. Obviously the sound of the room is a huge issue too. IMO a bigger space gives you more options and makes the phase issues easier to resolve. Plus sometimes leakage sounds good but sometimes it sounds like shit-- it's good to have options. Oh and remember the 3 to 1 rule.

 

[riffmachine]

This is a cool topic. I have been recording live practice sessions at full volume for my band. Everything except the vocals is live. So far, they have proved to be the biggest bitch with phase issues and bleed, so we just do them afterwards. Check out some tunes here www.myspace.com/weaponwithin. 4 drum mics, 2 guitar mics, and one bass DI.

 

[moose209]

Unless your room is 34 meters (113 feet) wide you'll never achieve a difference of 100 milliseconds.
3 meters would actually be a difference of 8.7ms

Not trying to be a know-it-all but it's worth having the math right.

You need to be very careful of phase issues in a situation like that and get creative w/ source/mic/baffle placement to make it work. Obviously the sound of the room is a huge issue too. IMO a bigger space gives you more options and makes the phase issues easier to resolve. Plus sometimes leakage sounds good but sometimes it sounds like shit-- it's good to have options. Oh and remember the 3 to 1 rule.

Yeah you do need to be creative about mic placement and inventing work arounds in close scenerios, but thats wat makes it fun hey! You are right about the size, but at 3 meters if the same sound is picked up close and in another mic without any compensation when played back there will be a noticable phase issue, the distant mic will suck the life out of the low mids and bass, so was it then worthwhile using two mics or would one for both sources be better? In situations like this less mics and the band balancing themselves is a better solution.

The main thing I try to do is think of every as a whole, just because I have one mic ideally trying to pick up say the guitar in a live situation doesn't mean I can't use that mic to pickup something else at the same time, by using the pickup pattern to your advantage and by deciding on a gain setting for the mic to open or close its field of "vision".

I try to see mics as photo lenses, the polar pattern is the shape of the lens and the gain is the zoom, higher gain = further zoomed out, lower gain = focused or zoomed in.

Although the math may be right in the 3to 1 rule it is only a good place to start for me. A good one though. The same goes for mic "set ups" like you see in books and shit. They are good starting points but until you focus on whats happening in the room you'll never get a good sound, although perhaps you will be chance.

Kick tunnels work a fucking treat, as does doing the same to the bass amp, although it'll really fuck off the bass player in both scenerios. And the guitars will be in every mic!

 

[moose209]

One thing that did work for my old band was to use only 2 sm58's, one primarily for the bass and drums and the other for the two guitars, we chose at the time not to do vocals as they were onlt to test how the song sounded. So we recorded a whole track and then sat and listened to it, making notes of what was to loud or masked and the either moved the mic or changed the volume.

The drummer should always be consistant and if hes too loud then fucking turn down the mic gain or point the mic in the opposit direction. However anything electric can be altered if you want to get a good sonic balance.


To get good recordings like this the band needs to be flexible and open to changes, as does the engineer. A balance between the two will really work.

If you've ever tried the plastic/polystyrene cup around the mic you'll know that anything that alters the air around the mic head has a dramatic effect on phase, but if you move the baffle a bit further down the barrel it can work a treat.

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

I have been doing this for a long time with my band. Recording rehearsals, because I found out that we would be creative in the rehearsal and then on the next one nobody would remember anything After a lot of different ways of recording it, I am doing it now like this:

The drums are all triggered and have a spaced pair of mics for overheads, this will get all cymbals including ride and hihat and it will also get some snare (to get a more real snare sound for the triggered one), just have to get the balance right between all cymbals.

I split my guitar into 2 amps and mic each one.

The bass that we don't have right now is through DI.

The vox is just the normal 58.

After that I replace all the ddrum clicks with soundreplacer, eq and compress everything (the overheads have to HP at 300-500 to get out the normal rumble and bass build up of a small rehearsal space like mine ( 3m x 3,5m :zombie and it's done


I also did a more elaborated sound for a preproduction of an album that I will record soon. To get the best sound in the same rehearsal space :zombie: I recorded more or less the same way but everybody was on headphones and I recorded the bass and guitars very low just for everybody to listen through headphones along with the DI tracks.
Then I reamped the guitars.
The vocals were recorded separately.
Then I mixed it and the sound was very good, better than I expected.

 

[-Gavin-]

Care to post an MP3??? I'm REALLY curious about this.

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

Care to post an MP3??? I'm REALLY curious about this.

I'll ask the band for permission to post a sample

 

[Sloan]

Part of the reason I started lurking this forum in particular is that I've been working with a local metal band. They've been renting out my "studio zone" for rehearsal and I've recorded a few sessions for demo reasons. I've gotten pretty good results and people seem to like it.

You can check out some of the recordings here:
www.myspace.com/cityofrlyeh

I use a yamaha aw16g and everything is done in the box.
The pictures on their myspace show the room i record in. it's just one room, nothing special. the recordings sound pretty muffled, but i'm borrowing some monitors and I just now am getting used to the way they sound.

i've wanted to get them in to actually work a "real" recording, but they had a guitarist just quit and are looking for another. blah blah blah.

 

[HeadCrusher]

Check out some tunes here www.myspace.com/weaponwithin. 4 drum mics, 2 guitar mics, and one bass DI.

Sounds great man, which mics were you using / placement? How big (and how high!) is your room?

[...] a small rehearsal space like mine ( 3m x 3,5m :zombie [...]

Now that's really small!! Did you ever measure the volume during rehersal in there? Must be loud as WWIII!

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

Now that's really small!! Did you ever measure the volume during rehersal in there? Must be loud as WWIII!

Never measured it but it must be at least as loud as WWIII!!!

 

[Eduardo Apolonia]

Care to post an MP3??? I'm REALLY curious about this.

Here is a link for a sample, it's small but you can check the sound of it.
Ignore the electronic influences if you don't like
And the snare is a little bit too electronic, it was done intentionally. ( before you guys start ranting about it)

HCM

 

[_RiseInside_]

I recorded this band in a similar way. It´s a modest production but done in "rehearsal mode". The songs are not final mixes. They recorded 4 songs in one day, playing at the same time, no overdubs, no fancy preamps.

www.myspace.com/allemotionsday

 

[riffmachine]

Fuck, double-post, my bad.

 

[riffmachine]

Sounds great man, which mics were you using / placement? How big (and how high!) is your room?

Cool, thanks man. For the drums I used an Audix D6 on the kick, an SM57 on the snare, and two Shure KSM 109 condenser mics for the overheads. The D6 was about two inches through the port and pointed just off center. The snare was mic'd from the top and angled towards the center. The overheads were spaced out on either side of the kit angled inward to catch some toms and cymbals. For guitars, I used Senheisser 421's up close and pretty much straight at the cone. Bass was a Beta 52A about 10 or 12 inches back. The room I used is a basement room, with short ceilings only about 7' tall and about 20' by 12'. Also, I had sound foam everywhere, which helped a lot. This was the way it was for 3 of those tunes. If you listen to CRL, it has a whole different sound to it, as it was recorded in a different room, with tom mics and all. It was a quick mix though, so I don't think it's as smooth as the others.

 

[elmuchoescadawg]

Ive just finished doing some rehersal room demos with a band. Weve kept the drums from the rehersal room and then overdubed everything else. Ive never posted any clips here before and its just a demo so be kind but here goes.

www.jamesdunkley.co.uk/invey/cutdown

Let me know what you think.

The drums were done in a large rehersal space with gobos round them and then the guitar and bass amps behind each gobo facing away. The vocalist joined in as well but was over the other side of the room and only went through her own monitors and the drummers headphones.