Recording my band - Question

Recording in the garage. Our drummer's spent a lot of money on SM57s and a Presonus interface. We want to record as a band, but don't have a soundproofed room like with a professional studio. We tried recording the drum track first, but he finds difficult to record to a click. Once that was laid, I tried laying downa guitar part, but trying to play along to a beat that is, to all intents and purposes correct, yet not exactly to beat, I find it very difficult to pre-empt the slight changes in tempo...

What can I do? Is there such a thing as a headphone splitter for three or more people so we can lay down all the parts at the same time?

briefly forgetting that i was a newbie once that was very painful to read

yes there are headphone amps that can be used to drive a bunch of headphones. i use an 8-channel behringer one (HA8000), the only behringer product i'm happy to use. they have a 4-channel one that's probably pretty cheap

perhaps this is a dumb question, but if you're going to be playing together in the same room, do you really need the headphones? how are you currently planning to separate the drums from the amps?

the perils of drumming to a click. Don't give the drummer a hard time.

How many inputs on the presonus? Kind of depends on the sound you're looking for. Bleed through to other mics doesn't have to be a terrible thing if you're really struggling with getting the parts laid down one by one. There's also a lot to be said for the 'capturing a performance' idea of tracking everything together.

Yes! I'm not the one in charge of recording here as our drummer's very keen to learn but my own experience says we're going the wrong way about it. We'd rather not play to a click (would stilt the feel of the song for a start) and the main issue is that he thinks bleed through from guitar amps into the drum mics will affect things in the production stages as our current endeavours to record single layer upon layer aren't working well at all.

Personally, I doubt a little bleed will harm things too much but they've asked me to look into a way of using headphones to possibly minimise it, so this info is helpful.

So is it generally deemed good practice to record together and then maybe put a few noise gates where bleed is most obvious?

sorry i'm as confused as electricsound, if you're going to play everything in the same room at the same time anyway, what do you need the headphones for?

seriously, unless you're planning some banging dance remixes then fuck the click off.

the drums will be way more in the guitar mics than vice versa. having said that, bleed is nothing to be scared of - it can give a recording some 'life' and improves imaging.

i might be concerned about spill if i was going to be doing any radical EQ or compression. some advance planning and taking care to make sure you get good sounds to "tape" can reduce this need.

apologies in advance for the snobbery but the 57 is really not a good mic to do every single instrument with. that's just my taste though. i don't think it does kick drums well at all for example..

put up some sort of makeshift baffles to help reduce spill into the guitar mic/from the guitar amp. even just pointing it away from the drums in a way that lets it still be audible for cueing can make a huge difference

Yeah we have a kick mic and some overhead condensers etc too. Guitar Amps plugged into the recording interface. Cheers for your helps!

nothing wrong with using headphones and doing a bit of re amping of guitars too if you're worries about bleed

Guitar Amps plugged into the recording interface.

hold up for a second, does this mean that you are going direct with the amps and not miking them

i record with pretty bad equipment & no consideration of bleeding and even then you can barely notice it when listening to one track in isolation (obviously it's impossible to detect otherwise)

hold up for a second, does this mean that you are going direct with the amps and not miking them

― I want L'interieur chicken, not Hausu chicken (jjjusten), Thursday, 24 May 2012 16:48 (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Idiot noob question - what is wrong with this?

a huge part of how guitar amps sound when recorded is the sound of the speaker and the airspace between the speaker and the mic - i know it sounds odd, but i have never heard direct out guitar sound good at all. it can be ok for bass however.

yeah especially those 'line out emulators' or whatever. They sound pretty dreadful.

i think of direct guitar sounds = early nine inch nails records

I think Jeff Baxter used to record a lot of his solos just plugged straight in. I could swear I read that somewhere.

yeah especially those 'line out emulators' or whatever. They sound pretty dreadful.

do you mean line6 pods etc? i've actually had pretty good luck with those (and software amp modeling), but it depends what kind of sound you're going for. amps have always worked out better for dirt.

no, I think they're on par with a lot of computer based modelling software. A lot of amps have a line out emulator for this purpose but they've never been great to my ears. I tend to use a lot of software and convolution based reverb and can get kind of close but guitars are never really at the forefront of what I do.

If I mic'd the guitar amps, surely I'd pick up loads of drum, no?

you'll get some drum, you have to experiment with placement, baffles (can be mattresses, blankets, pillows, etc.) - but also bleed is not really that big of a problem in my opinion. you should spend more time testing, experimenting, trying to get a good "live" sound where you won't have to adjust levels/sounds too much, then the bleed won't matter because you won't be tweaking the volume of the separate tracks as much

a lot of rawk bands I know use guitar rig/eleven/GTR whatever and get as close to the sound of their amp as possible. Track in with headphones and then line out from your interface to amp and mic that up after the initial tracking has been done. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right sometimes but it gets around bleed (if you really can't stand any). A bit of mic bleed is ok really, I've just been messing around with the multitracks for some Marvin Gaye songs and everything is hitting every mic. Sounds good.