In Need of some Home Recording Knowledge
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Posted on Jul 30, 2007 12:12 pm
xkapin_reelity
Musician on a Mission
Member Since: Jul 30, 2007
Hey,
Okay this is whats up, I'm trying to release a demo with my band,(1 singer/guitarist, both electric and acoustic, 1 bassist, and 1 drummer) nothing too special but good enough that it might land us a few gigs or what not. I am unsure on what the best setup if to optimize the gear that I have. Could anyone help me?
my gear:
Echo Gina 20-bit midi soundcard w/ breakout box (2 inputs, and 8 outputs)
Behringer Eurorack MX802A Mixer
Recording software (Cakewalk, Cool Edit Pro, Cubase (older verion))
4 Drum mics
1 Shure vocal mic
2 cheap radioshack dynamic mics
Bass amp with line out and Guitar amp with line out.
Also, we are on a budget right now, so I cant spend more than $100 right now for any additional equipment.
If anyone has any suggestions for a setup or even any equipment in our budget range to buy addtionally please let me know! Thanks!
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pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jul 30, 2007 12:40 pm Hey there xkapin, you should be able to work with what you have, though it'll take a little creativity and planning.
There's two (three) ways you can go:
1. Do everything at once. plug 3 mics into board for drums, 1 mic for vocals, and 1 line in for guitar, and 1 line in for bass.
All these sounds will mix together in the mixer, and then come out the mixer outputs as 2 channels (left and right).
The beauty of this, is once you get it, you're pretty much done. PLus, you get the 'live' feel of everyone playing together.
Downside, is that you can't change individual parts, as they're all mixed down together.
2. Record parts and add them (layer) on top of each other. This lets you alter each recording, but you don't have the energy of playing together. PLus this takes longer, and is usually not conducive to how live musicians usually want to play. Plus, aftewards you have to mix the signals back together, and make it sound good. This can often be harder than just recording everything at once.
(3). You can record everyone together, but not the vocals, leaving the vocals to overdub, later. This often works fairly well.
If you want to get more creative, you may be able to tap signal out from the insert points on the mixer, to be able to get more channels from the board at once. I'm not sure how many channel inserts you have, but even 2 would get you up to 4 individual signals. This may be enough to track the drums first, then do the two guitars together, then do the vocals last.
Oh yeah, you're interface only supports 2 inputs, so you're stuck with 2 at a time. Still, you can record the drums first (mixed from the mixer down to stereo), then record the two guitars, then vocals.
Should be pretty do-able.
Welcome to HRC, and good luck.
One thing I can see that'll help you out, is headphones. If you're doing the all at once thing, you may not need them, but if you're overdubbing, then you'll need some cans so you can hear the previously recorded tracks.
Jul 30, 2007 12:53 pm Thank you so much for your help! My Mixer has 8 Channels with 4 of those being Mic Preamps (i think thats what they are called) Is there any cheap solutions to record at least 4 tracks simultaneously? Mainly I want to try to record the drums simultaneously because its easier i would think to mix after recording (ei the snare needs louder or the crash is too loud) I have a pair of Koss closed-back headphones I just bought.
One last question: what is tap signal? and how do I go about doing that?
Thanks a ton again!
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jul 30, 2007 01:24 pm no prob,
tap signal is to get signal out of a jack. in this case, the channel insert. signal is flowing to the insert jack, for use with 'insert' devices. for our purpose, we can take a 1/4" jack, and plug it up to the first click (but not all the way), take signal from that point, and feed it to our computer. I do this on my setup at home, and it works great.
if your device only has 2 channels going into it, then you can only record 2 channels at a time. You'd have to get a different card with more inputs, or try and stack two together in the same PC (i'm assuming PC).
No real way of getting around that one.
I'm gonna assume you can get 4 channels out of your mixer, using 2 inserts and 2 mains out. I'm not positive though, so i'd have to check.
If your drummer is fairly tight with consistency, then using 4 mics, mixed down to 2 tracks works pretty well.
Lots of recordings have been done this way, that come out pretty good. Just be picky about mic placement, and gain setting before you record. A lot of test runs will dial it in pretty nice.
Plus, compression during mixing can tame over zealous playing. Not a ton, but it does help. EQ, and even a multi-band compressor can work wonders, if you know how to use it.
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jul 30, 2007 01:31 pm looks like you can get two additional outputs using aux sends. turn up the aux on 2 of the channels, and the signal will go out the aux send 1 and aux send 2.
Then the other two, have no aux, but all their signal going out main l, and main r.
Have these two signals full left, and full right.
eh, looking again, i may be wrong. it's tough to tell by the picture from behr.
Jul 30, 2007 01:40 pm Thank you so much for your help! I'm gonna mess around with it some tonight and see what i can get done. do you have any sound card suggestions with like at least 4 inputs or even two, if i can piggyback on the sound card i already have? I have $100 budget.
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Jul 30, 2007 02:06 pm For live Demos to PC I would suggest not doing the vocals with the instruments... you can do them later and have a lot less bleed through.
pjkPrince CZAR-mingMember
Since: Apr 08, 2004
Jul 30, 2007 02:22 pm If you can find a maudio delta 44, those have 4 inputs and 4 outputs. They're tried and true, and are still in use by lots of people.
It's a PCI card, with a breakout box.
Possibly, you could install another card like you have, but I'm not sure that it'll work. Others may have done it, and I just haven't heard about it yet. Internet research may help.
here's a delta 66 on ebay right now:
cgi.ebay.com/M-AUDIO-DELT...1QQcmdZViewItem
the 66 gives you spdif I/O. so you could technically have 6 inputs (4 analog and 2 digital).
JoshidoSound NinjaMember
Since: May 29, 2007
Jul 31, 2007 10:56 pm I have recorded a demo with my freinds band and what we did (and it came out pretty decent) Was use you highest quality mic as an overhead and just play live.
Then record each instrument at a time whil listening to the live track through headphones. It made sense to start with either bass or guitar, than after those two are recorded we recorded drums. The Downside is you have to have decent headphones for the drummer to hear the other instruments while they played. I actually stood behind the drummer while squezzing the phones to his ears cuz they were cheap. Then you can record vocals. We stood up a couch kiddie corner in one corner of the room to simulate a booth. And it sounded pretty good. We also stuffed the windows with pillows (not sure if it made a diffrence. I also perfer the warmer sound from a bass amp if its covered by a blanket. (Give it a shot)
When your all done, you have each track indivuadlly recorded and you can edit them accordingly.
Adding some eq around 100-120Hz to your drum tracks really help your bass hit harder.
And adding a bit of chorus and reverb to the vocal tracks will add some warmth.
And since most gigs have these types of equipment it will help you know what you want the sound guy to do. I hope this helps!
