I took this panicked phone call last week. A guy was shooting a showreel of his swing act for his agent, but the studios he had contacted had all told him that a successful live multitrack recording was not possible. I glibly told him it was and, well, here it is.
The band had never played together before they were all reading the dots. I used every last mic I had - including Thomann T-Bone tom mics screwed to the bells of the brass instruments (this worked superbly BTW) I DI’d whatever I could - bass, keys and acoustic guitar.
Just shows what you can do: Those T-Bones are about 30 quid each, vocal was an SM58, Kick D112, snare SM57. The whole lot was mixed and recorded through a Behringer X18 straight on to my laptop - I can’t speak highly enough of the Behringer. It’s an absolute steal at the price.
Indeed, although the Xr12 only records the stereo out. The X18 can record up to 18 separate tracks simultaneously. It’s worth the money for that capability alone.
UGH! You’re kidding me. Doh! Well good to know… I’d highly recommend either based on the way they sound.
Have you had a chance to work with the Ultranet feature yet? I use the ultra net here in the studio and absolutely love it. But ssssssh! Don’t tell anyone lol.
Pro Tools -> HD i/o -> P16/I -> P16/M -> Vic Firth headphones
Very cool! What kind of venue was this done at? Size of room? Audience, number of people? How much did you use the acoustics of the room, and how much was added production? It does sound very authentic Swing band, and the vocalist/song has a kind of Frank Sinatra vibe.
Thank you!
It was done at a local worship venue, about 500 cap, with a very nice-sized stage. There was no audience, it was a shoot only. Consequently there was plenty of reverb out front but I only used foldback and not FOH, so I managed to keep the captured natural reverb down to workable levels.
Very sweet, AJ. Lovin’ that bass in the beginning. Nice mix too. The brass is perfect. Not too loud. Just really nice.
I’ve been getting educated on mixing bass (two threads going on right now). Would you be open to post what kind of plugs & processing you did for the bass? It has a nice presence.
The main thing about bass is to get it leveled - either manually or with some kind of leveling plugin. I use Drumleveler. As for plugs: HPF at about 70Hz, 31-band graphic to flatten it out a bit, gentle compression and a smattering of stereo chorus.
First, the band performed par excellence, AJ. And you captured that exquisitely, a wonderful accomplishment, and with the good stuff but not the top stuff, which reinforces my belief that a good engineer can get a whole lot done without the big guns. I think your attention to the empty FOH etc. accounts for your successful results here!
It is a bright and live recording, I can feel the room, and yet you have miked it so every instrument has wonderful stereo space, and that makes the horns and bass and singer pop to the front so pleasantly when their turn. Thanks for sharing the music and the back story.
