JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques General Technical Forum recording "live" in the studio

A couple thoughts. I should note in advance that my experience is really outdated--I haven't owned a recording studio in some 25 years. However, I have a friend with one (little garage studio) and I'm trying to record an album of our Friday Night Group as a fundraiser for the school band program. So I have been thinking about your problem, because I've got one that's kind of similar.

First, there should be little problem recording the band live in the studio (a couple of provisos, though, that I'll get to). If the band is tight, and can do the song letter-perfect on stage, then they can do it letter-perfect in the studio. (And I wouldn't go into the studio with a song *unless* you could do it letter-perfect every time. These studio guys cost serious bucks.)

Second, the limitations are mostly limitations of the *studio*, not the musicians (or the engineer). The studio's got to have space enough to be able to semi-isolate the instruments and vocals from each other so there's minimal "bleed" so the thing can be mixed later. That's easier to do with an acoustic group than an electrified one, believe me. Unless you've got separate sound rooms you can put each person in (from which, ideally, they can see each other), you just about have to record each person separately.

Third. You don't have to do that. When I had the studio, we did occasionally record groups live, all together in one room, and forget the bleed. And sometimes it would come out just perfect. The band had to be good at bringing the lead vocal, harmonies on the chorus, lead instruments, &c., "forward," so to speak, at just the right times to minimize time and work by the sound engineer. (Bluegrass groups seemed to do this best, because they were accustomed to crowding around a single mike, and stepping backwards and forwards to emphasize particular performers.) Your sound engineer may have to do a number of takes to get the levels right, because he or she has got to know *exactly* what happens when in the song so he or she can make any crucial adjustments precisely at the crucial time. And again, studio time is expensive.

Fourth, y'all just may not physically *fit* in the studio. My friend's garage studio is like that: it's small, and I don't think more than 3 musicians could fit in there at any one time. In that case, the only option is for the studio to do the "mountain goes to Mohammed" thing and come to where *you* are and do a live-in-concert recording. (Alternatively, you can go to a bigger studio, and pay even more money. Not only time, but also space, is money.)

That's doable, but I can see where studio folks don't like it--you lose your control over the sound, because you're subject to whatever echoes, random noise, &c., is inherent in The Hall. (And of course, somebody's lugging some gear around, too--if they can. A lot of studio gear isn't very transportable, and sometimes it's even built in and can't be moved at all.) The trade-off your band and sound engineer should expect is you're going to get a "bootleg album" kind of feel out of the product--which isn't necessarily bad if the group is used to performing live most of the time anyway. At best, you're going to get what sounds like a note-for-note live performance.

And that is how we're going to have to handle recording the Friday Night Group. (There's about a dozen of us on a bad night, and maybe 18 on a good night--a pretty unwieldy group to record in a studio.) The gal who has the studio is going to have to bring her equipment down to the hall where we play, and spend some time setting up everybody's levels for everybody's songs, and plan on recording in one take an entire evening's performance, live. I've encouraged her to come down a lot and play with us, so she can be thinking how to translate what we do into dials and slides on her equipment to replicate it. From the band's stqandpoint, we've been plahing together for a year and a half, so everybody knows exactly what everybody else is going to do, and what to expect. And that will help a whole bunch.

This help?

Joe

P.S. Oh, and fifth--I'd forget "auto-tune, myself. How you sound is how you sound--and sometimes, if people were right on key, they wouldn't sound like themselves (and people wouldn't buy their stuff because they wouldn't recognize it). On the other hand, I presume y'all wouldn't be going into a studio unless you pretty much had the mechanics-of-music thing down. So I'd tell the studio to just put their fancy toy away.

I think one reason why studios get all insistent about the bells and whistles and doing it their way is *their name* is going to be on the product, and they want it to be as perfect as possible because their reputation's at stake. Bottom line, though, is if they won't do what *you* need, you need to find someone who will.