UB Ed

We're about to release a live album, so this subject is very much on my mind.

In four evenings, recorded over about six weeks, we did the same show each night and were able to collect twenty-four songs. We found that altering the running order of the sets helped each song sound its best on successive nights. You can distribute when you're tired, when you're spot on, and when you're not quite there yet.

It is important that you have an independant ear on the board who knows what you're after, and who will be around for post production. Hiring a producer (Danny Carnahan of Wake the Dead) was one of the best decisions we made.

By all means split you mics and record straight to the tape.

You might consider that your public address mics might not be the best choice you could make for recording. Although our SM58 betas are just fine for most of the joints we sing in, we rented a much higher grade of mic for recording, and were quite happy with the higher quality of sound we captured.

Think about your performance. Are you incidentally recording a show, or inviting an audience to a recording session? Are you willing to play a song a second time if you think it went to hell on you? Do you want the audience to hold its applause for a second or two after the song so that your engineer has more room to doctor that last chord in post production? How much audience response do you want on the final product?

We found that it's imporant to eliminate as much bleed through in recording as you can. That is, isolate each mic from the others, so that in post production it's easier to clean up intonation, timing, et al. Include a mic or two for audience pick-up for later inclusion as needed.

It's a pain to record live, as you surrender a lot of control. However, there's no substitute for the excitement and immediacy you can catch with a live recording. We found that we lived with some imperfections we would never accept in the studio, because the audience/performer energy carried the tune so strongly. I applaud your decision to do this.

I'm no expert at this. I've learned some things from the folks who helped us with our recording, and if you e-mail me, I'll be happy to pass along anything else you think might help.

Good luck, and have fun.

Dave