Quick recording help

[b to g is yummy]

My band is looking at doing an amateur recording ourselves to help tighten up and post on myspace. What is our best easier way to do it?
We have cubase, and a preamp thing that allows us to simultaniously record 8 individual tracks. I dont think we're tight enought to play together just micing the drums...cuz i feel the mistakes bleeding into the drum mics would not be pretty.
would it work for us to play everything together recording the main parts minus the drums..than get the drummer to play with the recording through headphones to get the base started??
thanks guys..sry for the poor question..

[T-Bird]

Hi.

Not a poor question at all IMO. While it can be done in a way You described, I still feel that by recording all the instruments simultaneously, including the drums, gives the tightest result timingwise. You'll probably have to re-record the cymbals anyway.
Also the bleed gives a realistic image of the space, if the mics and amps are placed correctly.

If the computer You're using handles 8 track recording at once without hiccups, I believe that the disk space isn't a problem either. Just record the tracks as many times as needed, until the result is satisfactory.



Just my 0.02€
Sam

[b to g is yummy]

thanks...so when you mentioned re-recording the cymbals did you mean that he'd have to go through the songs playing only cymbals?? or the whole kit and just turn on the overheads??

[T-Bird]

Hi.

For re-recording our drummer plays only the cymbals. That way the only "critical" hi-freq material stays as clean as possible, the whole headroom is used and You can hear the "tails" (or whatever the fading cymbal sound is called ) cleanly.
It's far easier to cut the tail with a gate in post-production than to try to isolate the often quite high noise level by gating too high for a natural sound.

Unless You're going to use a drum booth or other similar way to isolate the overheads from picking up, well about everything, I wouldn't and actually don't use any overheads while laying the basic tracks, unless there's a need for a few natural reverb or delay tracks. In that case the overheads are quite high up.

Sam

[Buzzgroove]

Hi,

I've been doing a bit of recording lately having everything in the same room and miking the drums - once everything is mixed together and you go over any parts you need to redo, vocals, guitar etc the bleed is not noticeable and the drum sound stays punchy, work post production in cubase to bring the levels up using the comp and noise gate.. Can you do the take without vocals and add them later? Maybe use cushions or blankets at the guitar cabs to try and stop some bleed if you can't get isolation boxes.

With a bit of experimentation you should be able to get a good recording this way using cubase, I have used that program and more recently a Zoom digital 16 track and had good results from both.

Main thing is to enjoy doing it and try different methods, hope this helps a bit.

[b to g is yummy]

Well last night we recorded the drums live...they seem to sound ok..we'll see how it sounds after we add everybody else...thanks everybody