Recording live performance

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 09:22 PM

Cell phone with video allow you to send almost live sections of performances....its a Khuwl Feetur for TheAtYur....to let friends know you were.... when and where at the place it was HapInIng.

You can record and send over and over and if the auditorium gestapo...say "No, no, no," Nod your head and begin again.

Buy good tickets, in the front rows and don't stand up and be obvious rotating the cell around.

The net is filled to bursting with the Stones current tour....recorded on cell phones. (Besides, its the same old stuff, if your mix is poor, search and get a free better mix of the material.)

I record live every time I go. Some of the "good stuff" would not exist today if there were not pirates in the crowd.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: Grab
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 07:39 PM

DW, was this the http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-PASM-2 instead? (the one with the built-in mic?)

Looks like a smart bit of kit. A bit pricey for us though (we're probably limited to sub-£100 without divorce proceedings being started), but it's a nice bit of gear. Something to think about for the future, I guess.

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 07:14 PM

My Peavey mixer has a Tape in and Tape out facility - we use the tape in for interval music and the tape out works quite well int a minidisc recorder .

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: dwditty
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 07:10 PM

This = http://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-PREAMP

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: dwditty
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 07:10 PM

THIS is a great stereo mic with preamp and gain control. I usually just stick in front of my PA (Bose PAS) and run it into an old MP3 Player (Creative Nomad which has Line in and 20 GB hard drive). It will record in CD quality up to 9 hours! I run the file into my PC and use Cool Edit to chop it into tracks, add effects, clean up, etc.

dw

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: Grab
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 05:46 PM

Thanks for the suggestions. Sadly, taking the recording straight off the PA isn't an option, because of how we're set up. And since I'm sound man, guitarist, bassist and vocalist as well (depending on time of evening), there isn't anyone spare to watch a separate mixer - and we don't really have the funds to get one either, unfortunately.

Only the vocals and guitars go through the mixer, and the guitars only go through it so that we can hear them on the foldback, plus a little extra on the PA to carry over people's heads. We both have good enough guitar amps that we don't need much extra reinforcement, and putting them entirely through the PA would lose some of the amp "character". The bass has its own amp as well - it doesn't need to go through the PA because bass carries well on its own (and tends to overload PA speakers anyway), and for the same reason we don't need it on foldback. And drums are loud enough as they are.

So neither the foldback output nor the PA output really bear much resemblance to the overall sound as it hits the outside world. It's a bummer, or we could just have recorded off one of those and had an easy life... :-/

We're not too bothered about perfect stereo or anything like that! :-) The main reason I thought stereo would help would be to get the sound from the guitar/bass amps properly - two of us have a guitar and bass each and swap roles depending on songs, and of course we have to put our amps on opposite sides of the drumkit, where we're standing. So a directional mic is probably going to pick up one better than the other. A pair of mics pointing both ways seems more likely to pick up evenly. Or would a single mic pointing straight ahead pick up both fairly well? (and also not pick up the drumkit at high volumes, since it'd now be pointing straight at it?)

If your basic 58 (or pair thereof) will do the job OK, I'll give it a try. I was wondering though if there was anything that would do a better job (or simpler, or more accurate reproduction) than that?

Graham.

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 02:13 PM

Do you run everything, guitars drums and what have you through the PA? If so then the previous suggestion of just record the PA output will work fine, otherwise it won't be a good balance at all.

If there's a spare person, a pair of headphones, and a extra mixer a separate live mix could be done, off the PA and mix in a couple of ambient mikes.

Very every session recording, maybe use any old stereo recorder, run the PA to the left channel and an ambient mike to the right. You'll have to run it back through the mixer to control the balance and it won't be swanky stereo, but it'll show whether you remembered the chorus right.

For this kind of thing the choice of mike is pretty academic, a good old 58 will do nicely, or whatever is spare! You will have to play with the position a bit, but it should only take two or three practice runs to find the right place.

Have fun with it!

Subject: RE: Recording live performance
From: open mike
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 01:42 PM

if you have microphones, amps,. mixer, etc.
why not just take the sound directly off of the
sound board instead of using a mic which might
include interference from the ambient sounds, etc.

good luck and keep the music coming!

Subject: Recording live performance
From: Grab
Date: 08 Nov 05 - 01:32 PM

Hi all,

Our band (pub-rock kind of thing) are starting to edge towards real public performance. We've played a couple of times in public, but only in front of sympathetic audiences (friends, or they were before we started playing ;-) so we've no real idea how we sound, or what we need to improve to raise our game.

What we reckon we need is to be able to record ourselves in full flow during practise, and then play back to see how it's going. We tend to practise with the same setup as playing for real (arranged as if on stage and facing out, rather than all facing together in a group) so that helps. We'd also like to be able to record ourselves when we do go for it and start doing it for real, so that we can dissect what went wrong afterwards.

I should mention that I've already seen the earlier threads here and here.

So, any suggestions? We don't have unlimited budgets (the amps, mixer, etc have expended all our brownie points with our other halves!) so it's got to be cheap. From the previous thread, the best idea seems to be a stereo pair of mics set up in front of stage. Linked to an MP3 recorder (they're now cheap) via a stereo pre-amp (which I can build myself), this should do the trick.

Can anyone see any obvious flaws in this plan? And does anyone have any suggestions for particular mics to use?

Cheers,

Graham.