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Starting band - recording without gear?

T

tony_clifton

Nov 14, 2009
240
1
#1
Hello everyone,

My band would like to record some of our tunes to put on a myspace. Pretty good idea, but there is a minor flaw in the plan; we don't have any recording equipment.


So I'll try to start with what we have got:

Guitar: Marshall Valvestate with headphones out
Bass: Orange TB amp with DI
Vocals: 1 mic into a guitar amp with headphones out
Drums (big drumkit, pretty rock 'n roll)

We don't have any money for decent equipment, but I can bring a SM57 to rehearsal so that's maybe something.
Last time I looked there was a cheap Behringer mixer laying around, but I don't really know how to operate it.

Using the mixer we're facing some additional problems: no more guitars and vocals because the amps will be muted.
The SM57 can be used for the drums, but a directional mic for a big kit is less than ideal.

My plan was to just bring my 57 and laptop, plug it in (I have a XLR to mini-jack cable) and record everything that way. Like, putting the amps together next to the drums, placing the SM57 about 2m in front of it, and hit record.
I'm afraid you have to turn the gain in Garageband or whatever very high this way to hear something, resulting in a lot of amplified hiss and white noise etc.

The other option is to use the internal microphone of the laptop, but I think that would distort a lot, even with the gain turned down in Garageband.


I think the best thing we can do is to get a gig with PA support and record the mixing board, right? I guess it won't be too much of a problem when I bring a minidisc player and give it to the soundguy?

But first things first; any opinions about what to do or to try?


Thanks a lot and merry christmas everyone!
 
#4
Recording the FOH board from a gig isn't easy, depending on what kind of output the board has. A two track out will require a fair amount of playing around to get a decent mix, and separate tracks out is high-end.

Get a Zoom handheld for $150 - it will pay for itself over and over.
 
#5
Don't do it just for the sake of having a recording on Myspace. There are enough crap recordings on Myspace already, and they DON'T do a band any favours at all.

Your best option is trying to get a desk recording, but be aware that some sound guys have an attitude about doing desk recordings; many are o.k. with it but don't assume they will just agree.
 
#6
Garageband has a click track... but if you're really worried about it, just record the entire band onto a scratch track once like you described above, then put that into some headphones and have each person (drums, guitar, bass) play along and record their part onto individual tracks. You should be able to get at least a C- quality recording this way if you're not tone deaf.

Merry Christmas!
 
#7
Another hint, go to radio shack and get an RCA to 1/8" cable. Plug the RCA jacks into the "Tape Out" on the beri mixer, then the 1/8" cable into the line in jack on your mac (I assume you're using a mac since you mentioned Garageband). This will get you a little better signal than going straight from XLR into the line in jack (since the mics will be preamped onto the board). You can even record 2 tracks at the same time this way by panning one all the way to the left and the other all the way to the right, and then in Garageband selecting mono tracks on the input pull-down.

I've recorded a lot of $0 budget projects this way...
 
#8
To be honest you'd probably get a better result using that 57, and placing it somewhere in the room where everything picks up to a (sort of) reasonable level. You'd be surprised how good a sound you can get out of doing that, although there are alot of factors that play into how awful or how presentable it might end up sounding. Done some demos just for sake of having something to write lyrics to before and you can manage to get everything audible with a forgiving room, decent mic placement and a reasonable balance of amps, you should be able to get enough level with drums and amps on the go.

What's the limit on time if your wanting to do this during rehearsal time anyway?
 
#9
you can do a room recording. We do it when we're writing to have something for our vocalist to use. helps us hear things out of context too, but it's nothing we would ever want to put on myspace to represent ourselves. With a mixer and a 57 you can do a lot. Just have the drummer lay down all the drums. We have our guitarist play a scratch track through headphones to our drummer while he records. Then just mic up the guitars with the 57 and do vocals. Bass direct in. Pretty simple as long as you track it. Will sound so much better than a room recording. record and mix everything in Audacity and you're good to go. The only thing you'd really be skimping on is the drums.
 
#11
tony_clifton said:
Thanks a lot and merry christmas everyone!
Click to expand...

merry christmas!

Well, I'd have to agree with SwamiRob and suggest just using the 57 in the room for now, even just for the first recordings you do. Once you start using a lot of workarounds like headphone outs into line inputs on the desk (not ideal), a stereo out being all you can record, the added difficulty of monitoring and a whole host of other traps I think you are in danger of spending a lot of time working on something which could easily turn out pretty awful.

A sneaky workaround or two can produce some pretty good results if you are careful but too many 'incorrect' connections (headphone sockets to line inputs :) ) and the faults will pile up and could end up in a big mess of audio. In comparison a 57 in the room is simple and easy to set up, you also have all the gear to record that way 'properly' (that is at least you can plug it in how it was designed to be plugged in!) and you can move it around the room in a second, working out where the best spot is and how each instruments sound changes as you move nearer and further away from it.

57 into mixer's mic preamp, out of the mixer into the computer, you end up with 1 track, and that one track represents 1 mic. The setup you proposed will still result in one track but it will be the combination of a few signal sources all recorded in a less than perfect way, result : really hard to know how to improve it!

If the guitar amps have Line outputs they will do the job MUCH better than the headphone outputs, and will not mute the amps output either. Even so, Line outs on guitar amps often sound pretty bad, the speaker is a big part of a guitars sound. Line outs on bass amps can be pretty useable sometimes.

Just make sure you DON"T take a speaker out and plug it into anything but a speaker! Speaker signals are much higher voltage than anything else in the 'studio' and should go into speakers or specially designed load boxes only.

Lastly, recording a drum kit with directional mics is not only ok, its pretty much the standard in all studios accross the world! The only exceptions are overheads/ambients can sometimes be ribbon mics, which are generally Bi-directional (still directional though!) and If you are lucky to have a nice sounding room then you might put up an omni-directional mic to catch a bit of the rooms character. There are a few clever stereo techniques that use these mics as well, but generally a whole kit from snare kick and tom mics to rooms and ambients, will be directional, cardiod.

A 57 placed in front of the kit about 4 ft up, pointing at the drummer's belly and slightly to the snare side can be a good starting point for a 1 mic drum sound, and you can get pretty good results in a pinch with a bit of playing around!
 
#12
With the exception of the drums, there are a lot of no cost options you can use to get decent recordings. But to get a halfway decent drum sound, you're gonna have to come up with a bit of scratch for some mics. However, here is a nice, low cost means of micing the kit.....

http://www.speakerrepair.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=genem&Product_Code=37-206x3

Great mics.... and cheap. Set up using the recorder man method, plus one of these mics for the kick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiFOD1EeKhQ

This mic'ing method will work with dynamics.



I'd start with setting up the mic's around the room, using the mixer, and run it into your 'puter. Record the whole band with audacity (free program).

You could go in and layer from there using the mixer. Record using audacity, or better yet, get the fully featured demo of Reaper (it will cost you 60 bucks later if you like it). Master it using audacity.

We did something like this a while back, but instead of a mixer, we used a cheap Presonus Inspire firewire interface.
 
#13
Thanks all!

I have to say I did it exactly the Charling's way yesterday. SwamiRob, time wasn't really an issue, a mic is easily set up and plugged into a laptop.
Amps for bass, guitar and vocals close to the bass drum, SM57 pointed to the bassdrum, slightly angled for the other drums and cymbals.

The results are pretty good. No hiss and everything clearly hearable. Off course it lacks in sound quality (sounds a little youtuby), but it's certainly something good to have.

Thanks all!
 

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