early 60s rock 'n' roll recordings...

[curtiswyant]

I'm thinking about doing an early/mid-60s rock 'n' roll album reminiscent of local teenage garage/r&b cover bands of the era. You know, like early Animals, Rolling Stones, Beatles, and so on. Now, I have a 388 which I just use for drums, I figure I should use that for everything on this album. I don't have any outboard besides an RNC so it'll be mixed ITB. Also, this is a one-man-band project so it'll all be overdubbed...one idea I had was to just leave the vocal mic up while I'm recording other instruments to get bleed, stuff like that. Any ideas?

[Kyle Motor]

I like the bleed idea. Along the same lines, try doing the vocals with the monitors blaring the instruments while you track. Are you making it all mono?

[JGriffin]

You could just set up a room mic after you have all the tracks done and record a track of monitor bleed, that way you don't have an individual bleed track for each instrument.

[curtiswyant]

Hmm...interesting ideas. I think I will do bleed both ways. Since I do vox last, I can do 'em live with the monitors on. I LOVE the old Sam Cooke stuff (and similar) where the snare slaps from right to left because it's bleeding into the piano mic

[drumsound]

Go totally old school and use the room as you reverb and print any guitar effects in tracking and then mix off the 388.

[thethingwiththestuff]

i dont mean to criticise, but if you "leave the vocal mic up" during drum tracking for a one man band, you dont have vocal mic bleed, you have a poorly placed drum mic.

take the time to place a distant mic in the right place for the drums or any of the instruments....you'll have a nice room sound to work with. but i'd have to say bleed is a concept involving two instruments playing with each other in a room. you cant fake "bleed."

if no one's singing into a mic, is it still a vocal mic? if the snare doesn't buzz with the bass, etc......

[Rufer]

I'll agree that the vocal mic thing, from my logic, won't simulate bleed. But I do believe bleed can be faked while if you monitor with speakers and not headphones. Maybe even messing around with the relative levels of the instrument tracks at each stage to simulate the proximity of instruments to one another.

[thethingwiththestuff]

ok, i guess you can fake bleed through reamping.

but does that mean like, playing back all the tracks into the live room while you play something else? that would be bleed, i guess.....otherwise you're just reamping for more ambience, which to me, is second best to having a room mic at tracking.

[syrupcore]

put the vocal mic in a good spot for drum 'bleed'/room mic. sing there.

In general though, I'd go with dlwb's suggestion to rechamber the whole lot.


Will

[logancircle]

Go totally old school and use the room as you reverb...

Yes! if your room sounds good this can help make things sound organic. It also makes it easier to mix later. If you're not too limited in track count, set up a room mic and leave it in the same place as your reverb track for each thing you want room sound on.

[surf's up]

why dont you try...

dubbing the tracks one at a time, individually, then running each through its own speaker, which is positioned like a band on stage or rehearshing would be (you can even set up individual speakers for each drum if you please and had closed miced them) and then record that "band" with you doing vocals live over it. and close mic stuff, but also add a few ambience mics....okay thats a horrible idea.

[logancircle]

Yeah, I've tried chambering things in sections, like all backing vocals together, all drums and percussion together, lead vocal alone, etc... This works well IF the room sound fits the arrangement. Once you have the chambered tracks you can delay them for interesting effects.

[joeysimms]

why dont you try...

dubbing the tracks one at a time, individually, then running each through its own speaker, which is positioned like a band on stage or rehearshing would be (you can even set up individual speakers for each drum if you please and had closed miced them) and then record that "band" with you doing vocals live over it. and close mic stuff, but also add a few ambience mics....okay thats a horrible idea.

That sounds like a cool idea to try sometime, irregardless of 60's sound..

[curtiswyant]

why dont you try...

dubbing the tracks one at a time, individually, then running each through its own speaker, which is positioned like a band on stage or rehearshing would be (you can even set up individual speakers for each drum if you please and had closed miced them) and then record that "band" with you doing vocals live over it. and close mic stuff, but also add a few ambience mics....okay thats a horrible idea.

Ha! I actually thought of doing this live...

[tonewoods]

Some of those 60's mixes were unbelievably weird...

I mean, if the Beatles were so damn influentual, why don't you hear records with the whole band in one channel, and the vocals in the other these days?

You heard mono drums in one channel all the time in some of those recordings, with bass on the other side, etc.