Re: [LAU] Multitracking a band live at a gig

zotz wrote:
>
> Does anyone here record a band live at gigs to seperate tracks?
>

Hi,
I have done this a few times using an emi 6 | 2 USB card and a laptop. The
problems I ran into were not really computer ones though - the biggest issue
was separation between tracks. On a medium-sized stage, I had a saxophone
and a guitar amp close-miked, and you really couldn't hear much difference
between the signals from these and the stereo overheads on the drums - the
drums just bled into everything! The one useful thing was having the
keyboard and bass going in through DI units, giving them total separation
from everything else. If I was going to do it again, I'd try to persuade
the guitarist to split his signal and send some of it via a POD or similar
direct to the sound card. Then I'd have an isolated signal to work on
afterwards for that too.

The best-sounding live recordings I've been involved in have been ones where
we just used a crossed pair of mics in front of the band - after all, with
that much bleed between tracks multitracking doesn't give you the
opportunity to go back and correct mistakes, so assuming the room (and the
band) sounds good, there's a lot to be said for just trying to capture that
sound as faithfully as possible. Of course, if you've got mics and channels
spare there would be no harm in taking isolated signals from bass and keys.
Also might be an argument for putting a mic in the bass drum as well. The
rest of the drum kit will be all over every channel, but the kick drum can
easily end up needing reinforcement in a final mix. And of course if you're
involved in the heavier end of music you can always use the kick drum
channel to trigger a sample for that death metal 'click'.

Best of luck!
Howard

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Multitracking-a-band-live-at-a-gig-tf4953080.html#a14197945
Sent from the linux-audio-user mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user