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Recording live shows

Joel S.

Joel S.

Reserved for future witty use...
Jul 9, 2008
374
3
www.joelandrew.com
#1
I searched, nada, so... either I suck at searching or this hasn't been touched on.

Last gig I played we were all run through the house PA, I in turn brought my laptop with an external sound card and plugged into the mixer. Ran into some issues.

1) The mixer looked pretty abused, and as such the record out wasn't too reliable. The result was 6 out of 10 songs being trashed do to ridiculous buzz. What wasn't trashed had a little low buzz here and there, nothing too noticeable and for the most part the sound was good.

2) The mix leaned heavily on vocals with guitar right behind it. I was almost inaudible on one song, ok on others. I, of course, expected it to be mixed like this because people want to hear vocals, and with amps and such behind us, I can imagine the music being loud and vocals needing to be bumped to compensate. My bass sounded great to me, loud and clear, I could FEEL it, and no complaints from friends in attendance.

On the outside, the sound was great, so it certainly wasn't the live mix from a listening standpoint, just recording.

So, I'd like to record all our gigs so have some stuff to check out and listen to later, but I'm not sure how to go about it. I'd like to get something where it's clear so I can easily critique my performance, as well as pass on to others. We kicked around using a mic, I'm just concerned the quality will be trash...

Anyone have any successful tips/tricks?
 
#2
What you recorded was mixed for the room. A recording of the FOH mix is always goofy because it's mixed for the room, not for a balanced mix out of a stereo, etc.

One solution, if the mixer outs weren't so bad, would be to use an aux mix for what you are recording and use headphones to dial it in. This way it is a separate mix from the FOH mix.

If you are just looking for a simple solution to record an audience mix, there are a bunch of all in one hand held recorders with built in mics and the option to connect external mics. Zoom, Tascam, Sony, and many others make them and they range from around $300 up. Here are some: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/navi...-track-recorders-professional?N=100001+309138

You can also just mic the room with some good stereo mics (Rode NT5 maybe) and record on a laptop if you have a good audio interface. In a pinch an old analog 4 track, minidisc, or DAT recorder would even work.
 
#3
Unfortunately, you're pretty much at the mercy of the house PA mixer. If it doesn't have the capability to send you an auxiliary or matrix feed, you're going to have a difficult time getting a decent mix recorded.

The best situation is when the house mixer is something like a Mackie Onyx with the FireWire interface, so you can grab all the channels individually, or a large main mixer that can send you at least an 8 channel matrix feed. Of course, many times, a house big enough to justify this type of mixer is likely to use the matrix or aux sends for monitor mixing, so you might still run into problems.

Another way to do it is to run splitter snakes, so you can get everything individually before it ever hits the mixer, but again, it's unlikely that the house is going to let you dismantle their system in order to patch in the splitter.
 
#4
I use an Edirol R-09 digital recorder (a ZOOM would do, too) and place it in the back of the room on a tripod. It picks up everything authentically. What it hears is what the audience is hearing. Then it's a simple matter of plugging it into your computers USB port and downloading to your editing program (I use Audacity), then transfer to Desktop to transfer to CD. It give our 5 piece classic rock band a great reference for improving.
 
#5
Everyone above is spot on. Unless you are playing a huge venue (think sheds or arenas), you won't be able to get a good left / right board dump. Even then, most of the artists use a stereo matrix feed to get a 2-track reference recording.

The mix is far, far, far too skewed for the room in smaller venues to have any hope unless you are entirely electronic (drums, PODs, etc.).

-Mark
 
#6
Another option, if you're dealing with larger boards, is to use the "direct outs" to feed a separate recording system, but again this is generally a feature of boards that go in larger installations or systems, and the direct outs may still be used to feed the monitor mix, depending on the preferences of the house engineers.
 
#7
amper said:
Another option, if you're dealing with larger boards, is to use the "direct outs" to feed a separate recording system, but again this is generally a feature of boards that go in larger installations or systems, and the direct outs may still be used to feed the monitor mix, depending on the preferences of the house engineers.
Click to expand...

I've thought about this for gigs where we're not run into the PA because I have a box with a bunch of ins that I can use to record to a laptop.

One thing I'm concerned about with recorders and mics are idiots who mess with them out in the crowd, no real avoiding that though.

The singer/lead did say he has a nice mic they've used for recording... might have to give that one a go.

Thanks.
 

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