Gear / Technical Help > Ask The Tapers
Help needed with taping strategy!
Pieteker:
--- Quote from: rocksuitcase on March 05, 2024, 09:39:41 AM ---Oddball idea: make a stack tape. Walk up and face the speaker in the balcony from about 10-15 feet away. You will look odd facing the speaker, but that will be an optimal way to reduce crowd chatter and pick up direct sound from the speaker. Of course, if this band has lots of stereo effects and you know they mix in stereo, then my advice is wrong. One of my finest recordings veer made in the 40 years of doing this was from about 6 feet from a Meyer UPA-1 in a balcony. We took over the front table and set the mics up almost as if we were close micing onstage!
Rock on!
--- End quote ---
Sounds good to me. Thanks!
Gutbucket:
^ I'm thinking like those guys!
I once wore miniature omnis in the laces of my shoes recording from a side balcony up close to the stage and PA. The PA speakers on that side were only ~10 feet away, down at foot level. Made for a clear direct path from PA and stage to the mics, and positioned them about as far away as possible from all the mouths and clapping hands packed in below, behind and to the sides. Worked really well. Other times in similar situations I've dangled them over the rail, similarly positioning them. Also used the on-shoe method a few other times for jazz gigs from right up front with the band setup on the floor rather than on a raised stage. Each of those arrangements got nice clear direct sound and helped minimize direct pickup of nearby audience members.
Have thought many times about the approach DavidPuddy mentions, either with a friend, or by using a miniature planted rig on the opposite side, but have never done it. Would be sort of the ultimate take on this technique.
fanofjam:
Yup, that's exactly what I was going to suggest. I'd just choose one of the stacks and record close up. You'll still hear the chompers between songs but during the music the stacks will dominate most of the crowd noise.
As far as recording both stacks for stereo, I've owned multiple recorders/rigs for a long time and it's not unheard of for me to find a place near a stack to stash one of my rigs and just let it record into either one or both channels, then I stealth the stack on the other side. Requires a bit of skill in post to create the master recording, but nothing too technical. It's mainly about matching the length of the two recordings using the stretch tool since two separate recorders will never synch up perfectly over the course of...say...a two-hour show. By the end, one recording will be longer than the other by some numbers of milliseconds. If you join them together without any stretching of one to match the other, the mix-down will start out sounding fine, but by the end of the recording you will start to hear a reverb type of effect. Or if the time difference between the two recording is more than a few milliseconds, the effect is more of a slap-back effect.
Gutbucket:
^ End result after the channel sync'ing should be very similar to the technique of hanging a wide spaced pair out in front of the PA speakers as we discussed in a recent thread installing permanent mic rigs a venue, and in others in the past. IME that technique can produce a recording with excellent upfront clarity, good stereo width, and a big open decorellated room and audience sound.
Thierry:
Palladium is such a shitty venue. You'd be better off in the balcony. The podium is quite low, things are hard to see if you aren't that tall.
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