Recording Your Practice

samurai_24 · #1 05-23-2006, 11:59 AM

Can anyone provide some insight on how you record your practices? I'm taking all advice!

tZer · #2 05-23-2006, 12:16 PM

We did this as a regular part of our jam sessions for over a year. Every session recorded - we have hours upon hours of really cool stuff and total crap

- But I would recommend to anyone, especially those in a band trying to write their own music, to record everything!

There are a number of ways. Some that I have used include:
1. A simple microphone into a laptop into some simple MP3 recording software.
2. Better microphones set up in such a way as to capture the room better (I am no engineer, but the dude whose studio we use placed the 2 mics over each other then angled the top one about 30 deg. to the left and the bottom about 30 deg. to the right) Recording into more sophisticated software (Sonar 4.0 Producer's Edition).
3. Mics into a Hard Disc Recorder (a Roland something or other)

The best sounding one was the good mics through really good preamps, into the Delta 1010 into Sonar. These mics are really top-notch - amps were all nicely dispersed throughout the practice space and we were really well balanced with the drums... not too loud - just loud enough to get the character of the amps and guitars without it being a unweildy sonic scenario.

--tz

Big Cadillac · #3 05-23-2006, 07:07 PM

The band practices in a basement and it usually has been three piece but at times there has been four or five of us. Drums in the middle with the drummers back against the long wall. Amps mostly on the short walls to the right and left of the drummer. Main PA in the corners opposing the drummer. Two Oktava condenser mics facing away from the drums towards the the amps and PA. The back side of the mics are located fairly close to the drums. Sound meter positioned at the mics, facing in the same direction, used to balance the sound level of the guitar, bass, drums and vocals to the desired dB. Fine tuning of each instrument's sound level is made by ear. Mics feeding Presonus Firepod into PC. Once a set-up is made it is used pretty much for the entire practice. If the guitar changes, e.g. Strat to Les Paul, sound level of the guitar is once again checked with the sound meter for the desired dB. Experimenting and fine tuning over time work wonders for recording quality. By the way, the kick drum is mic'd, the rest of the kit is not because it's too hot of a signal for the basement.

niftydog · #4 05-23-2006, 09:19 PM

Take one HiMD recorder, one ultra-compact stereo condenser microphone, connect together and place strategically in middle of jam room, hit record.

Make it small and stupidly easy to set up or else you won't use it as often as you should.

My Sony HiMD unit fits the bill nicely, it and the mic together are smaller than a cigarette pack, and it's much cheaper than the popular favourites such as the Edirol R-09 et al.

You don't need sophistication or high quality, you just wanna hear the parts reasonably clearly so that you can repeat the jam at a later date. Place the mic sensibly and you can achieve this easily.

samurai_24 · #5 05-24-2006, 09:07 AM

Awesome. I already have a condesner mic and a small mixer, but I'm hesitant to drag my whole pc into our practice space... perhaps just a tape recorder would work?

paulraphael · #6 05-24-2006, 01:04 PM

The classic boombox works really well.

I got fancy when my old band practiced at my loft, and started taping our rehearsals with Cubase on my mac using a pzm mic.

the result: it was still boom box quality, but we spent half of our rehearsal time hanging out while i fiddled with the thousands of virtual buttons and knobs on the german software.

i'm not sure it was the best idea.

Big Cadillac · #7 05-24-2006, 04:49 PM

I started out recording on a Zoom MRS4 and two condenser mics. It works quite well. Songs get recorded on a memory card which can be converted to .wav on your computer using software you download from their web site. I then used Sound Forge to add eq, adjust volume levels, etc. It also works great for burning CD's..

Coop Soup · #8 05-26-2006, 11:15 AM

My old band recorded every practice. I literally have 250 cds from practice.

We close micd everything and ran it into our board... then ran that to a Sony burning deck. Dialed in a mix and we had it. It really worked wonders for hearing individual mistakes and a great reference for the following practice. I'd highly recommend everyone recording practice... it really helps.