Guide to getting and playing better gigs
Live Recording Tips
If you're in the process of recording your live show to get those better gigs, do a live CD or to be critical of your performance, here are some suggestions to make your life a little easier. This section deals with recording from your live console straight to a DAT machine. With any recording worth making, it's important to make time for experimentation. When you decide which venue you'll be recording at, it's always a good idea and call the in-house sound engineer and let him/ her know of your plans. They'll most likely have suggestions or feedback to make your life easier before you even walk in the door.
Make sure to fax ahead of time your stage plot and input chart so the sound crew will know what to expect. On your stage plot, show the locations on the stage of the band gear, wedges and the band members' name to expedite things. It's also a good idea to show the location of AC drops for power. On your input chart, include your microphone stand and microphone type (plus alternatives). Each channel of your input list should also indicate what type of insert (gate, compressor, etc.) that you would like.
Once on site, and you have your gear set up, here are some suggestions to make the best recording possible. Have shock-mounts on all of your vocal mics and use rugs on stages to keep the sounds of people walking back and forth down and eliminating that nasty stage rumble. You'd be surprised at how you can pick up from people walking back and forth across the stage. Another suggestion is to have Plexiglass placed around the drum kit. This brings your entire stage volume down, prevents leakage of the drums into your vocal mics and makes for a better recording overall. For drums, try to always use Drum Claws on toms. This is great for keeping the mics in place and not having to worry about someone accidentally knocking into one of your stands.
Try to leave your bass and guitar rigs in the trays of your road case (or elevate them if you don't have cases) to get rid of low-end rumble through the microphones bases of the vocal mics.
The day before you actually record, your drummer should replace old heads, clean cymbals, oil all pedals and tunes their kit to eliminate rattles and buzzes. When toms are tuned too high, they'll often cause the snare to rattle. Proper tuning is usually better than muffling the heads with tape and tissue paper. For the bass drum, try draping a heavy blanket over the top of the bass drum. This will sometime help cut down rattles from the snare drum. As an added bonus, this will also absorb some of the sound from the bottom of mounted toms--another potential source of snare drum rattle.
Guitarists and bassists should check intonation and don't forget to take an electronic tuner, spare strings, extra cables and picks. Clean noisy volume and tone controls with contact spray and lubricant (WD40 works great). Try miking only one speaker on each 4x12 guitar cabinet because miking several speakers on a single cabinet can cause a lot of phasing problems that will definitely show up on your recording. Always use a quality, name-brand DAT tape. "Break" the tape by fast-forwarding to the end of the tape and then rewinding to ensure that the tape is evenly packed in the shell. This reduces the possibility of tape malfunction and guards against dropouts due to tape crinkles. It's also wise to make sure your DAT recorder's heads have been cleaned according to the recommended maintenance schedule. This can be done manually or with a cleaning cassette.
Once everything is set up and you have time to do a soundcheck, make sure to record the ENTIRE soundcheck and then listen back to your DAT tape in headphones to see how everything is balanced.
See also: Acoustics