I drove up coast last weekend to record a friend's band playing a beach party and a volunteer fire department awards diner the following night. There was no good way to put mics out in the room full of banquet tables. I had the R44 with me with the idea of recording a mic pair + SBD, but for several reasons I didn’t end up recording the SBD mix. That concerned me because except for electric guitar and bass, the band is very PA reliant with vox, acc guitar, keys and an electronic drum kit all dependant on monitors and PA.
That live/session thing referenced in the jazz thread came to pass and it was quite educational... We wound up experimenting (which I'd have preferred not to be doing at that moment) but good ideas came about (I think).
The intent was to go totally unamplified - though that presents challenges with a shifting and somewhat large and disparate configuration (acoustic piano, drums, double bass and up to three saxes). The natural levels of all of those being quite different it becomes a big challenge. My initial thought was to just go strictly ambient with a mic on the piano running through the PA to get the piano to a comparable level (the pianist was the leader on the date). I thought the bassist was going to bring a small amp as he usually does for live shows, but he didn't.
After some experimentation what we had was: my mics over the piano (one direct to a channel on the R-44 and another into the PA to provide some piano monitor and to the ambient mics). My Naks were actually far more directional and better than the house mics so I used those for that. The bassist brought a DPA instrument mic he uses for recordings that clips to the strings, so that was another channel. I ran the Schoeps for the drums/horns (more ambient in feel). Ultimately an advantage was that I had a direct mic on the two instruments that are always lost in an onstage band mix.
As it turns out rather than going off the ambient and sweetening with the direct piano/bass I may build off the piano mic since there was a fair bit of bleed (as expected in a live or basically live environment, which is conducive to an improvised group feel but not ideal for a recording setting compared to studio isolations). So I may be sort of sweetening with the "ambient' set.
Most of my jazz listening friends always complain that acoustic piano is never properly in the mix so I was happy to find ways to resolve that issue. In the future I'm going to fly at least one mic over the piano into the R-44 for anything I can. I actually think it would be a useful strategy to fly a pair over the piano toward the band since that might be about the right mix with most players... It's sort of hard to position that correctly though since the lid intervenes...
I was also quite pleased with the DPA (which has very good isolation - a little bleed but not much). If I could I would invest in a few of those with the various mounts (since they sell the same mic as an instrument mic for piano, bass, other strings, horns, guitar, etc.)
I never intentionally multitrack so this is all going to be new ground for me. The results seem good though I'd have preferred not to be improvising too. But I've got some new strategies I think I'll really like. I think I'm going to want to move on from 4 channels though if I do this more...