What do I need to rent to record my 18 piece band live?

[vaud overstreet]

I have an 18 piece horn driven, vocal heavy, old timey band. Lots of guitars and fiddles, accordion, horns, keys and drums. I have 24 inputs. What can I rent from a local sound house that I can record us live at a gig? Something Pro Tools related? I am a complete retard with this stuff and don't know anything technical. Any help is appreciated so that I can at least head in the right direction.

Thanks
Vaud

[paul999]

It maybe better to get pro help on this one. You could spend not that much more plus get a pro mix to go with it. Collecting the sound is 1/8 of the battle. When I do stuff like this I use an adat hd 24. It is bullet proof. The converters are great to. If you have a 24 channel board then you can, if need be, mic each person. Sometimes I mic each person but other times I will mic horn players etc. together. Also the best thing for live is not necessarily the best for recording which of course is some of the charm of live stuff. You will need mic's that are appropriate for the instruments. Can you provide a list of the instruments you are recording and the mic's you have for the live show or will you rent all that to.

The other easy way is to mix everything as good as possible in the board and record a stereo mix. 2 track. What will the recording be used for? How good will it need to be?

Cheers.

[vaud overstreet]

intrumentation:
five vocals
2 guitar
1 one string guitar
1 fiddle
1 accordion
1 keyboard
1 bass
drums
1 tuba
1 bari sax
1 tenor sax
1 trumpet
1 bone

I have recorded in clubs with an Alesis HD24 with poor results. Lots of bleed over. I was told to go direct into a Protools type of system so as not to lose a generation in the transfer from the drive into ProTools

[paul999]

[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by vaud overstreet

intrumentation:
five vocals
2 guitar
1 one string guitar
1 fiddle
1 accordion
1 keyboard
1 bass
drums
1 tuba
1 bari sax
1 tenor sax
1 trumpet
1 bone

Do you have mic's picked out for any of these? Are the guitars electric or acoustic? Plugged in or not? Is the violin plugged in or mic'd. How big is the drum set?

I have recorded in clubs with an Alesis HD24 with poor results. Lots of bleed over.

Bleed? From track to track? Likely it was your mic technique as in the different instruments bleeding into each others mic's. If it was from track to track the adat was broken.

I was told to go direct into a Protools type of system so as not to lose a generation in the transfer from the drive into ProTools

If you use a fire port transfer there is no generation loss or if you use optical adat out's there is no generation loss. Your computer will need to be powerful bug free to record 24 tracks for a few hours and not glitch out. You wouldn't catch me depending on it. If it is not the end of the world if/when the computer malfunctions than it is okay.

Cheers

[vaud overstreet]

guitar amps, fiddle amp mic'd with sm57s
accordion, keys, bass go direct
horns, sm57, 58, or wireless
drums, kick, snare and overheads, not sure on the mic used

bleed from drums to guitars, vocal to vocal, drums to horns, etc...

used an Alesis HD24

[paul999]

bleed from drums to guitars, vocal to vocal, drums to horns, etc...

used an Alesis HD24

[/QUOTE]

This is all about micing and nothing about what recording device was used.

You are wanting to record in one of the hardest recording situations but as you said are a "complete retard with this stuff". Learning to record is 4x harder than learning to play and instrument and pro tools will not help mic bleed one bit. Mic bleed is part of the charm when live recording. You will have to gate things in your daw manually or with a plugin.

If these are electric guitars with an amp a 57 on one would be good and a hiel pr-40 on the other would be my choice. If they are acoustic going through an amp take a direct out and don't use a mic. This is also what I would do with the fiddle. Accordion direct. Live that is easy, recorded that is brutal.

This is something like what I do depending on variables. If a performer like the accordion player moves around a lot on stage you have to record direct because a mic demands that they stay at least a little bit still. If they are pretty still I use a mic that just gets recorded and doesn't get used live. I may or may not record the direct feed as well.

With vox good ol' 58's will do.
With guitar I recommend 57 and pr-40 if electric or sm-81 and akg 414 if acoustic and if the performers are still enough. Use the direct sound for live and the mic's for recording.

For the sax I like an e609 I have had great results with this. With the horns try not to use all the same type of mic on each one. Try a 57, 421, wireless (on less prominent horns). Try the 421 or an re-20m on tuba. Royer 121's are standard fair for a lot of horn players to.

For drums I usually use:
Kick d112 and /or yamaha sub kick and /or 57 on beater.
57 on top and bottom of snare.
421 on tom 1 & 2
Re-20 on floor tom
Sm-81 or studio projects B1 on hat and ride.
Neumann km 84' as overheads.

Additionally I would put one 414 in the middle of the stage at the back, high aiming at the audience. As well I put a 414 above or below each speaker but behind them so the speaker isn't playing into the mic. Your 19th instrument is the audience and you have to mic them to.

This is not the cheap mic set up but if you are renting that isn't as big of a concern.

[vaud overstreet]

thanks for the input. I think we'll try all this and see how it goes. In the end we will probably end up in a studio situation.