It would be easy to assume that in 2024 when great, inexpensive recording gear is so available that all bands are painstakingly recording professional sounding mixes of their material. No they aren’t and it’s often because that’s just not what they need. Julian investigates the kind of quick and easy recordings many time-poor local bands actually would prefer.
In this article, I'm going to discuss the style of recording that, in my life away from the blog, I probably talk to more people about than any other - Quick, “low impact” recordings of bands doing what they usually do. The philosophy of this type of recording is to record a band without changing what they usually do, or changing it as little as possible. It’s not the recording style that is necessarily the most appealing to a sound engineer, it’s inherently a compromise, but it is something which fulfils a genuine need in the most appropriate way.
I see it this way: In a studio, with full control over the subject and the environment, photographers can create amazing images. But if someone wants someone to take their photo, they probably want a good snap, not a full photoshoot. They want something appropriate for their purposes and while a studio shot is, at least in photographic terms, ‘better’, it’s not appropriate in many situations. Exactly the same applies to many music performances.
Most bands are semi-pro or happily amateur and with opportunities to make money from recorded music being as difficult as they are in 2024, the bands I meet in my non-industry life are looking for opportunities to play live. And for this they need material for social media and showreels for venues on their local scene to check out. Live footage is of course desirable. If bands are playing venues with good digital consoles which can capture multitrack to a USB device these are ideal. But what if you’re not playing gigs like that very often?
The Pub Gig
Many of the bands I meet out in the real world are the kind of weekend-warrior pub gig players who go out for fun and usually for money, but aren't making a living from it. It's something they do because they enjoy it. Because of this the constraints around time and budget are significant. However, it doesn't follow that these people aren't talented or worth listening to. Many of them are really good and deserve to be heard. All too often people are seeking a better alternative to shaky handheld phone footage of gigs with severely distorted audio. We've all seen the kind of thing I'm referring to and it's understandable that it's all that many bands have available. Is there an easy way to get something better? Typically bands like this will be using a combination of a small PA system covering vocals and maybe keys or acoustic guitar to complement the backline amps. The acoustic output of a drum kit is sometimes supported by an optimistically placed SM58 in the kick drum, which I always advise is just going to ruin both the sound of the vocals and probably the small PA system! Mixers are frequently small analogue affairs. I’m sure you’ve seen the kind of thing I mean.
Recording From The Mixer
If there is the facility to record from the mixer, it is either stereo to a memory card or multitrack via USB. Recording the output of a mixer in a small venue is invariably missing key elements which don't need the support of the PA system in a small venue. Typically, there will be lots of vocals and a very dry kick drum or similar. Probably no bass or electric guitar at all because their amplifiers are covering their needs. If the mixer is big enough, then it might well be possible to capture these other elements without routing their audio to the front of house mix in which case, if multitrack capture is possible then you have much of what you need.
The issue tends to be that bands using their own gear often have as small a mixer as is necessary to cover their live requirements and no more. There is a vast choice of small, inexpensive mixers but I find it frustrating that there is so little real choice when it comes to features. Ranges of mixers like this tend to grow horizontally with increasing channel count, but never vertically, by which I mean that they will be available with various numbers of channels but rarely seeming to gain additional busses. More auxiliaries make for more flexibility when trying to route signals to multiple destinations, but invariably on small mixers there are never enough.
As mentioned in my article How To Choose The Right Way To Record Your Music a handheld recorder can be very useful for completing a low-impact recording solution for a band looking to get a recording of their gig which will bring far better results but with only a pocketful of additional gear. Having decent built in mics and proper control of input gain (and without the automatic gain control or noise cancellation which so often plagues phone recordings) will get a decent result but if it’s possible to record to additional line inputs on the portable recorder as well as from the recorder’s mics then running a cable or two from available outputs on the mixer and recording them to your handheld recorder can provide everything necessary to later be synced by eye with video captured from a phone and even cut with additional audience footage. I’ve done things like this before and asked friends at gigs to all film a particular song and then cut the footage together for the cheapest multi-camera shoot in history!
The mixer’s close mics on the vocals, kick drum and keyboards together with the ‘live’ sound from the suitability positioned hand held recorder’s mics can be blended to give a surprisingly acceptable sound. It’s labour intensive but works very well for social media posts and YouTube showreels.
Recording A Practice
But what if you want to do something closer to a proper recording but again with a light touch in terms of what the band usually do? All bands can of course do dedicated recording sessions either themselves or in a studio but is there a way to get good results from a typical band practice without changing the regular setup very much?
Bringing a laptop and a suitable interface and preamps is of course a great way to go. I have a Pro Tools Carbon which is perfect for this and when I’ve recorded my band’s practices I’ve found that because of its lack of latency while tracking it’s just perfect. It is after all exactly what it was designed to do. However I still find a light touch approach is just more practical most of the time. Returning to the photography similie it’s like a photographer who stops the event to direct the people to capture a shot compared to a photographer who just lurks, capturing natural shots. If people are aware they are being recorded they often play differently, especially if they aren’t very experienced in studios.
When recording a practice, as opposed to doing a dedicated recording session, you’re capturing what is happening in case something good happens. It might be a reference for the band but it might also be used for promotion. The point is that if its quick and easy to set up you’re more likely to do it more often.
My approach is to set up the Carbon in place of the little notepad mixer we usually use. DI the bass, guitar and keys but still use the amplifiers and to run all the vocals via the Carbon for capture, but routed out to the PA as well like at a normal practice. As far as the band are concerned the setup is exactly the same as a regular practice. No headphones anywhere. Everyone in their normal place.
The drums get a mic on kick and snare and a single multi-pattern condenser overhead in fig 8. I’ll use the side null to keep as much of the backline and PA out of the mic. It’s not perfect but those side nulls on a fig 8 are deep and our regular practice space is an old industrial building with a high ceiling so conditions are favourable.
Leaving Pro Tools running all night I can quickly bounce out selection by selection ‘as is’ but if I want to make something a little more polished then there are some easy wins to be had.
Extra Drum ‘Mics’ In Post And Clean Vocals
The lack of mics on the drums is easily compensated for by using Sonnox’s Oxford Drum Gate to isolate the toms and by splitting these out onto separate tracks I can create MIDI triggers and run in some samples for a closer sound. The dedicated kick and snare can also be used like this but the results are usually pretty good just from the mics.
Having a DI of bass and guitar means that I can run an amp sim to match the sound of the guitar amp in the room. The vocals are usually relatively spill-free but the SM58s used by the three vocalists sound… well, like SM58s. Some aggressive EQ can help a lot but replacing the vocals with an overdub is the best solution. As long as the singers know their parts well they match closely with the spill from the original take, which is only present from the drum overhead. Tucked in behind the clean overdub it usually just adds some thickness to the vocals.
People Listen To The Music, Not The Recording
I’d prefer to spend a day getting things as good as I can in a dedicated recording session but as I used to say to my students when I taught recording techniques, a flawed recording which exists is better than a perfect one which doesn’t.
I’ve learned a lot about the importance of balancing the sonic benefits of controlling your recording process against the performance benefits of keeping your performers in their comfort zone, no matter what issues that comfort zone might present you with. As engineers we often listen to the recording rather than the music. That’s the wrong way round!