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Venue does live recordings

#21
what style does your band play. If it's metal, suicide silence record a couple of albums live and it sounded very raw. If you play something more produce then don't even try it. this style of recording sounds like what black metal, Hardcore, and Punk bands would do.
 
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#22
Kmonk said:
All they are going to do is give you a crappy recording direct from the board which you won't be able to mix correctly. At best, you might be able to clean it up a bit but you won't have a good quality recording.
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If they opt for a stereo board mix or a two track room mix, then, yeah, your stuck with what ever the finished mix is. Given a choice I would opt for the multi track recording. And then only if the band were tight enough to warrant the expense. And then only if there were enough tracks to capture everything and enough things mic'ed to provide a complete multi-track recording. If they're counting on vocal mics to capture cymbals for the live mix and not putting up overheads and high hat mics, for instance, then your going to end up with a recording where the cymbals that disappear every time somebody uses their vocal mic for vocals. No mic on the bass, your using pedals and all their offering is a DI on the instrument only? No thanks, unless your have the ability to re-amp the raw track. Since they are charging you for this service, it is more than reasonable to have certain expectations from the results. You need to have reasonable expectations and the ability to do something with the raw tracks. As somebody mentioned above, I'd ask for some past results.
 
#24
LowActionHero said:
We got an offer to play on a paying night after playing the free 'open mic' night. Haven't had a chance to set it up yet. The recording is a new thing they just started.
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You must have impressed. I was talking about the recording. If they give you a decent mix, along with some video you can edit, it MIGHT be worth it.

Or it might be garbage. Rather than an empty room, how about during the paid gig, hopefully with a good crowd?
 
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#25
bassboysam said:
generally these recordings turn out sounding like garbage.
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That depends on their gear and the person using it. If they run something even as cheap as a Behringer XR18 they can produce wav files with all 18 tracks. Drop them into Reaper or similar and, assumming decent playing and decent sounding instruments, you can make some very good recordings.

I've recently gotten a little Soundcraft Ui12 which does basic stereo recordings and the results we've gotten are better than i would have expected.
 
#26
Interesting that this just came up. One of our bands did exactly this at our last show. But for a much cheaper price (i think they charged us 10$) so we still got paid plenty for the show. Got the tracks in email today. Literally 15 different mics from bass, guitar, vox1,vox2, tom1,tom2 etc etc etc, even two ambient crowd recordings if we want to maintain the "Live sound". I'm very happy with the quality of the tracks and look forward to the mixing process. Always fun to hear your isolated bass, really lets you pinpoint things you should work on.
 
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#27
trevcda said:
No mic on the bass, your using pedals and all their offering is a DI on the instrument only? No thanks, unless your have the ability to re-amp the raw track.
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At nearly every gig I've done and seen the FOH bass is DI'd. That's what the audience is hearing unless the PA is crap and you're cranking a big rig to be heard. A hell of a lot of recording is through a DI as well.

trevcda said:
If they're counting on vocal mics to capture cymbals for the live mix and not putting up overheads and high hat mics, for instance, then your going to end up with a recording where the cymbals that disappear every time somebody uses their vocal mic for vocals.
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This would be a deal breaker for me though.
 
#29
Is this audio & video, or just audio? And is the audio a bunch of separate, high quality tracks you can mix? For the price I hope its not just an audio CD burned from the AUX output on the PA because you could do that by yourself.
 
#30
ThreeFingers said:
Interesting that this just came up. One of our bands did exactly this at our last show. But for a much cheaper price (i think they charged us 10$) so we still got paid plenty for the show. Got the tracks in email today. Literally 15 different mics from bass, guitar, vox1,vox2, tom1,tom2 etc etc etc, even two ambient crowd recordings if we want to maintain the "Live sound". I'm very happy with the quality of the tracks and look forward to the mixing process. Always fun to hear your isolated bass, really lets you pinpoint things you should work on.
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Wow. Email huh? What was the average file size per song?
 
#31
dxb said:
Is this audio & video, or just audio? And is the audio a bunch of separate, high quality tracks you can mix? For the price I hope its not just an audio CD burned from the AUX output on the PA because you could do that by yourself.
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Audio only, and separate tracks. It may be $125 but it still seems high for mixing like they would anyways, then hitting the record button. Then the copy button. Oh well.
 
#36
I like getting live recordings of my bands, but I don't know that I'd pay much cash to have a keepsake of a Sunday early afternoon gig. If you guys can rock a decent raw demo out of it, that's cool, but are they expecting you to run a regular set for four hours? Will you be getting multiple takes of songs?
 
#37
I've done this more than once and it works fine. You need to be able to remix yourself though so you need the individual tracks. Remember though that with an external multi-channel soundcard and a laptop you can do this yourself - maybe worth thinking how many $150 fees it would take before you could have bought your own live recording setup? I had a mobile 16-track setup for very little outlay and at one time was doing live recordings for others.
 
#38
Do you guys have & use your own PA? If so maybe look into a digital mixer upgrade & have the ability to do live multi-track recording anytime & everytime you gig w/your PA. # of tracks/channels needed determines the cost of said upgrade, which could be as cheap as a few hundred $'s
 
#40
Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I haven't seen what the GOAL of doing this is. Sounds like the drummer just wants to do it to do it. You're not likely going to get anything that you can use professionally, and if you just want to hear yourselves, you can record during rehearsal. I record at rehearsal and gigs with my iPhone and the quality if fine for troubleshooting.

Unless the drummer is the BL, just say no.
 
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