On the desk there should be a seperate out (Mix B or similar) it may be called, make sure its set to pre-fade, and providing the gain on the intruments and vocals is at a fairly balanced level it works ok, can be vocal heavy if its a chugga chugga wahh wah band though.
Note this is not using the RCA tape outs that you find on the desk, its a seperate mix altogether, The RCA outs tend to be straight out, therefore free of any EQ.
Thanks for the advice. It's a Fuzzy, jangly, LoFi Indiepop gig. Think Primitives, Talulah Gosh, Popguns etc. C86 type stuff*. The room is fairly small - 50x30x12 or so maybe - with a permanent PA and a sound man who knows his stuff, it's a great sounding room - but I think the room is small enough that the backline makes a significant contribution so far as bass and drums go, hence my worries about taking it from the desk. Some of the recordings I've heard in situations like this sound pretty thin and bass light ... and my guess is that's why, though I could be wrong.
Other easy suggestions are a zoom H2\M-audio Microtrack or similar sat somewhere in the room where the mix sounds good, or even a humble video camera that has reasonable sound quality works a treat.
Other suggestion is two mics crossed over in an XY pattern, a bit like a divining rod.
Are the mikes on those sorts of recorders good ? We could use external mikes ... I don't think we would have a problem hanging them from the ceiling for example. This sounds like a possible way to go though. How big a problem is it picking up random conversations - if some dickhead decides to tell his mate about his corns during quietish moments?
If you want something "proper" to work with you could perhaps hire something like an Alesis HD24 this is a multitrack recorder of up to 24 channels, use the direct outs from the desk to record every channel and then mix it down to 2 channels later.
Hmm. Mebbe ... sounds complicated. Are these things spendy to hire? I could probably justify buying a zoom or similar to myself for various reasons - including doing other gigs, but the whole thing is low budget stuff and I couldn't really justify hiring something expensive ... on the other hand the sound engineer has a mixing studio upstairs and a big Studer multitrack tape machine ... that'd be more hastle than I'd even want to imagine though, it's a bloody big heavy thing - the sound guy is amenable, he's sound
but he will have enough on his hands I reckon without having to operate a tape machine.
Basically its live really, and you get what you get, its random, expect nothing and you will be rewarded. However as I said earlier, a well placed zoom h2 can give remarkable results!
Hope this helps.......
Understood. It certainly does help - it's much appreciated. Basically I want it to sound Live - like you were there, y'know
* For anyone that's interested in coming to this, it'll be on Sunday 18th July at The Chameleon in Nottingham, £5 on the door, early start for an early finish (probably starting at 5pm and finishing by 9pm, though there may be dancing afterward). The Parallelograms split up last year when their guitarist emigrated to NZ, but he's back in the UK for a couple of weeks and they agreed to do a couple of gigs. I love them and it was a not to be repeated opportunity, hence putting the gig on.
The Parallelograms have a listen to
Papageno
Horowitz have a listen to
Pop Kids of The World Unite
The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut - This one's called
I Haven't Got a MySpace Because MySpace ****ing Sucks (as you can imagine, unlike the others this one isn't on a MySpace page
) - it may be a bit misleading as it's solo acoustic - when he plays live he usually plays with a full band ... drums, bass and keyboard/backing singer.
