Topic: Recording a tiny festival

[duckman]

Hi guys.

I've gotten brilliant help here before, so I hope someone will have some input on this little challenge.

My band has it's own little festival every year. Actually, it's not that small anymore, with 10-15 bands playing this year - but the venue is small.
We're calling it a Nano-festival, as it's only room for about 80 people in the concrete backyard where it's held.

We use a small PA-system, and run the vocals and the keyboard through it.

The rest of the sound is bare amplifiers and drum-set. The venue is so small there is no need for anything else, and the sound is actually surprisingly good, to be played incapsulated in concrete.

The first two years I taped it with a stereomicrophone in the center of the backyard to my Edirol R-09HR.



You can see the microphone at the left edge of the stairs, beneath a camera covered in plastic.

The set-up on stage looks like this:



The microphone in the back did a great job picking up the amplifiers and the drums, but the vocal was too easily drowned in that recording

What really saved my recording was a camera I had placed on the side of the stage, which picked up on the monitor-mix. So I used that audiotrack, and mixed it with the track on the Edirol.

What I want to do this year is to tap the mixer and get the vocals - and use a microphone in the back to get the rest of the instruments as last year.

Are there any great ideas on how I can get this to work?

I'm willing to flesh out up to a 100$ on a mixer of sorts, and I've had this recommended for me;
http://www.roland.com/products/en/M-10MX/

I've also had someone suggest taping the instruments separately, and tapping the mixer through this to my computer;
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250803287568&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT#ht_3865wt_905


But I really want to hear what some of you guys think, as the ones suggesting are smart soundpeople by all means, but none of them do any field recordings.... so it's a lot of theory and not really any practical experience.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

If you can either run into a 4-channel recorder and take the stereo mics + SBD feed and mix them together or get 2 recorders and mix the 2 sources in post you should be able to make a pretty nice recording.

Looks like you just have th R-09. When I only have a single recorder I've been known to record staight into a laptop (especially when I have access to a power source for the laptop).

[runonce]

Is it just the camera - that stage looks really deep...?

[rastasean]

Is it just the camera - that stage looks really deep...?

it does look really deep consider there's at lest two posts holding up the tarp and the lights look petty high. The first photo on the far left, near where the lady is standing looks like it starts where the stage is and it looks a good 4 1/2 to 5 feet taller than her.

[duckman]

If you can either run into a 4-channel recorder and take the stereo mics + SBD feed and mix them together or get 2 recorders and mix the 2 sources in post you should be able to make a pretty nice recording.

Looks like you just have th R-09. When I only have a single recorder I've been known to record staight into a laptop (especially when I have access to a power source for the laptop).

I don't have access to anything else tham my R-09HR and/or a laptop/eee901.

How would you suggest I best utilize this, to get both the mics in the back and the signal from the (small) mixer?

[duckman]

Is it just the camera - that stage looks really deep...?

it does look really deep consider there's at lest two posts holding up the tarp and the lights look petty high. The first photo on the far left, near where the lady is standing looks like it starts where the stage is and it looks a good 4 1/2 to 5 feet taller than her.

You're right, it's a deep stage.
About 4 meters deep. We have a keyboardplayer and a drummer in the back, and needed space for 10 more in one of the bands :O
It worked out great actually! There's room for audience all the way back, and behind the stairs is a area which is a mirror of the stage area - so room for 80 people and a barbeque area.
We've also decorated the basement and made it into a pub on these occasions. It's brilliant.

If I could just get the sound stuff flying this year, we have three cameramen and two cameras on stands - need a good sound source to dub onto the film.

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

If you can either run into a 4-channel recorder and take the stereo mics + SBD feed and mix them together or get 2 recorders and mix the 2 sources in post you should be able to make a pretty nice recording.

Looks like you just have th R-09. When I only have a single recorder I've been known to record staight into a laptop (especially when I have access to a power source for the laptop).

I don't have access to anything else tham my R-09HR and/or a laptop/eee901.

How would you suggest I best utilize this, to get both the mics in the back and the signal from the (small) mixer?

1. Put your mics where it sounds the best.
2. Record the SBD to the laptop
3. Mix the 2 sources in post. You will more than likely need to timestretch one source due to drift. I use Wavelab for this. You could also chop one source into tracks and mix it that way. I prefer to chop the SBD source if that is the case. Basically if you chop tracks you'll line up the 2 sources manually for each track. Pretty sure there are still tutorials on how to do this somewhere on this site.

[duckman]

If you can either run into a 4-channel recorder and take the stereo mics + SBD feed and mix them together or get 2 recorders and mix the 2 sources in post you should be able to make a pretty nice recording.

Looks like you just have th R-09. When I only have a single recorder I've been known to record staight into a laptop (especially when I have access to a power source for the laptop).

I don't have access to anything else tham my R-09HR and/or a laptop/eee901.

How would you suggest I best utilize this, to get both the mics in the back and the signal from the (small) mixer?

1. Put your mics where it sounds the best.
2. Record the SBD to the laptop
3. Mix the 2 sources in post. You will more than likely need to timestretch one source due to drift. I use Wavelab for this. You could also chop one source into tracks and mix it that way. I prefer to chop the SBD source if that is the case. Basically if you chop tracks you'll line up the 2 sources manually for each track. Pretty sure there are still tutorials on how to do this somewhere on this site.

Thanks!
I'm getting good at syncing and chopping up stuff, as I had to do that for last years festival (now a 5 DVD concertmovie )

What do I need between the mixer and the laptop ??
The mixer can output to jack, as it stands now - but we have cables to convert into almost anything.

[stantheman1976]

The mixer should have some type of record output, probably female RCA or 1/4".  Get the appropriate cable to go out from those into the input jack on your laptop or recorder. 

[earmonger]

A little laptop is likely to only have a mono mic input into a staticky soundcard.

One cheap way to get a stereo input is the Griffin iMic, which is not a microphone but a USB soundcard with a stereo minijack input. I don't know if there's any major difference between iMic and iMic II beyond the shape.

http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-iMic-Audio-Device/dp/B000BVV2IC

Or you could get that USB preamp from your link above, or some other USB sound input. But don't go through the mic jack. 

And you'll have to tweak your Windows settings (Sounds and Audio) to let the laptop know it's there. 

[duckman]

A little laptop is likely to only have a mono mic input into a staticky soundcard.

One cheap way to get a stereo input is the Griffin iMic, which is not a microphone but a USB soundcard with a stereo minijack input. I don't know if there's any major difference between iMic and iMic II beyond the shape.

http://www.amazon.com/Griffin-Technology-iMic-Audio-Device/dp/B000BVV2IC

Or you could get that USB preamp from your link above, or some other USB sound input. But don't go through the mic jack. 

And you'll have to tweak your Windows settings (Sounds and Audio) to let the laptop know it's there.

Thanks for you input, also thanks to stantheman.
I think I'll be using my eee901, which only has a microphone input, so I'll then be getting a soundcard. The iMic looks brilliant, and it's 50$ cheaper than the USB-preamp. Seems like a good investment.

Recording to laptop will be a breeze, as I run Linux and not that troublesome other OS which only causes problems at every corner

[earmonger]

Make sure there is a Linux driver for the iMic. And it only takes a stereo miniplug (like a headphone jack), nothing fancier, so check what the soundboard output is.

[duckman]

Make sure there is a Linux driver for the iMic. And it only takes a stereo miniplug (like a headphone jack), nothing fancier, so check what the soundboard output is.

Soundboard output is RCA, but can be split and patched into anything - we had to do that last year to get enough monitors up and running.

The iMic doesn't take drivers like we know them, only usb-drivers in the system. i.e the system has to be "usb aware". And their website says the iMic is very compatible with Linux.
Remember that Apple OS is built on Linux, so a system built for mac (which the iMic apparently is) should have no problems working on a Linux machine.

I've ordered one off eBay now, so I have time to try it out before the festival!

Thanks for your input guys!

[rjp]

Remember that Apple OS is built on Linux, so a system built for mac (which the iMic apparently is) should have no problems working on a Linux machine.

Actually, MacOS X is BSD-based, not Linux-based. There are a lot of similarities, but BSD and Linux are very different codebases.