Do I just need four mics?

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elguapo511

Senior Member
Joined
Sep 18, 2010
Messages
210
I want to record a band that is coming to my neighborhood.

I have a Tascam 34b reel recorder and the show is in a nice square room. Do I just need to run four mics to each corner and hit record?

Cant be that simple. Is there any literature out there on how to do this?

I can't seem to find anything with a four mic placement set up.
 
It's all in what you want. Two close mics and two far mics might sound OK but it would be unlikely without a lot of trial and error. It is hard enough to make four mics into a stereo mix, I used two channels for a band mix and the other two for vocals and guitar/percussion. It would be more complicated/easier to user a mixer or two and more mics, still hard to fit an arrangement on four channels and make sense out of it on mixdown. Something I haven't tried but like the idea is one drum mic (there are guides on that, something about measuring two stick-lengths each from two points to derive the third point where the mic is placed), then one on bass (or direct, or a little off-axis, etc.), one on guitar(s), and one for vocals (all singing around one mic, or a mixer with more mics). With enough bleed there could be a viable Columbia-type wacky four-to-the-walls mix there. Then variations like have one vocalist stand near enough for a bunch of bleed from one guitar, and the other the same with a different guitar, but that would leave the bass to be caught just by bleed. If it is not a rock band, then there would be a whole different set of options. I haven't tried any of this to four channel, but managed to make a few half-decent stereo mixes from a four track, sometimes bouncing a mix to another deck and back to get two more channels for mix-down. With today's digital platforms, the original mix and overdub bounces could be ingested and aligned for editing, like they did with Beatles stuff.

I see it appears to be in a venue, might not be too many options. The least I would try would be a board feed for fronts (might be mono) and two room mics. The standard ambient quad as far as I know.
 
While I haven't made a surround recording myself, I imagine that you'd need to turn the room mics away from the stage so that they're recording the reflected sounds from the walls. Placing them more towards the center of the room I think would work better than being near walls.
 
While I haven't made a surround recording myself, I imagine that you'd need to turn the room mics away from the stage so that they're recording the reflected sounds from the walls. Placing them more towards the center of the room I think would work better than being near walls.

I did two channel that way. One channel board feed and the other a mic six feet high next to the mixer. I did that to check the mix later, but it turned out a good listen. Wish I'd had kept copies, I gave them to the bands. However, the best bass was with the mic being a PZM facing the stage about four feet from the back wall.
 
My first impression from the title of the post was "and talent...."

More to the spirit of your question, it sounds like you are asking:

If I have only four tracks to record on, how should I make a live musical recording?

The question also seems to imply that you do not have access to a mixing board with direct feeds of all the instruments. If you DID have a mixing board, then I would set up a mix through the board that outputs to four channels in a fixed configuration. The science and/or art of what this configuration should be is a matter of great debate.

I do not personally have a high regard for audience/ambience recordings in which the rear channels are primarily audience sound and reflected sound from the rear of the hall. For me this does not add much if anything to the musical experience. I would far prefer a recording which spreads the musicians across the soundstage you are creating with your recording. If the band were, say, drums, bass, guitar, and keyboards, AND you did not have a mixing board, I might try the following mix:

Mic's 1 & 2: use on either side of the drum kit, possibly high up: do a Google search on mic'ing a drum kit with two microphones and see what you find. But a stereo drum sound in the fronts is pleasing to my ear. With four open microphones the bass will be all over the recording, so I would not be too concerned about capturing bass, although you may wish be sure these front mics are sensitive to a full spectrum of frequencies.

Mic's 3 & 4: Bias these toward the amplifiers of the lead instruments - no so close that they exclude all other sound, but close enough so each one "features" the targeted instrument. You may also wish to be sure there is good proximity to an amp that is providing vocals. If the band uses on-stage monitors, you might try mic'ing these as they will often feature a stronger mix of the instrument of the person in front of it. Alternately you could ask the band to feed vocals to a small amp near one or both of the rear mics to give you a clean feed. The trick with amplified vocals on stage will be to avoid vocal feedback.

These are just a few ideas. There are a million ways to do this, and plenty of room for innovation. Sound engineering is an art unto itself, and the sky is the limit as to how involved you want to get. The ideas above are meant to address the simplistic limitation of recording live to four channels with no opportunity to mix after the fact. The ideal for any multichannel music recording is to isolate instruments onto individual recorded channels and mix the multitrack in a studio after the fact. This gives you the most control over the final outcome. I hope this helps!
 
I want to record a band that is coming to my neighborhood.

I have a Tascam 34b reel recorder and the show is in a nice square room. Do I just need to run four mics to each corner and hit record?

Cant be that simple. Is there any literature out there on how to do this?

I can't seem to find anything with a four mic placement set up.

I think some of the other responses will help you. Let me also try.

If you setup with four mics in the corners, you will get an audience recording of the event since none of your mics will be close to the band. The separation will sound strange since the mics will be picking up room reflections off the walls, which will be the closest thing to the mics.

A good surround recording starts with a good recording. If you have four recording tracks to work with, I'd certainly want more than 4 mics. I'd want some type of mixing system for at least some of the recording channels. Then, if it's a rock band, I'd capture the band's vocals in one channel, guitars in a second channel, bass/drums in a third channel and background vocals in the fourth. Or, you can combine in a different way, maybe have guitars spread through two channels.

When you get to mixing then you can find the ambient information for the rear channels. And, really for a good surround mix, you're going to need a mixing board for post production.

If, however, you really want to try to make a live surround recording, then try two mics in the front in a stereo configuration about six feet in front of the band, separated by about 4 feet-ish. Then place the two microphones for the rear in a place in the room that is an even distance from the band and isn't too close to a wall. I'd probably aim slightly outside of the band. If there is any audience they won't like having the mics there but that's probably the best way to try it. It's not the way I would go but we're all welcome to try different things.

Andy
 
I have done it, using QS encoding (plays in Dolby Surround).

I used the band PA mixer, set up as follows:

- The 4 mixing buses were sent to the 4 tracks on the multitrack.
- The PA was fed by an after-fader aux send (so acoustic instruments could be turned down a bit in the PA).
- Instrument placement in the front half was done by panning the instrument into buses 1 and 2.
- Instrument placement in the back half was done by panning the instrument into buses 3 and 4.

About 20 to 30 feet from the band (where I had the mixing table) was a cluster of 3 mics on am 8 ft. pole:

- The mics are spaced 10 inches from each other in a triangle, with the mics pointing outward.
- 1 cardioid mic facing toward the band, but 60 degrees to the left of the band, panned to bus (track) 1.
- 1 cardioid mic facing toward the band, but 60 degrees to the right of the band, panned to bus (track) 2.
- 1 cardioid mic facing directly away from the band, panned to center on buses 3 and 4.
- None of this group of mics is sent to the aux send feeding the PA.

I later mix this down by playing the multitrack into a mixer with a phase reversing transformer on the track 3 output:

Pan track 1 left.
Pan track 2 right.
Pan track 3 left.
Pan track 4 right.

Monitor the mix through a QS or Dolby Surround decoder.

This sounds amazingly real. When I first set it up to record a soloist, I started to play back the multitrack through the mixer, set to make the final mixdown. I then asked her to stop practicing, because I wanted to hear the tape. She said "That's not me. It's the tape."
 
I want to record a band that is coming to my neighborhood.

I have a Tascam 34b reel recorder and the show is in a nice square room. Do I just need to run four mics to each corner and hit record?

Cant be that simple. Is there any literature out there on how to do this?

I can't seem to find anything with a four mic placement set up.

To make a "field recording" (ie capturing an event from a point location in the venue) you'd have the mics 90 deg apart and located at the point you wanted to capture the live sound from. That would give you a quad surround capture of the live surround sound event as it sounded at that point location.

If this is a live performance in a room presented in surround and with live acoustic instruments and the live performance is naturally mixed in the space, you might have good results recording the 4 quadrants instead of from the central listening position. You would be able to adjust for balance afterwards.

Recording a band and further producing mixes in surround sound is VERY different! If you don't literally have a live event going on organically presented in surround, you'd want to do the polar opposite and close mic all the mix elements to produce in the studio. Even if you were mixing from 20 or so channels live to surround for the event, you'd still normally want to take the raw multitrack home and remix it in the studio after the fact. It's a rare event that goes down so perfectly that you want to present a live capture as is. There are multiple sound sources in a live event. Instruments with different volume levels. Drums can be very loud for example. You need to end up with a complete and balanced mix in the wire at the end of the day and it's a heck of a lot easier with all the elements captured and working with a single sound system that trying to do that while mixing multiple sound sources in a room live. And this would be tenfold for a surround mix.

Depending on the instrumentation, you'll want anywhere from 8 to 24 mics and recording channels to capture the live performance from a close perspective to every instrument. Then any additional parts are overdubbed if there are further arrangements that didn't get performed live. Then you mix! Present all the elements of the performance in the balance you wish to hear in the perspective you wish to hear. All levels/balances, any ambience (this is a big deal), instrument position on the sound stage (surround and/or stereo), movement, etc etc etc.

To try to recap a little:
A more classical or jazz style performance truly mixed well in the space live (a combination of the natural instruments as positioned with players very under control of their dynamics with possibly some live PA support for quieter bits just as well controlled and mixed) would beg to be captured live to preserve the event.
A band that relies on some level of production and being more traditionally mixed live in mono you would want to produce in the studio after the fact from the multitrack.

Even if it was the rare first thing, I'd still bring home as many tracks as I could so I didn't end up painted into a corner missing something at the end of the day.

PS. Leave the old open reel deck at home. A Macbook Pro (specifically the 2009 - 2012 models), an audio interface with the number and type of inputs and outputs you need (this is modular so you can just add more interfaces for more channels when needed), and Reaper DAW app are all you need to do everything from run sound at the live event* (plugins replace racks full of processing gear), simultaneously record all the inputs to multitrack, and produce/mix the recording you brought home.

* Your controls can be anything from an iPad to an iPad + multiple MIDI controllers assigned to the virtual mixing board controls. I prefer MIDI controllers for real faders under your fingers + the iPad so I can always have the screen right there and full control over the whole computer.
 
Thanks for the responses. I have done it a few different ways since and the results are all over the place.

My favorite has been two mics stereo front of stage, then a dynamic Omni hanging over the drums.

Then one direct vocal feed.


Small club and bass is everywhere .


Also, bring a tape recorder to a club and half of your tape is people talking about your rig.
 
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