Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed Dec 04, 2019 7:00 am

Just spent the weekend tracking the beginnings of a new record for my old (and now reunited) band. We cut the beds live (vocals and all) in my 12x20 garage studio. I thought I'd share some photos and info from the session.

We're a 4 piece for this excursion. Drums, upright and electric bass, acoustic guitar and me on vocals, second acoustic or piano. I was concerned about bleed but it's turned out pretty well. Thankfully our drummer has a light touch.
I went to town with gobos to create little forts for each player (see the photos below). It worked really, really well. There's some drum bleed in the acoustic guitar mics and vocal but it's totally manageable and way less than I would have expected given the size of the room.
Everyone except me was on headphones. Even without them I could hear everything very well.

Guitars mics were an AKG D224 on one and an RE15 on the other.
Vocal was an RE20
Piano was a Realistic PZM taped to the lid mixed with a Barcus Berry piano pick-up.
Bass was 414 in fig 8 jammed between the tailpiece and body of the upright as well as the pick-up into an Ampeg Portaflex pre-amp clone into a DI. Electric bass was just the Portaflex/DI.
Drums were a single 414 OH in fig 8, M88s on toms, E602 on kick and a Western Electric Salt Shaker on snare.

In the photos the acoustic is behind the green gobo on the right, piano/vocal/ac gtr 2 is behind the tall blue gobo on the left. I hung shipping blankets off of a tall mic stand behind the vocal station to try to keep any cymbal splash from bouncing off of the back wall into the mic.
Unfortunately I don't have photos of the drum set-up. They were in the corner in front of the piano/vocal station with two 4' high gobos behind against each wall and another on an angle across the front of the kit.
The upright was next to the drums on the same side as the acoustic.

I'll link mixes once this thing is all done. Hopefully this can serve as inspiration for others to embrace the bleed and track live. With a bit of prep it can work beautifully.

Image
Vocals/piano/Ac 2 on the left, Ac GTR 1 on the right. Drum mics waiting to get placed. You can also just see the 414 under the upright tailpiece.

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Acoustic station

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Vocal/piano/Ac GTR 2 station

Image

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markjazzbassist
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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by markjazzbassist » Wed Dec 04, 2019 7:26 am

i love it man! reminds me so much of all the vintage 60's and 70's studio photos i see with all those gobos for everyone. were you tracking to tape, cassette, or digital?

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed Dec 04, 2019 7:41 am

This one was done to Pro Tools.
I had thought about doing it to 16 track but went with digital in the end so that I could edit takes for the best vocal (instead of punching in for fixes).

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed Dec 04, 2019 8:39 am

Here's the drum and bass side of the room, post load out.

Image

The drums were in the corner with the black gobos with a slightly shorter gobo across the front of the kit. Bass was next to it.
You can see the Portaflex clone bass rig as well. The DI ran after the pre, before the power amp. The power amp/speaker were used for monitoring in the room.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by losthighway » Wed Dec 04, 2019 11:30 am

I don't know if it's a good or bad thing when I want to hit a 'like' button for something on a forum. It probably means my mind is rotting and I don't have anything intelligent to contribute other than enthusiasm. But....


LIKE

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by markjazzbassist » Wed Dec 04, 2019 11:43 am

looks like an altec tube power amp for bass. i have that speaker cab, it's a Traynor YS-15, great bass cab. sealed 15". it's probably the smallest and lightest vintage bass 15" cab ever made. small world. you're in canada so it makes sense, i had to do a lot of internet reading to find out about mine and then actually find one for sale in the US.

who built the b15 preamp/di?

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Wed Dec 04, 2019 1:48 pm

markjazzbassist wrote:
Wed Dec 04, 2019 11:43 am
looks like an altec tube power amp for bass. i have that speaker cab, it's a Traynor YS-15, great bass cab. sealed 15". it's probably the smallest and lightest vintage bass 15" cab ever made. small world. you're in canada so it makes sense, i had to do a lot of internet reading to find out about mine and then actually find one for sale in the US.

who built the b15 preamp/di?
The Altec is a solid state, 60's era, Voice of Theatre...etc, etc. I bought it at a garage sale for $20. Quite a steal.

Traynor's are a dime a dozen here in Toronto. They were designed and built not far from my house. When I was a teenager we all wanted Fenders and could only afford Traynors. It took me a few years to realize how lucky we were and how good the Traynors were. I once found a late 60's Custom Reverb head in a pile of trash. It worked just fine and I'm still using it today. The prices have gone up now that the cat is out of the bag but you can still walk into almost any used guitar store here and find a dozen Traynor amps of various vintages.

The B15 pre-amp was built by an amp tech in North Bay, Ontario. Unfortunately I don't have any details. A friend had it made (along with a Garnet Hurzog clone) and then sold it to me a few years later. It's built into the chassis of an old Electro Home tube PA amp. I have no idea how true it is to the B15 circuit but it sounds amazing.
Last edited by A.David.MacKinnon on Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by roscoenyc » Wed Dec 04, 2019 1:53 pm

Nice one.

If the players are good, it works and it goes together quick.

Bravo.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by vvv » Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:58 pm

Like.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by markjazzbassist » Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:58 am

yes Traynors are wonderful. True story they used to drop them off their 2 or 3 story building and then immediately plug them in to test to make sure they were road worthy! Built like a tank for real.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by drumsound » Thu Dec 05, 2019 8:55 pm

markjazzbassist wrote:
Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:58 am
yes Traynors are wonderful. True story they used to drop them off their 2 or 3 story building and then immediately plug them in to test to make sure they were road worthy! Built like a tank for real.
Shure does that as well. Its a nod to military spec.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by Scodiddly » Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:22 pm

Very cool!

I'd be curious what the 414 on the bass sounds like. I've generally found that a mic in the tailpiece works best if it's point up across the body instead of into the body, but that has always been with a cardioid.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:21 am

Scodiddly wrote:
Sat Dec 07, 2019 7:22 pm
Very cool!

I'd be curious what the 414 on the bass sounds like. I've generally found that a mic in the tailpiece works best if it's point up across the body instead of into the body, but that has always been with a cardioid.
It's ok. Not amazing on its own but sounds pretty nice combined with the preamp/di. It's not a traditional upright sound but works well in this situation.
The approach favoured isolation over perfect sound.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by standup » Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:18 pm

Many years ago an engineer stuck a KM88 in a piece of foam in the feet of the bridge of my upright bass. Sounded great. I have no idea what pattern he was using, I was Isolated so it could have been omni but don't know. Sounded great. I've never seen one since.

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Re: Live Off the Floor in a Small Room

Post by drumsound » Mon Dec 09, 2019 6:35 pm

standup wrote:
Mon Dec 09, 2019 5:18 pm
Many years ago an engineer stuck a KM88 in a piece of foam in the feet of the bridge of my upright bass. Sounded great. I have no idea what pattern he was using, I was Isolated so it could have been omni but don't know. Sounded great. I've never seen one since.
I did that with a 421 years ago. I had the bass in the control room with me, because he was having issues with intonation in the room with the band.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1r7yjUfCTvBDfEl4axuLdp

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