recording live comedy

phantom power · Post by **phantom power** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:51 pm

I'm recording a live comedy show for a friend of mine this weekend.

Any pointers?

It will be a smallish club (250-300 capacity). I'll be recording through a MOTU 896 to DP.

Thanks
-AE

firesine · Post by **firesine** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:12 pm

Get a split from the FOH board. Usually comics move around a lot so you will need to record the hand held mic. Then, put up a condenser or a 421, something bright, on either side of the crowd to get all the laughs. Also, the music can be a big part of the comedy so definitely talk to the FOH guy before the show and get whatever he is getting, assuming you aren't running sound as well.

SpencerBenjamin · Post by **SpencerBenjamin** » Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:11 am

I'd recommend a hardware limiter. Comedians often do a fair bit of getting right up into the mic for an effect. Some light compression on the way in could help too. If you have the facilities, it could be worth splitting the mic on 2 tracks with different levels. That way if the comic's doing stuff a bit away from the mic you'll have it on 1 track with a reasonable noise floor, & if they're sticking the mic down their throat you'll have it without (unwanted) distortion. And definitely audience mics x2, sdcs in xy should be fine, in the middle above the stage, or either side of the stage if you prefer.

And yeah, a split of playback if any. Also, if the MC uses a seperate mic, a split of that to another channel.

phantom power · Post by **phantom power** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:28 pm

Okay, so I'm definitely taking the hand-held mic and I like the idea of recording it to 2 different tracks with a high and low level.

I was planning on a couple of modded 603s in XY at the FOH position (2/3 of the way back in the room). Do you think that I should also have some on the stage in stereo (XY OH or 1 on each side) or will the room mics be enough? How about an omni taped to the front of the stage kinda like a PZM.

As far as the hand-held goes, is there any real difference between taking a split before the snake and just taking a direct out?

Thanks

-AE

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 4:57 pm

Depending on the board/setup the Direct Out could be post Fader/EQ/Inserts which may or may not eff u up.

SpencerBenjamin · Post by **SpencerBenjamin** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 11:57 pm

Those MXLs should be fine. I wouldn't sweat on having too many audience/room mics, you'll just introduce a whole lot of phase problems later. I think the position at the FOH should be ok, although if you're pointing at the stage you'll likely get a fair bit of PA; the best place for PA rejection is either side of stage above the speakers with maybe a pair of shotguns, or the xy above the stage works ok too. Either way, try and find a position where the sdcs are facing away from the PA as much as possible.

I did have a thought that it's worth finding out if the comic does much interaction with the audience, and how they do that. Often any interaction would be with the first couple of rows, but not always. If your audience mics are 2/3 way to the back of the room, you might miss some of that (and pick up the engineer trying to bore you with the time when he mixed Nirvana before they were famous...).

And yeah, try and get a pre-fader split from the board, whether from an aux, rec out (might need to check this is pre fader?), or even from the insert - there are cables you can buy that will do this, or you can make one yourself. No-one here can answer whether the snake at the venue will be ok... it could go either way. If you have the facilities to run a line seperately then this would be worth having as an option, but the FOH engineer may be highly suspicious of letting you split his signal before it gets to him.

emrr · Post by **emrr** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:03 am

use as many channels of audience pickup as you can. the comedian will ALWAYS want a sense of a much larger involved audience than two mics will probably ever give. mics in the front, mics in the middle, mics in the back, mics in the kitchen, mics in the parking lot. you don't want to get into dubbing extra audience noise artificially.

phantom power · Post by **phantom power** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 12:38 pm

Thanks for the tips guys.

I'm headed down to set up in a couple of hours.

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

-AE

SpencerBenjamin · Post by **SpencerBenjamin** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:48 am

It's possibly too late, but I would respectfully disagree with that. In my experience a couple of well placed audience mics will give a far better/clearer/less phasey image than a whole bunch of them. Having said that, I have worked on TV & radio shows where the Audio Director obviously disagrees... There's a TV chat show here in Australia where the AD has, last time I counted, 14 different mics on the audience, including a stereo LDC, bunches of sdcs and shotguns pointed everywhere. Whenever I watch the show all I hear is swirling whenever he brings up a different subgroup. Recently we did a DVD for a well known British comic, & the aforementioned xy about 12' above the stage sounded great. We did have a boomie standing by with an 816 just in case there was a particular audience interaction we needed to get, in the end we hardly needed him.

emrr · Post by **emrr** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:41 am

Fine, but I've had the experience of recording comedians quite a few times, and the more audience perspective you have the happier the talent is. I've been criticized for NOT having enough audience pickup. A well placed stereo pair is certainly ideal, but doesn't cut it when you have a poorly attended event with mediocre response. Then you want mics in the parking lot and kitchen too, for as much sense of activity and energy as possible. I certainly won't call it ideal. You may still get a request to dub in more audience noise.

SpencerBenjamin · Post by **SpencerBenjamin** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:24 pm

I see what you mean now. Ideally in this situation we'd try beforehand to get an MC or warm-up guy or someone to basically get the crowd to yell & scream a bit while keeping quiet themselves - clean crowd effects, which can be inserted upon mix down wherever required, as well as covering edits. Most times the best policy is to be perfectly honest with the crowd about this, or another one is 'checking the audio levels'. Crowds tire of this one fairly quickly unless they're really drunk, so usually at the most you'll get 3 or 4 passes. I just don't know about the theory that more mics = bigger sounding crowd. If there's only 10 people there, it's never gonna sound like a stadium.

emrr · Post by **emrr** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:54 pm

seems to be more a factor of having as many perspectives that are all close to something, giving the (blurry) illusion that more is going on than actually is. Can radically cut the dubbing time on a no-budget job.

audiogeek1 · Post by **audiogeek1** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:01 am

SpencerBenjamin wrote:It's possibly too late, but I would respectfully disagree with that. In my experience a couple of well placed audience mics will give a far better/clearer/less phasey image than a whole bunch of them. Having said that, I have worked on TV & radio shows where the Audio Director obviously disagrees... There's a TV chat show here in Australia where the AD has, last time I counted, 14 different mics on the audience, including a stereo LDC, bunches of sdcs and shotguns pointed everywhere. Whenever I watch the show all I hear is swirling whenever he brings up a different subgroup. Recently we did a DVD for a well known British comic, & the aforementioned xy about 12' above the stage sounded great. We did have a boomie standing by with an 816 just in case there was a particular audience interaction we needed to get, in the end we hardly needed him.

Sounds like he needs a little mic adjustment. Maybe omni mics might be a better choice for this.

Hope it went well and the comedian was funny. Let us know how it worked.

Mike

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:07 am

All of my recordings are comedy, too often dead.

Thank you very much, I'll be here all week if ya wanna record me!

phantom power · Post by **phantom power** » Tue Jan 27, 2009 4:23 pm

Well, I think it went pretty well.

I went with SDCs (modded MXL603s) in XY by FOH, CAD e100s on the sides of the stage, and randomly placed a Royer'd MXL2001 in the back corner of the room. I hid the 2001 behind a floor lamp. This ended up being kind of a "happy accident", because there were 3 hecklers that gave the comedians hell all night and they were seriously less than 2ft away from this mic. I couldn't have planned it any better.

Anyway, there was some great interaction and 1 of the comedians used these guys to fullest. He was so stoked to here that there was a mic right on these dudes.

So, I'll be mixing it all this week. I'll know a little better how it turned out by the weekend.

Thanks for all the help guys.

-AE

Message Board

recording live comedy

recording live comedy

Who is online