Let it Bleed!

[twitchmonitor]

I recorded a rootsy band over the weekend that consisted of a famale singer/acoustic guitar player, a bass player and a drummer. we set up in their living room for two days and tracked everything LIVE, including the vox. only overdubs will be bk vox, a horn on one song, a beatboxer on one song and that's it. I was a bit worried about bleed/isolation but I said fuck it and did what I could. I stuck the small drum kit in an alcove and miced it with three mics, made a tunnel for the bass amp with a futon mattress and threw a blanket over the swr that the acoustic was plugged into. The I put the vocalist on the far side of the room so that her vox mic and acoustic mics would double as room mics and I'm totally happy with the results. I WOULDN'T let the band do punch-ins and we both agreed that vox needed to be live.

Anyway, I'm just starting to mix and despite my fears, this is one of my favorite projects so far. And it's THE BEST drum sound I've EVER gotten. I'm think I'm hooked on live recording with the whole band playing together! I try my best to run a session like it's on tape and to fight against people's tendencies to want to "fix it in the mix" or to edit a bunch of half decent takes together instead of just nailing one good take.

Just thought I'd got some props to these old skool methods. Carry on.

twitchmonitor

[markpar]

The last project I did was live, all instruments in one room and I had the same reaction as you. It really generated that 'live' feel (obviously ).

And it was pretty easy to mix, too!

-mark

[soundguy]

humans playing music together sounds pretty good.

shit, who would have thought of something as radical as that.

dave

[wing]

live albums always sound really natural in performance... just because the musicians are able to 'play off one another' so well. i love it.

[wayne kerr]

humans playing music together sounds pretty good.

That's just plain wrong. You can't record that way. Under no circumstances should the individual component musicians utilized in the recording process ever be allowed in the same room at the same time. That may result in a dangerous situation wherein musicians will actually have to learn to play their instruments while at the same time completely eliminate the need for offline editing. We simply can not have that!

CC
PP

[wing]

power to the robots

kill the humans

[soundguy]

That may result in a dangerous situation wherein musicians will actually have to learn to play their instruments while at the same time completely eliminate the need for offline editing.

there's really nothing more that rains on the parade of spending last months paycheck on the hipest newest plugin and updating pocket calculator to the newest greatest than having a bunch of guys roll in and be able to play. These guys may also typically have the grotesque attitude of simply wanting a recording of their band instead of a highlight from your editing reel.

"Hey guys, just let me edit these two together, you'll LOVE it, Im telling you, this will make the greatest theme for the title sequence on my reel. will you let me use it?"

good thing most pocket calculator guys dont have to worry about that.

dave

[twitchmonitor]

the funniest thing about the session was that although we quickly agreed to track the vocals and the band at the same time (for a better feel and for vox/instrument interplay), the band was EAGER to punch in on songs in the middle. It took a while to explain that it's hard to keep the "real" feeling of a band doing a great take of a song when you've actually got two takes glued together. They were like "well, we nailed that first verse and first choruse, so just take us in at the second verse."

and I was like: no.

that worked.

[soundguy]

the band was EAGER to punch in on songs in the middle.

I know I talk a lot of shit on this subject and stuff, but I really cant believe that a band would punch, together, that is just like, the other side of the twilight zone to me.

I guess there's the carpenter who has to use a power tool for everything.

dave

[jajjguy]

I agree it's strange to have a whole band punch in. I mean, you'd have to give them headphones, right?

But once I recorded a group, all live as mentioned, do several takes of a song including one where the jam-out break was so amazingly interesting and off-the-wall and ended perfectly but then fell apart that i couldn't resist editing it together with the last verse from a different take. I was unsure at first, but everybody agreed it was better than losing that amazing instrumental break. So hey, sometimes editing actually works in service of good players playing well together. Sometimes.

[hardLeft]

I WOULDN'T let the band do punch-ins and we both agreed that vox needed to be live.

You fucking rule.

[bigtoe]

punching a whole band in rules...it can sometimes be totally hilarious what you end up with...like listeneing to a bloopers tape...but it can work really well...it's saved my tail on a few occasions and given me at least as many laughes...you can also have em play the part and edit it in...

editing isn't bad per se it's just it's done so poorly and with such a heavy hand nowadays it hurts the take...if there even is a 'take.'

live music rules. the guys i know into recording who also play say it's because it makes the recording job easier...not really - in the end i think it makes their job easier...

ramble tamble,
Mike

[leigh]

Twitch,

That sounds like an awesome session! I was just reading over a couple other posts, where people were saying how they wound up adding/creating ambient noise/resonance tracks to songs that were tracked totally dry, how it sounded boring and plain without some other stuff going on. My thought was, what about just letting it bleed from the get go! And then your post was like yeah, it really can work. Rad. Mint. Tubular.

Please, if it's cool with the band, can you post some mixes?

Leigh

[honkyjonk]

"power to the robots

kill the humans"


Wing, Wing, Wing,

Why take the robots' side? Sure, they look overpowering at times, and sometimes you may ask yourself, "who do we even have that can face up?" Nobody right? Wrong.

We have a little Japanese girl named Yoshimi.

That's right, she knows karate! And she knows how to discipline her body.[/quote]

[twitchmonitor]

Twitch,

That sounds like an awesome session! I was just reading over a couple other posts, where people were saying how they wound up adding/creating ambient noise/resonance tracks to songs that were tracked totally dry, how it sounded boring and plain without some other stuff going on. My thought was, what about just letting it bleed from the get go! And then your post was like yeah, it really can work. Rad. Mint. Tubular.

Please, if it's cool with the band, can you post some mixes?

Leigh

Yeah, I'm meeting with the singer tonight to give her roughs of every version of every song we did so she can pick which to work on and I'll ask her if it's cool. I've started doing some basic mixing, but I'm trying not to screw with it too much...just compressing the kick, snare, bass and vox a bit, some panning, levels. Not much else. I'll try to get something online tonight. I think that I'll use G. Love and Special Sauces first record and the Stones' Exile on Main Street as reference points for mixing....