Denver Recording Studio

Last week I talked about the benefits of live tracking vs multitracking in the recording studio. This week Id like to hone in on the benefits and techniques involved in producing good results with minimal headaches when tracking live. Tracking a band live can be a great way for improvisatory acts to capture the magic of their live chemistry. Another reason for doing a live tracking session in a professional recording studio is for pre-production purposes. Tonight at CCM I just finished tracking about 15 cuts live in one 4 hour session for a well rehearsed hardcore band called “Bank Robber”.  They are planning on doing a full length album in a couple months and wanted to get their ideas down on tape for fine tuning before doing the real deal tracking of a record. Doing a quick live tracking session can be a great way to quickly and cheaply get a good rough draft that will in turn make your later tracking sessions go that much smoother. When engineering a situation like this you want to emphasize a quick set up while preserving as much isolation as is humanly possible. What I did tonight worked great. I put all the musicians minus the singer in the same room, close miked the bass and guitar amps and then used some baffling to create a barrier around the drummer.  I put the singer right outside the door so he could still see the band and quickly communicate as needed. Surprisingly I got great sounds, good isolation and 15 tracks down in 4 hours!  You can use your imagination and create baffling that is very effective out of some foam, a little wood and some sound diffusers. All materials readily found at your local home depot.  Once we got our room and baffling set up we mic everything up and do a test track to see what kind of sounds and what kind of isolation we are getting. Once the client is happy you can start really streamlining the process. Like I said tonight I got 15 good takes in 4 hours because we just kept on tracking one right after the other, and the band was so well rehearsed. It can be a great thing when you don’t have a ton of set up and tear down in between each track you are working on. Of course your success or failure here will also depend upon the group you are recording and how tight they are as a unit. Since we all know time is money, I would advise that if you are planning on running such a session to recommend your artist practice as much as possible before coming into the studio!