Recording Live Audio (Loud Rock Bands)
 

My main area of fun with video currently is recording live bands, I've progressed up from filming with a single chip consumer JVC cam with no ext. mic even, to a set of Sonys - TRV950 and PD150. With the 150 I'm blessed with the XLR inputs and plan to make good use of them!

In one club I film at, I'm on good terms with the sound guys, so I get an XLR even feed from the desk and I have the second camera at the back (quite high) with a sony electret mic (MS 908C) set to 90deg for ambience and I can put together a mix I'm happy with (obviously not quite as good as the 16 track desk feed sent thru a MOTU to Nuendo on a friends laptop the other week, but that was very much a one off!).

My main problem is, the main two clubs I go to have no fixed PA. What I was thinking of doing therefore is, buying a cheaper ~5x XLR input behringer or phonic mixer, and taking feeds from the PA guys desk into that, and having someone balance the audio during the first track (unavoidable really, but hey) via solo buttons and making sure the peaks are generally even, as well as a condenser mic (set quite low) then all sent down an XLR feed to my camera at the front of the stage. Even if the mix isn't so even, I'm sure this will give me a better sound than I'm currently getting (basically the electret mic on top of my camera.. which as I'm side of stage means I'm picking up amps/drumkit a bit heavy unfortunately)

Was planning to do something similar for a small PA in a small club that does a similar thing as well, as recording in there is a nightmare currently.

Anyone got any tips or ideas? I'm working on a very low budget, as it doesn't generate income and is simply for fun, but it'd be nice to put together a DVD of really good footage of the various bands, as it all helps promote our local scene.

Thanks!

Have you thought about a mic splitter set up? you can get one with a snake, and you would get a duplicate of all the stage mics into your own mixer I was told that the pro live music broadcasters use this set up...one miz live, one foe video and one for4 monitor.
I think marketek carries them.
Bruce Yarock

I'm in the uk so i pretty much have to order from here due to import tax and shipping prices unfortunately.

Hadn't thought of splitting the mics, as I didn't know whether this would reduce quality or not, also setup time is fairly important as I don't want to get under the sound guys feet! I'm also not sure if I have enough money to buy a mixer which'll take that many inputs, nor the time to have it mixed... I'll have literally about 3 mins during the first song (unless I specifically need an entire set, not the usual plan of recording the whole set with the aim to have 2 or 3 good tracks from it) to set the levels.. which is why I was more interested in taking 3 outs (1 for all the vocals, 1 for all the gutairs/bass, 1 for all the drums) + an ambience mic, as I'm guessing the drum mics will all be mixed to make it fairly even, as will the vocals and the gutiars, then its a case of quickly monitoring the overall levels to make sure the drums aren't overpowering and not having to worry too much. I'm not looking to get the quality that you'll get on major label live DVDs, just something that sounds better than my current single mic, mainly because of echo and placement.... as long as the mix is fairly clear I think people watching/listening will be happy.

I'm not a "sound" person tho (unfortunately, I have done basic stuff tho and used to record band demos on 4 tracks back about 7 years ago hehe :) ) so not sure if I can group like this, not sure if these mixers even have an XLR output (I suppose I can just get a 5.56mm Jack >> XLR cable tho, so thats not a big deal)

I'm guessings its mainly down to the sound guys desk, so I've sent him a message with a brief similar to this and will see if he gives me the "ok"

http://media.samedaymusic.com/media/brand,sameday/UB-1204_top-54d487ac594fcbc8f6d36d538dc669e7.jpg

to me, thats the ideal mixer... not too big, has 4 (would rather 1 more like the phonic, but still want feedback on particular models, so just take this as an example) XLR ins, a decent range of controls that I'll probably make more use of back at home for video based audio work, and a level of upgradability without costing the earth. (No point me buying the model down which is smaller, but lacking features.. I've not gone for the FX model here as I'm guessing it won't really do anything for me I can't do in post as its all digital effects anyway)

Important factors as ever are size and cost unfortunately :) Can't drag a 16 track desk as well as my camera box onto the train before walking to the venue, I'll be dead before I get there! :)

Thanks for the reply :)

My $.02...

I started out as an audience taper at a favorite band's shows and have evolved into a multi-camera and often times multi sound source geek who's even working up a documentary on the same band.

We've gotten to the point where we have a couple of different setups depending on the scale of the show. I'll share the simplistic approach that covers the majority of shows...

We shoot three cameras as a minimum at most shows that we're considering for mixing. There is always one camera at the soundboard with the XLRs from the board being fed into it via the dual-DI box that Beachtek sells. This is our main audio source as the sound man for this band is very good at what he does and he travels with the band.

A second camera is set off to one side closer to the stage and raised (balcony seats are the best). We run a set of audience mics (currently using AT822 Stereo Condensers) into this camera which happens to have a built in level meter.

The third camera is just shot from another convenient location and sound is only for lining the video up to the others.

Does this band that you follow have any tapers that are archving shows? If so, get in good with them as many of them have considerable sound experience and sometimes lots of money invested into their recording rigs. We've got quite a few tapers on our short list who love being listed as sound engineers on our finished DVDs.

I can also recommend http://taperssection.com/index.php as a good source for audio recording information specific to musical acts.

-Kevin

I guess I forgot to say that we then do a matrix mix of the overall sound from those two sources. If the vocals are a bit heavy in the board mix I boost the audience mics to round the sound out. Otherwise the audience mics are set at a low level and only get a boost during cheering or crowd participation type songs. In general we get very good sounds out of this.

At bigger events, we do get sound from and engineer who has an octo-split and is mixing the sound professionally. In these cases, we don't worry about micing or feeding the cameras. We just match his sound up later.

Good luck,
Kevin

Hi Kevin, appreciate the post.. sounds like we do similar things, but I'm guessing yours is on a larger scale (you mention balcony.. you have seating?! :D Virtually all the venues I work at its all standing 200-400 capacity kinda jobs.) I mainly follow the DIY Punk and Hardcore scene, I'm on great terms with the bands in the area and also the promoters so I can get permission to film virtually anyone who passes thru as long as they're not egotistical rockstars :) (Altho, my friends in Lostprophets and they're on Sony, and even tho I had permission to shoot video from the security part between stage and audience (again.. our shows don't HAVE security except on the door! Audience is allowed to climb onto stage to jump off, grab mics etc)) I was grabbed by security 2.5 songs in and told to give up the tape so it could be destroyed. Cheeky gits, didn't offer to give me money for it, I should've refused and taken a beating, but when you have a 3CCD camera around your neck its hard to do that!)

But back to the point, I tend to shoot 1-cam for most of the shows, annoying but when there's only one of me not always much I can do. I take the PD150 for this as venues are badly lit and its the only way I can get decent exposure. If I'm shooting at one venue, the soundguy (PA system is built into the club, the other places tend to hire in per night) will give me an evenly mixed XLR feed of the desk for the camera, and I'll have a microphone in the other channel which I'll mix in in post for ambience and to make up for any levels that aren't high enough.

The first time I did this, the mix was uneven (different sound person, so she just gave me a basic feed which made me ecstatic, I couldn't believe the quality especially on the triggered bass drum pedals.. but the guitars were too low) so I had to do a major mess around with both tracks and managed to virtually kill all the vocals from the mic (bit echoey considering how clear they are on the desk feed). I had my PD150 at the back of the club on a tripod, but a cheap one.. no fluid head so bad movement alas.. and it was one of the first times I'd used the PD so it wasn't particularly well setup. The gain is set very low cos the band love their darkness heh. My friend used the TRV950 at the front, and isn't used to shooting bands but had some good shots I could cut into at least which was nice. Definitely a learning experience but the band were happy with the results because they'd only ever had shaky 1CCD + inbuilt mic performances before, so it was definitely a step up. There's a track on my website here if you want to grab. Warning, the server is being a complete arse today and speeds seem really slow for some reason, also its very loud music (metalcore) so might not be to your tastes at all!

Alas, I'm always trying to get other people around here interested in filming and doing audio, but most kids either aren't interested or don't have the money to even start out doing bits and pieces.

Can't wait to start putting the show we did the other week together... I must've gone thru over 10 MiniDV tapes full of footage in total. As I was the only one there for the first half of the day, I had my XLR rigged up (altho my audio circuits were naffed so I'm peaking at -25db annoyingly.. gain control went dead on ch1 and I didn't know what was wrong) and the TRV was at the back with a stereo electret mic nice and high and doing an overall view of the stage to cut to. Then when my friend came, we had an extra VX2000 for the other side of the stage, and the full 16 tracks (whole of the stage and a condenser mic) going thru his Motu to his laptop running Nuendo. He's a studio engineer and I've heard the mix he's done so far, really nice! I had to control 3 cams tho, 2 by remote control (remember sony consumer/prosumer models shut down after 5mins of nonuse!) and mine in my arms.. a mad rush for 12 hours!

Anyway sorry for the ramble, I'm a detail whore I know ;) Cheers! If you have any of your stuff online, I'd love to check it out.

Sorry I forgot about this thread and just stumbled back on it. I checked out the link you sent and I think it pretty freaking good.

The bottom line is that the bands are happy with the clips too which they apparently are.

The one band that we have covered most has a page setup with a few of the mixes we've done. You can see them on the VIDEO page at http://ekoostik.com/

-Kevin