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natthu
Gold Member
Australia
756 Posts |
 Posted - 04/05/2010 : 12:03:30
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I bought a Tascam digital 8-track recorder. I'm hoping it will give me some recordings of my new band from our practice room.
The unit is a DP-008, I would love one of those new Boss recorders but I can't justify the price (the DP-008 is dirt cheap).
Does anyone have any handy hints or tips for recording? We're talking simple here, it's just for rough mixes to help us arrange songs. The unit can only record 2 tracks at a time but can handle up to 8 in total. It has built in mics but I also have access to some proper mics (nothing special, just SM-57s). My band currently consists of 1 guitarist, a drummer, Bass (me) and a singer... so a pretty simple line up. Shouldn't be too hard to record right?
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Dirk
Platinum Member
Netherlands
1309 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2010 : 12:58:58
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The easiest way is to hook up all the mic's to a small mixer, feed the mixer into the 2 XLR inputs on the tascam and make a live recording.
That works great for demoing new songs if you just need a fast, basic idea of the song for bandmembers to take home.
You need the most mics on the drums, to capture most of it you'll need 1 or 2 overhead (like above the kit) to capture most of the cymbals and the basic sound of the kit.
Then you could add 1 in front of the kickdrum, 1 between the toms and snare, and maybe 1 extra for the hihat incase it doesn't come through clearly, make a quick test mix first in order to get the balance right.
Put 1 mic in front of a guitar speaker, experiment a little where it sounds best, just move the mic around a little until you've reached the sweet spot.
For quick bass recording I'd just use your amps DI output, put it post EQ to include the preamp, EQ and FX loop or Pre EQ if you want just the clean bass tone/pedalboard sounds.
That usually sounds good enough for quick recordings, micing a bass setup is a lot trickier, cause you'd need something like a high quality kickdrum microphone to capture all the low frequencies, same thing goes for the kickdrum itself btw, but for now your SM-57 should do the trick.
Good luck  |
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FRANZONI
Double Platinum Member
Ireland
3543 Posts |
Posted - 04/05/2010 : 19:12:41
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I have the 1st edition Tascam DP-01 which is also an 8 track with two tracks at once...what dirk has said is good advice i have done some basic recordings with mine in the manner he suggested...i've put eveyone miked up into our Dynacord desk and the into the two channels on the DP-01 for quick recordings..the most important thing is to take time to get the levels right...i've also done it a slightly different way ..i've miked all the drums up through the desk and recorded the drums onto two tracks the done the bass,guitars,vocals etc to give me more control over the final mix...mixing drums and bass and getting it right is hard if you don't have control over the levels of each drum but again take time to get the levels right beforehand and the results can be ok...
The biggest mistake i've made was i tried to record a gig one night with the tascam...i hooked up to the desk recorded the gig and then found that the file was too big to export....  ...thats the only thing with them is recording long pieces of music might make a file too big for mixdown and exporting...plus one night the bass player pulled the plug wrapping up the gear and the tascam hadn't been shut down properly and we lost the recording so be careful to shut it down properly after each session...
P.S...I used my Pod XT pro for my guitar 'amp'..and D.I.ed the bass...vocals and acoustic guitar were also D.I.ed...the reason was in the time i had to catch the drums i spent my time experimenting with the mics and sounds...i knew i could always put my guitar and the rest down later..we played along with the drummer via the desk into a headphone amp so we couldall hear each other and give him a feel of what he was playing along to... |
Edited by - FRANZONI on 04/05/2010 19:19:02 |
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natthu
Gold Member
Australia
756 Posts |
Posted - 04/07/2010 : 15:04:17
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| I didn't have time for a proper set up at tuesday's band practice, but I did take the 8-track along. I did a series of stereo room mixes which sound surprisingly good (with random external mics we found at the practice rooms). I did tweak the original tracks a little with my computer - I used some compression - but aside from that the Tascam unit does a pretty clean job of recording. There's no noise what so ever. I am very happy with it. I can't wait to do some real multi track recording. |
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Tascam portable recorder
