another recording thread

skapunkkeith

ok, i have a laptop with audiocity on it, i have been practicing in a rehearsal room for the past few weeks with a new band, they have a pa, drums, leads, speakers, amps............

im wondering if i can use the pa head as a mixer and mic drums, put the mics through the pa, put one of the outputs into a speaker and the other into the mic input on the laptop to record?and do this for other instruments aswell?

we do not have drum mics, but we have about three or four normal vocal mics, im not a drummer so im wondering what would be the most effective way of micing the drums, its a basic five piece kit i think, like is there any measurments and special placings for each mic?

i am goin there on saturday so id like to get all the possibilities sorted out before then!




please reply and dont just ignore me if you can help

david

Don't feed an active speaker signal into your laptop, see if the mixer has a line out or control room out, an amp'd speaker signal will fry your soundcard

skapunkkeith

so if it has a line out, can i plug it in to the mic input

Doctor J

Yes, but bear in mind the sound card in your laptop is **** and it is calibrated to accept a mic signal and, as a result, anything you record through it might sound rather noisy. You might be better off actually recording through a SM58 or simlar placed in the middle of the room and run that into your laptop sound card, though you will need and xlr to 1/4" jack mic lead and then a 1/4" to minijack converter too.

skapunkkeith

noisy as in loud, or as in bad quality noisy

we will probably record on a tape recorder first as a demo for the drummer, we dont want to spend any money, we just want to hear what we sound like, we dont have money to buy condenser mics or anything, we can mic our amps and plug them straight into the mic input on the laptop but for drums, i was just wondering what we can do to record them with what we have

david

Noisy as in rubbish.

COOKSTER

If its just to hear what you sound like, get a cassette recorder with a built in mic. Or a Minidisk or MP3 recorder and plug a mic into it. theres bound to be someone on boards that has one of those crappy wand mic's that they give away with "family" PC's lying around, It'll do fine. Especially on the Minidisk cos of the compression. You'll have to move the mic or recorder around the room to get a good balance of the sounds in the room. Remember that if there are flat surfaces around the mic the low end (Bass) will increase on the recording. Also you can turn up and down your instruments, and change positions in the room, so that each person is comfortable with what they are hearing, while getting the best balanced recording
C

skapunkkeith

we have a cassette recorder, were gonna use that too, but when we tried it with an mp3 thre drums couldnt be heard

jtsuited

solution:

two mics overhead for cymbals and toms.
one mic on kick
one mic on snare

feed these mics into mixer.

take line out of mixer and into line in on laptop.

set up laptop to record from line in.

Lather, rinse, repeat.