Recording live?

tubedude

Hey boardsians,

I'm going to be recording a live performance of my band for one of my gigs coming up soon, which i have not done before! It's a standard 4 piece rock oufit, drums, guitar+vox, bass(me!), acoustic+vox.
I have a focusrite saffire pro 26 interface into macbook running logic. This has 8 ins. I want to try and record everything to separate tracks as opposed to taking the stereo out of the desk. I would just like to know what any of you would think to be the best way of doing this. I've had a couple of ideas swimming around in my head, like just taking a load of mics and setting them up beside the mics going to FOH and record them straight into computer, or is that stupid!

PaulBrewer

tubedude wrote: »

Hey boardsians,

I'm going to be recording a live performance of my band for one of my gigs coming up soon, which i have not done before! It's a standard 4 piece rock oufit, drums, guitar+vox, bass(me!), acoustic+vox.
I have a focusrite saffire pro 26 interface into macbook running logic. This has 8 ins. I want to try and record everything to separate tracks as opposed to taking the stereo out of the desk. I would just like to know what any of you would think to be the best way of doing this. I've had a couple of ideas swimming around in my head, like just taking a load of mics and setting them up beside the mics going to FOH and record them straight into computer, or is that stupid!

Ambience is a big part of live recording, without it it doesn't sound 'live' - so make sure you record clapping cheering etc.

Perhaps the way to do it is from the FOH groups, taking it you have that option.

studiorat

I'm wondering why it's called a Saffire 26 if it's only got 8 inputs!

Anyway probably best to go from the groups on the desk. But if you didn't mind you could try a few extra mic's. Better than bothering the front of house guy with it.

1. kik
2. snr
3. OH
4. OH
5. Bass
6. Gtr 1
7, Gtr 2
8. Vox

You could try loose micing the toms to pick up a bit of them with the overheads instead. Without getting into bigger budgets and splitters an all that. That's the way I'd go. It's gonna sound a bit rough I'd reckon but it'll give you a good idea of what the band sounds like.

Run a stereo pair into a DAT or whatever and just edit the applause etc in, usually you won't need it with the playing bit of the track.

bedbugs

studiorat wrote: »

I'm wondering why it's called a Saffire 26 if it's only got 8 inputs!

Coz it has 26 inputs, but only if you use the ADAT, SPIDF and MIDI.

it's in the small print

studiorat

You'll need a rig like mine so...

PaulBrewer

studiorat wrote: »

You'll need a rig like mine so...

Speakin of which? Where's me photo til we get yer handsome fizzog in the mags ...

studiorat

You can take your pick from the ones on the studio site and book face. The others were released just the other day in Mojo and landrover mag. Probably a copyright vibe going on there. I'll hook you up if you want.

tubedude

Ok cool thanx, yeah I'm pretty sure our desk does not have group outs, I'l have to check if it has direct outs. But yeah maybe I'l go with miking everything up in order studiorat listed there and just skip the mixer. Just thinking though that I wont get any of the effects done on the mixer recorded. But it will have to do! Yeah that's a neat little rig ya have there studiorat, is that what you use for live recordings, how do you do it?

studiorat

You should need to record any effects anyway, you don't usually record effects "to tape" you add them in the mixing stage. You could try a Y cable maybe so the singer hasn't got two microphones in front of them, works ok with a dynamic mic.

The photo's a rig I brought to Morocco during the summer, with an Audient 8 channel mic pre I blagged from Audio Warehouse. Thanks P.
It's an M-Audio Profire using Adat lightpipe inputs from an Apogee AD16X. That's 16 really good quality inputs and another 8 average inputs so with the right cables I can have 24 tracks in a 2 unit rack with a laptop and external hard drive.

I've done loads of live recording but I've always found that to do it properly, I mean really properly it usually costs as much as a day in the studio.

if6was9

I've been looking into recording our gigs and doing some for some other people too,
What I've been doing is using the hardware outs on my firepod so it goes mic->firepod->desk. anytime I've tried it it worked well, If the desk being used for FOH is really nice and has direct outs then I'd go Mic->Desk, direct out->firepod line In.

The gig I tried it at though the bands arrived over 2 hours late so I had to ditch the idea as they didn't even get a sound check for the gig let alone set up the recording, was a bit of a horror story as I'd a 3 camera shoot aswell, Bit of a bit more than i could chew...

studiorat

^^^
rockstars then!