Cheapest, easiest way to record band?

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romanianreaper

romanianreaper

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My band is talking about recording a few of our songs and doing an EP of sorts. Rather than go to a studio, we were considering doing it ourself.

I've done my own recordings in Reaper with great results but that is my USB interface and fake drums. For a basic setup, what am I looking at?

Here is what I'm envisioning:

Reaper on laptop
SM57 on bass amp, SM57 on my amp
4 mics on drums?
USB mixer to take it all in


Anything else I'm missing? I'm not trying to record Dark Side of the Moon. Just.some basic songs we can put on a site, etc.
 
Cool… I’m wondering if The weak link may very well be your laptop(?).

Good mics, good interface and good players on good gear.

Depending on the numbers of tracks and ultimately size of the file(s)…w/o compressing for file size may tax your laptop (?)

I’m no expert,,,just curious really.
 
Cool… I’m wondering if The weak link may very well be your laptop(?).

Good mics, good interface and good players on good gear.

Depending on the numbers of tracks and ultimately size of the file(s)…w/o compressing for file size may tax your laptop (?)

I’m no expert,,,just curious really.
I started on a laptop. Some can handle it.
 
Cool… I’m wondering if The weak link may very well be your laptop(?).

Good mics, good interface and good players on good gear.

Depending on the numbers of tracks and ultimately size of the file(s)…w/o compressing for file size may tax your laptop (?)

I’m no expert,,,just curious really.
Oh no that is not what I'm using, that is what I was thinking we need to get.

We are starting from.scratch. I have Reaper and my buddy had an SM57. That is pretty much it.
 
Oh no that is not what I'm using, that is what I was thinking we need to get.

We are starting from.scratch. I have Reaper and my buddy had an SM57. That is pretty much it.
I have a rhode k2. It is a good ambience mic that could mic the band sound in the room. It isnt cheap, but there are others like ir that are way cheaper. Otherwise you are spending a bit on micing all kinds of shit
 
Bro, record it in your mind!

Get a UA Apollo and logic, decent mic pre and a couple good mics and you are good to go. You can find an Apollo used for good deals. I’ve never used reaper, but you can get great results with logic.

The new Mac Studio is a powerful little desktop if you need a computer.
 
I started with this...
1688342275028.png


Seriously though, some good mics and a digital multitrack recorder can work well
 
Even easier… it’s cheating, but, it would probably work:

Use two overheads on the drums only. Then, take that stereo track, and place it in superior drummers sampling program. It’ll pick up each drum individually. You can then convert those tracks to midi and voila…. You’ve got 24 tracks of drums recorded with 2 mics, if you like :) now, you obviously won’t be able to blend the samples with the real shell hits because they weren’t close mic’d, but you would still have “professional” sounding drums that you recorded with only two mics.
 
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That’s really about it. Oh, and many many hours of aggravation learning to mix lol
Oh so a worse version of what I've experienced already with my solo recordings then, lol. Son of a....
 
I actually read up on the Tascam 12 today. I think we may be able to use something like that because it is just three of us and i can still move.tjr tracks over to Reaper. Portable so could record practices, gigs, etc too.

I think we could use a few mics around the drums and get a great sound. His Gretsch drums sound like cannons, lol.
 
The drums are the hardest thing to record and make or break a recording. If a recordings sounds good and “professional” it’s because the drums sound awesome. Do some research and ready your expectations.
 
Ok - first thing - I am not a professional, I record crappy tones that some people hate, and some sounds I've recorded that people love but I hate, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about... but here's what I'd do:

#1 thing is to be sure to get an interface gets out of your way (i.e. you're not screwing with levels and crap when you're just trying to play the music). Pretty much any modern interface will record super high quality sound, even the cheap ones.

If you're going to be recording the whole band at the same time, it's critical that you get an interface that can handle enough mic inputs - ex. your laptop's sound card or focusrite 2i2 is not going to cut it. I recently bought a Focusrite 18i20, I know that seems excessive, but seriously I don't know how I lived without it before. I can run my guitar directly into it, then out to an amp, and I can record both my mic'd amp as well as my dry guitar signal for later re-amping, all while not stepping on the toes of any other channels.

I really can't understate how valuable it is. You record your best possible take, or several takes of a song, and then everyone can just go home. Then if you want to spend 30 minutes or 30 hours re-amping and mixing that's up to you, you have your dry signals to work with. As long as you are a little anal about the initial setup, make sure there's no clipping on the dry signals, you can basically do anything.

SM57's on the guitar and bass amps make a lot of sense, they are cheap and easy to set up, and sound great.

SM57 on the snare drum is common, workable on the other stuff, but personally if you're going to get a bunch of mics, instead of getting 6x SM57 I'd consider looking into some other budget mic options at least for the kick and cymbals. Then you have a bunch of options to try out for other stuff... it's pretty fun sometimes to use a less-common mic on something else, even if just for an intro bit or something.

If you end up with a multi-mic interface as I describe, you may want to consider getting a condenser mic for the "room" in general, which you can mix in to add a little air. Just put it on a stand somewhere in the middle where it gets good sound from everyone. And this brings the next part into question, the room you actually record in, ideally you'd want some separation between your amps and the drummer so there isn't too much crossover in the channels... a lot of places use plexiglass/plastic paneling for this purpose, and also hang some blankets and stuff around the walls to keep the reflections down... you can always add "room" reverb later on. You don't want to be hours deep into mixing your song and find an annoying snare drum hit in your guitar mic track that you can't fix.

I'm a little out of date on what your options are on the market these days, but I think at minimum you need that 18i20. That has 8 mic preamps, which means you can record 8 mics at the same time. The next model behind that is the 18i8 which only has 4 mic preamps. If you only have 4 mics, that's very limiting. You'll have 1 on guitar, 1 on bass, then you only have 2 to split for a whole drum set (1 kick, 1 snare... hope for the best on crash and hi hat?), and nothing for vocals if you need that. Also I'm aware I just gave you a shopping list that could easily hit $1000, but hey, that's why recording studios exist and charge for this kind of stuff. Depending on your area, you may want to consider just ponying up for a professional studio, they will do it faster and more efficiently than you can and they'll have better quality gear.

Good luck I hope you'll share whatever you record here. I've been really enjoying digging through people's signatures and listening to the kinds of music they make.
 
Thanks TRG, and everyone else who had chimed in. All great info and really helpful!

I'm trying to find a balance between having some great recordings, having fun, and doing something more "professional". Mr and my buddies have lives and do this for fun and don't take ourselves too seriously but you know how it is, always cool to be able to throw songs up on social media, etc.

I've been looking at that Tascam Model 12. It is something I could take anywhere and record the whole band at once but then could bring into Reaper and fix parts, etc. There are only three of us in the band so don't need a ton of mic pres. I love recording my own songs too so would cone in handy for that. Just a thought.
 
I don't know what quality you are shooting for but, there is always the zoom option.. if you are limited budget wise... it too has an audio interface for running into your laptop.

Zoom 6
 
I don't know what quality you are shooting for but, there is always the zoom option.. if you are limited budget wise... it too has an audio interface for running into your laptop.

Zoom 6
Oh yeah, the Tascam is similar to the Zoom but has built in compression, more inputs, etc. My idea is to record stuff and then polish stuff in Reaper.
 
Go to a studio and record the drums. Then take those tracks home and do the rest.

this is a good idea, its taken me years to learn how to record good sounding drums, guitars and bass though theres not much you can really fuck up, throw a 57 in the center of the speaker and youre good.
 
this is a good idea, its taken me years to learn how to record good sounding drums, guitars and bass though theres not much you can really fuck up, throw a 57 in the center of the speaker and youre good.
It’s the hardest thing Imo. And it immediately makes a recording sound amature. Not only does the drummer need to know how to tune them, let alone change the 20 year old original heads, but then to mike and capture them. Plus having a good room.…
maybe an electric kit will get you by, but the cymbals and snare sounds, ugh…
 
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