Recording Live Comedy

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
User avatar
A.David.MacKinnon
ears didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3819
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:57 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Recording Live Comedy

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:55 pm

This came up at the tail end of another thread but it really does deserve it’s own discussion.
Who’s making comedy records? What are you using? Tips? Tricks? Pitfalls to watch out for?

Comedy is becoming a bigger and bigger part of my work year after year. I started out doing a friends live talk show podcast. That allowed me to learn on the job and also let me meet a ton of new clients. My typical set-up for a straight stanup gig is a split of the stage mic and at least one pair of audience mics (414s in hyper, behind the PA facing the audience). If time and location allows I prefer multiple pairs of audience mics but that’s more often than not impossible.
For the stage mic, I split it 3 ways with an ART mic splitter box. One feed goes to front of house and two go to me. My two feeds go to two preamps. One gets set normally and the other set 10db lower as a safety if things get crazy loud (as they always do).
Up until this year I’ve been hauling an ancient laptop and digi002 rig out for these gigs. The laptop is so old that it gives me heart palpitations hoping it makes it through the gig and the digi002 got killed in a flood two weeks ago (no great loss). Today I bought a Cymatic LP16 16 channel live recorder. I haven’t tested it out yet but it ticks all the boxes I was looking for for these gigs. I’d thought about an Alesis HD24 but this thing is brand new, smaller, records on any USB 2 drive and is under warranty. The specs look good but we’ll see how it goes.

As for pit falls, the biggest is bad mic technique and plosives on the part of the performer. Sometimes I can get a foam clown nose on the mic but often the performer rejects the idea and I have to sort it out in post.

MoreSpaceEcho
zen recordist
Posts: 6671
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 11:15 am

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by MoreSpaceEcho » Fri Aug 24, 2018 9:26 pm

i'm not making them, but i've mastered a few comedy recordings and your setup sounds like a hifi dream compared with some of the stuff i've gotten.

i'd say just having a decent close mic and a pair of audience mics would be more than sufficient. i got one thing in where there was no close mic. one of the only, if not the only project i've ever turned down. there was just no way to get any coherence out of it, i'd have felt bad taking their money.

bad mic technique is tough, but at least plosives are easy to fix in post.

User avatar
alexdingley
buyin' a studio
Posts: 804
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:00 am
Location: Greater Philadelphia Area
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by alexdingley » Sat Aug 25, 2018 10:09 am

Yeah, it’s been a surprisingly cool part of my work for the last 10 yrs. one of old high school friends started in stand up 16yrs ago, and started having me out to videotape his shows... In Which the sound was always bad, so I started trying to improve that end of it. After a few of those, he asked to do his album. I tapped the house mixer and used a laptop with an m-audio io plus I hung a pair of earthworks Omni mics Oder the crowd and tracked it that way... it was pretty good!

Over the years, I’ve averaged 1-2 albums a year for other local comics... slowly putting another tool in the toolkit with each show. I now tap the stage 58’s directly into a pair of Radial JS3iso splitters... I give 1 copy to the house, and the two splits feed my thunderbolt io and my tascam portable Recorder, respectively. The tascam has its own LR pair built in... so it’s a 4-track, and the laptop is taking 4ins... works like a dream. I still hang those earthworks over the audience and it’s great.

Best things I’ve done lately include: using Logic Pro with .CAF format as the record format... even if the computer/app crapped out mid-recording, the files are non-corrupted because that format is more bulletproof than wav/aif. Also I ripped the chirp circuit out of my APC battery backup... and my whole rig runs on that uninterruptible power system... with no chirp if the power does go out.

Two small plastic tubs and a 2sp rack bag fit neatly in the trunk, and load in is always easy. I could go on and on about this... it’s become really fun to do.

I have two local comedy albums coming up in the next 3mo + my first major headliner act has connected with me. He's been self-recording (with just a zoom H5) at clubs all over (so it's gonna require more mastering / clean-up (hooray for iZotope) and we'll compile an album sometime next year.

Here's some of the recent ones I did:
Blake Wexler - The Blake Album
Michale Brooks - Watch This
Mary Radzinski - Discomfortable (can't stream it yet, but you can hear samples)

User avatar
alexdingley
buyin' a studio
Posts: 804
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:00 am
Location: Greater Philadelphia Area
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by alexdingley » Sat Aug 25, 2018 2:02 pm

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:55 pm
Today I bought a Cymatic LP16 16 channel live recorder. I haven’t tested it out yet but it ticks all the boxes I was looking for for these gigs. I’d thought about an Alesis HD24 but this thing is brand new, smaller, records on any USB 2 drive and is under warranty. The specs look good but we’ll see how it goes.
I’ve never seen the Cymatic units before... you bought the LP16 (website describes that as a playback unit, the older LR-16 seems to be the recorder... hoping thats what you meant— it seems cool!
A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Fri Aug 24, 2018 2:55 pm
As for pit falls, the biggest is bad mic technique and plosives on the part of the performer. Sometimes I can get a foam clown nose on the mic but often the performer rejects the idea and I have to sort it out in post.
Plosives can be a huge pain... so I always keep a notepad and write down timecodes of any of those / any distracting audience noises (one album was tracked with a very congested audience member... thankfully iZotope RX can “cure the common cold” in post.

I find the biggest hurdles I’ve dealt with in live comedy recordings have been:
•Comics to physically handle the mic too much (gripping it super tight / switching hands often) in one case they were so bad, with this nervous habit, that they accidentally disconnected the XLR mid show.
• mouth noises... I find myself De-essing a lot. And taking out big breaths/ wheezing sounds... but I’m a bit OCD.

User avatar
A.David.MacKinnon
ears didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3819
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:57 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:28 am

Must be the LR16 that I got. It’s 16 channel record and playback.

Are your audience mics out in the crowd? How are they with PA bleed? When I started I would put my audience mics at the back by the sound booth pointing forward. They ended up being more like room mics for the PA. Once I started putting them on stage behind the speakers facing out into the house I got much cleaner results (although I still like having the perspective from the back of the room if I can get it).

User avatar
alexdingley
buyin' a studio
Posts: 804
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:00 am
Location: Greater Philadelphia Area
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by alexdingley » Sun Aug 26, 2018 10:22 am

A.David.MacKinnon wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 9:28 am
Must be the LR16 that I got. It’s 16 channel record and playback.

Are your audience mics out in the crowd? How are they with PA bleed? When I started I would put my audience mics at the back by the sound booth pointing forward. Thecy ended up being more like room mics for the PA. Once I started putting them on stage behind the speakers facing out into the house I got much cleaner results (although I still like having the perspective from the back of the room if I can get it).
Phew! Glad you’ve got the right unit — 

As for my audience mics... it really depends on the venue. When I work in the bigger clubs, I tend to hang my overhead mics (the earthworks Omnis) from a place that’s:
a) convenient to hang a mic & run a wire back to my tracking position
b) out of the direct line of fire of the PA.

Mostly I don’t find myself getting too much PA noise — just enough to blend it up so that the album sounds “live” enough for the artist. One of my recent tracking dates was at a multi-floor venue, and I started out by clamping mic mounts to the the ceiling... but it turned out that the mics were picking up way too much foot-traffic noise from the level above our stage... so I just brought a heavy boom-stand — and did an XY over a small corner of the audience...

After the recording date, I typically send a couple sample blends back to the comic... “audience up” / “audience down” mixes so that they give me a quick bit of guidance on how they want the blend. Normally we get it nailed on the first/second blend (and I don’t bother exporting the whole recording... just a 5min segment that gives them a few small & big laughs to listen to)

kslight
mixes from purgatory
Posts: 2968
Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:40 pm

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by kslight » Sun Aug 26, 2018 11:17 am

No experience with comedy albums (though I’ve done concert albums) but how well would boundary mic(s) work for audience capture?

User avatar
A.David.MacKinnon
ears didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3819
Joined: Wed May 07, 2003 5:57 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Sun Aug 26, 2018 12:56 pm

I like boundary mics for the audience but only to augment the main pair (not as the main pair). I've never found a placement for them that doesn't pick up too much PA spill.

User avatar
Nick Sevilla
on a wing and a prayer
Posts: 5555
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:34 pm
Location: Lake Arrowhead California USA
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by Nick Sevilla » Sun Aug 26, 2018 3:40 pm

Not necessarily a comedy gig, but I did do a stint with a one woman show, called "The Rabbi and the Cheerleader", down off Hollywood type thing,
in a small theater (less than 100 seats), for about 4 months.

I used her headset mic, a shure theater type thing, headworn, similar to those that theater companies use for their operas. Another, a single omni microphone, hung from the rafters, about 8 feet from the roof (this was not a tall nor huge place), and above the 4th row seat.

I mixed that together, all in a basic "mono" situation, and it worked really well.

Used one Presonus Blue Tubes tube mic preamps, and two RNC compressors, set to only kick in at the max level, which was only during the loudest laughing of the show, towards the beginning and the end.

Two channels. Simple, and it works great. Sometimes trying to have more audience mics is too much of a phasing nightmare, between the mic phase relationships, and people moving around (doppler effect anyone?), it is too much of a hassle.

On the comedy note, I have some REALLY EARLY Steve Martin tapes I transferred to digital, and those were done similarly, with one NAGRA channel being the stand up microphone, usually a Shure of some type, and an omni audience mic somewhere in the audience. Not perfect, but you get the comedy and the laughs. Which is all that matters.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

User avatar
alexdingley
buyin' a studio
Posts: 804
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:00 am
Location: Greater Philadelphia Area
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by alexdingley » Sun Aug 26, 2018 4:25 pm

Nick Sevilla wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 3:40 pm
On the comedy note, I have some REALLY EARLY Steve Martin tapes I transferred to digital, and those were done similarly, with one NAGRA channel being the stand up microphone, usually a Shure of some type, and an omni audience mic somewhere in the audience. Not perfect, but you get the comedy and the laughs. Which is all that matters.
Those old Steve Martin albums (not sure which recordings you’ve got) tend to sound awesome... I listened to tons of different comics over the years, to make sure I was keeping the sound of these albums “within norms”, and his albums are some of my favorite... sonically and otherwise.

User avatar
emrr
buyin' a studio
Posts: 876
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:21 am
Location: NC
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by emrr » Sun Aug 26, 2018 7:12 pm

I've only done one, and the take-away was MORE AUDIENCE MICS! I had a pair, and it wasn't enough to create a full sounding audience.
Doug Williams
ElectroMagnetic Radiation Recorders
Tape Op issue 73

User avatar
Nick Sevilla
on a wing and a prayer
Posts: 5555
Joined: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:34 pm
Location: Lake Arrowhead California USA
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by Nick Sevilla » Mon Aug 27, 2018 6:31 am

alexdingley wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 4:25 pm
Those old Steve Martin albums (not sure which recordings you’ve got) tend to sound awesome... I listened to tons of different comics over the years, to make sure I was keeping the sound of these albums “within norms”, and his albums are some of my favorite... sonically and otherwise.
Cool. The ones I have were from before he made any albums.
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

User avatar
vvv
zen recordist
Posts: 10139
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 8:08 am
Location: Chi
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by vvv » Mon Aug 27, 2018 4:45 pm

I bet that's some cool stuff!

OT, but, I went to look up a Lenny Bruce thing on the uchoob the other day, and it was removed for racism.

Hmm, just checked again, and it's back:
(cited herein: http://www.vulture.com/2016/01/100-joke ... c-v-r.html)

Hard to hear him some, the people are either laughing too close to the mic, or mebbe just that loud ...
bandcamp;
blog.
I mix with olive juice.

User avatar
Scodiddly
genitals didn't survive the freeze
Posts: 3957
Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2003 6:38 am
Location: Mundelein, IL, USA
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by Scodiddly » Mon Aug 27, 2018 7:21 pm

alexdingley wrote:
Sun Aug 26, 2018 4:25 pm
Those old Steve Martin albums (not sure which recordings you’ve got) tend to sound awesome... I listened to tons of different comics over the years, to make sure I was keeping the sound of these albums “within norms”, and his albums are some of my favorite... sonically and otherwise.
I was going to comment that when I listen to some of those classic live albums, they sound pretty rough. Really obvious edits to take out dead spots, etc.

User avatar
alexdingley
buyin' a studio
Posts: 804
Joined: Fri Feb 13, 2004 10:00 am
Location: Greater Philadelphia Area
Contact:

Re: Recording Live Comedy

Post by alexdingley » Mon Aug 27, 2018 7:47 pm

Scodiddly wrote:
Mon Aug 27, 2018 7:21 pm
I was going to comment that when I listen to some of those classic live albums, they sound pretty rough. Really obvious edits to take out dead spots, etc.
I’m sure they have plenty of gnarly edits, but I was thinking (in the case of Steve Martin) about ‘Wild and Crazy Guy’, and it’s balance / levels / tonality... when I was first getting my bearings on “how a comedy album should sound”, I was aiming for that kind of balance and that sort of overall level. It holds its own against records done 10, 20, and 30 years later IMHO.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 67 guests