Recording a jazz combo. Need mic/pre advice.

[Jaws of Hell]

My friend is in a jazz combo for school and asked if I would record a quick demo of the group they could use to get gigs around town. I've only had my home studio going for a couple months and I am personally doing indie rock for myself, so I was hoping I could get some tips on miking for jazz.

We need to do 7 songs in about 3 hours, so I'm not going to have alot of time to try things out to get what I want, so I was hoping some of you could point me in the right direction. I'm most worried about drums and sax.

Everything will be done live, in a fairly large loftspace. Instruments are guitar, upright bass, jazz drum kit (18 kick, 10, 14 toms, 13 snare) and sax. Mics at my disposal are:

MXL V69
SP C1
SP B1 x2
Oktava MC012 x2
SM57 x2
Sennheiser e609
CAD m179
ATM25

I use a Digi002 so I have 4 pres there, plus a Have a lunchbox with 2 OSA "C" models, a Safe Sound P1 and a Joemeek 3Q.

I've never done recordings that will have so much bleed so I'm wondering how many phase issues I'll have. I want to do the drums in mono to possibly alleviate some of those issues. Any tips or tricks would be helpful. Thanks!

[cgarges]

If it's in one open space, you're going to have lots of bleed an potentially lots of phase issues. I just did an album like this not too long ago.

I'm not familiar with many of the mics you have, so I can't offer specific suggestions in that regard. That having been said, I recommend having everyone set up as close as possible to each other. If you have gobos available, put them near the bass first, as that's probably going to be your quietest intsrtument and the one most likely to catch other stuff in the mic(s). Use the rejection patterns of the mics to determine positioning. And don't plan to fix anything in the mix. Spend time getting sounds and make sure that the players are happy with the sound of their instruments as it's going to tape. This will get you much closer to final results and will allow for less phase-shifting individual EQ in the mix stage.

Good luck! This can be really fun and rewarding if the group's good!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Jaws of Hell]

Well, it went ok. Sounds fairly good to me, but then again I'm brand new at this.

Here's mp3s if you care to listen: http://www.theenvycorps.com/tsq