Recording in mini storage...Help!!

[Cirrused]

My band is going to start recording an extended demo (10-12 songs) for use in getting gigs and such, but also to sell. We have decent equipment and some pretty good recording gear. Right now the setup is a Tascam 8-track digtal recorder, an 8-channel mic preamp (not sure of the brand), a set of drum mics, two Shure sm-57's, and a few various other good quality mics. The demo will be mixed on my home computer after the recording is done.

The problem is, we're recording in our practice space which is a storage. It's a 3-piece rock group in a corner storage room. I'll be DIing a Cirrus 5 with my PBDDI. No vocals will be recorded, but we'll be playing at the same time. Besides the obvious soundproofing, do any of you have any suggestions on mic placement or any other tips? Thanks in advance!

[anderbass]

Sounds like you guys got a good plan.

The best advice I've got at the moment,
is spending some time reading posts on this sight:
http://homerecording.com/bbs/

[derrico1]

DI the bass and use a pre-amp/modeler to DI the guitar.

That way, only the drums will sound all blurred, with the cloudy lows and flutter echoes you get when recording in a mini-storage. Of course, craptacular drum sounds are likely to be a fatal flaw.

You're thinking about selling the resulting recording. If your band is good enough to move CDs with your post-gig merch, and if you care about how your music sounds on CD, I'd strongly suggest finding a *good sounding space* to record at least the drums.

You can often rent out event spaces in churches and lodges that sound pretty decent. If anybody you know lives in a house with high ceilings in a large room, that's also a good candidate. Failing that, seriously consider going into a decent studio to track drums and vocals.

[Cirrused]

Yeah, I kinda figured we would end recording somewhere else. I'll talk to them tonight about setting up temporarily in a better room. Hopefully we'll be able to get it done quick and lay down the vocals at a later time. Thanks for the help

[thewanderer24]

I'll second the thought of DI'ing the guitar for the initial recordings. You want your drum tracks to be as solid as possible without any unnecessary bleed before you start layering in the other instruments.

[Juniorkimbrough]

just for the sake of saying this from my experience but normally you only need a 3-4 song demo to start booking gigs.

If it were me I'd focus on getting 3 GOOD recordings instead of 10 or 11 half way good tracks. Normally a booking agent or bar owner will only listen to 2 songs before making their decision.

[Cirrused]

That's definatly where we're headed. After a few test runs, it seems we can get some decent recordings with this setup. The original plan was to have a 3-4 song short demo for bars/press kits and keep a longer one to do with as we please. However, if we get the top 3 or 4 done I'm pretty sure we'll stop there due the time and nerves it's costing us.