Recording In The Living Room

[L20A]

My band practices in a living room that has great acoustics in it. We would like to record some songs in the room. We play acoustic guitar, mandolin and banjo.
All five of us sing.
What would be a good way to capture the sound in the room?

Several condenser mics spread around the room.
Individual mics on all instruments and on all vocals.
Combination of both.
Other?

[clintj]

This would be a good question for the Recording section. Depends partly on how many channels you can multitrack. If you have the board room, you can close mic everybody and mix in some general room mics for ambiance. The hard part of general miking is getting a good mix of instruments; everybody has to be conscious of their volume levels to get an even recording.

[billgennaro]

if you do use only one mic, get one with multiple patterns available (omni, cardioid, etc.) and experiment with each one. also, experiment with mic placement. do not extend the mic high up near the ceiling.

bill

[trek1500]

Originally Posted by L20A

My band practices in a living room that has great acoustics in it. We would like to record some songs in the room. We play acoustic guitar, mandolin and banjo.
All five of us sing.
What would be a good way to capture the sound in the room?

Several condenser mics spread around the room.
Individual mics on all instruments and on all vocals.
Combination of both.
Other?

Here is a sample of some great bluegrass players -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a3KWN0FdHI

[Bob Womack]

I would say that it would largely depend upon the style of music played by your band. Electric music? Instruments played through speakers often don't reproduce well through ambient ensemble mics. Acoustic music? You can do that. In the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, there was a whole lot of music played in a single room, with a vocalista, and recorded with ONE MIC. There were mics such as the Neumann U-47 that were specifically designed for just such an application. However, that required having the members of the band balance their own levels and that balance was often managed by a conductor separate from the ensemble.

Here's another consideration for you: Pickups and edits are much harder to manage with a band recorded with ambient mics than they are with close mics and multi-track. Can be done with hot players.


Bob

[L20A]

We are totally acoustic. No pick ups.
We have the equipment to record both ways.
I think that we will try a few condenser mics first. If we can control the blend of vocals and instruments, this will give a nice full sound to the recording. Thanks for all the input.

Please give more suggestions as you have them,
Dale.

[moon]

Maybe a couple of omnis in a Jecklin disk?

"Mix" all the instruments and voices by placing people at different distances from the mics. If you've got a lead vocalist, try to put him/her nearest.

[Rudy4]

I recently did a similar project with 6 members playing banjo, 2 guitars, fiddle, mandolin, and electric bass. We set up in a circle with the mics (cardiod SDCs) facing outward and we made a large enough circle to minimise bleed. We did two vocal mics at the same time, they were MDCs with pop screens and it worked out really well. A few tracks needed additional vocal harmony overdubs after the basic tracks were recorded.

I set up each new piece as a project and we did each as many times as were necessary to get a good completed track, no stopping or re-starting the recording until we were satisfied. Once imported into DAW it's easy to work on just the section that contains the best take. (Keep good notes during tracking!)

All tracking was done with mics as close as possible and NO room mics. Recording this way will give you plenty of room sound without trying to add any. Your objective in recording live with several mics should be to minimise any chance of relective sound, you'll get a much more intimate recording.

If you have vocalists that can do the entire process but do vocals as overdubs it's even better, as you can do the vocals with much better sounding (but problematic for live recording) LDCs.

That might give you an idea or two.

[Eire]

The Cowboy Junkies recorded their Trinity Sessions album (the 1988 album, not the more recently-released Trinity Sessions Revisited) using a single microphone: a Calrec Soundfield Ambisonic. It's a quirky beast, a stereo mic that's sort of a M/S technique wrapped up in a single coincident mic -- a step up from omni, I'd suggest, but not far from it. So I'm not sure but that, with selective placement of your instruments, you can't do something similar with just a good omni mic, as has been suggested. A former group I was in (five acoustic instrumentalists, singing parts -- think a poor man's Fleet Foxes) used to perform on the radio each week around an omni, and I've used my BeesNeez producer series LDCs in omni to record multiple instruments acceptably to gain that 'live' sense of performance in my home studio. Again: placement around the mic is everything, and it will take some testing before you achieve what you want (and this may vary, song to song).

[L20A]

Thanks for the tips and suggestions. We are going to give it a try in the next week or two. I'll report back then,
L20A.

[Davis Webb]

Leslie Fiest records some of her stuff in a single room. Her documentary, Look at What the Light Did Now shows her working in a large single room studio. You should be able to do wonderful stuff.

[Scott Whigham]

You've received some good advice already. I think there are two other things that would make your recording "less than stellar", so watch out for the following when you record:

1) Carpet floor - sucks the highs and upper mids out of the recording but leaves the low end. The result is a possibly muddy, overly low sound.

2) Flutter echo - have someone walk to the place where the instruments will be while you stand where the mic will be. If it's a directional mic, cover one ear and point the other ear at the instrument. Have your friend clap their hands. Do you hear "slap echo" (a.k.a. flutter echo)? If you do, it's going to cause issues with your recording, particularly the top end. Things will sound brittle or harsh instead of warm and plucky.

There are ways to mitigate these problems though that are easy. If you are dealing with either of those situations, let us know and we can help with ideas.