Guitar Gear Forum

My friend and ex-bandmate is in a band consisting of two guitarists, a bassest, and someone that plays various instruments like panpipes and little instruments like that. He wants to record a rough live track and I said I didn't mind doing it on logic 9 with my akai eie pro and mxl condenser. Now the idea at the moment is to have the bassist direct into the akai interface, and have the other lads around the condenser playing AND singing as if it was a gig. What is tge best way to approach this in terms of getting a usable sound with everything coming through enough to not sound messy? Would it be better to have two condenser mics place apart picking them up abd panned slightly? My said friend has a crappy usb condenser we could use. We could say have the main rhythm player/simger in the middle and space the guitarist and panpipes on opposite sides? The bass part can go in the middle as well. What do you think?

Long ago and far away I did some folk group shiz with me playing fiddle, a dude playing upright bass and some other folks doing hand drums, pipes of various types and flutes. From my memory, the best way to get a messy, indistinct recording is a single mic. The idea of the bass direct is probably a good start to cleaning that up, and having a second mic to give a vague stereo spread would likely help a lot. A lot of times these quieter (being a relative term to the usual metalz brutality I've dealt with) groups can actually be recorded perfectly well with a couple mics laid out wide, though a center mic to pick up vocals could bump the mix from a nice stereo image to a nice stereo image with some polish.

Of course, the perfect setup would be everybody separate mic'ed, but that's the day-dreamer option. Just remember to keep your two mics wide at mix-down, bass centered, a little EQ for polish and it should be fine.

Personally I'd spend my time finding a really good sounding room and just do it with one mic in the middle. Maybe DI the bass as you've already planned. I'd go with a good ribbon mic for this ideally. (Rent one?)

Is your condenser cardioid only or does it have some other response patterns? If it will do omni then your idea of having everyone around the one mic would probably work out alright. If it's cardioid only it will probably be hard to get everything evenly due to the off-axis and rear rejection, unless there is a lot of distance between the mic and the instruments...at which point I hope you have a good sounding room. Although omni will pick up tons of room too. Maybe figure eight would work well (which ribbon mics do by default I think). Figure eight rejects the sound on the sides but receives equally well from both the front and back of the capsule. That way you could have a couple instruments on either side.

...and in any case I hope you have a good sounding room.