A fairly common assumption is getting that "live feel" is better. That's where everybody tracks at once as opposed to tracking each instrument individually. There's another presumption that everybody at once is cheaper. Both are wrong most of the time. Most of us, and I'm including about 80% of those playing pro around town, are better served tracking one at a time. I totally get it. The house is rockin' with a packed dance floor. The band locks in and that psychic connection happens with the crowd. Endorphins fly and it's rilly rilly great. You want THAT on the the CD. Tragically, those nights happen very rarely, and even rarelier in the studio. To record live you have three options: One is to separate the players in various booths throughout the studio, hopefully with a line of sight to each other. You separate amps and drums in their own little rooms so there's no bleed, which is where guitars or whatever get into the drum mics etc. You can't really edit a guitar track say, that has bled into the drum mics because you wind up with phasing and ghost notes. You have to edit all the tracks simultaneously. Hence separate booths and long cables with headphones. Trouble is, the act of separating the players, no audience, and using headphones, has completely blown the whole concept of trying to get the live feel. All you've added to the mix is eye contact, which is cool, but nowhere near as cool as being able to edit or retrack a part. Option two is live on stage. The trouble with this is the sound is not great, bleed problems etc., and you can guarantee one or more of the players will not be happy with their performance. Plus, those crazy nights when everything locks in and the magic happens are rare. back in the day I took a 24 track recorder to a jam we used to run and recorded every set for months. I finally got enough magic for a 10 song CD. The performances were great, but the sound wasn't. The magic doesn't translate well to CD. Much of it is being there and concert volume. It's true there are tons of successful live on stage CD's out there, but you'll notice they're all established bands in concert arenas with a very good crew running top notch gear. If you have all that it might be worth the attempt. By the way, if you do decide to try it put a good stereo mic setup in the audience. Part of the feeling you get from live on stage is the crowd noise. Option three is to record live in the studio, all in the same room without headphones. The idea is to use the bleed as ambience for close mics. Or do a high quality stereo setup. This option works great for very good players in a few genres. It won't work with any aggressive style of music like rock. When the guitars and snare are louder in the vocal mic than the vocal it's a total clusterfuck. You could track the vocal separate, but of course that's blowing the concept again. Live in the studio without headphones is mostly for acoustics and brushes. Jazz and vintage country do well with this when all the players are top notch. This works great in a properly treated room with wicked gear, and more importantly, a wicked engineer who knows how to do it. Most studios in town will tell you they can do it, and most can't. Studios will say any old thing to get your money. Live does have it's points, but multitracking has so many points over live that it's not worth trying to chase it down. Much of the recording process is dedicated to fooling the ears. Much of mixing is creating the illusion of space. We use compressors to imitate the feeling of volume. Your ear naturally compresses loud sounds, and your brain levels out intimate sounds. Heavy compression with a quiet vocal sounds like someone singing in your ear. Various levels of compression across a full band recreate what you hear when listening to a live band. Ambient reverb recreates a smaller space, Intimate club, kitchen, whatever. Longer reverbs recreate anything from a concert to a wind swept mountain top. EQ is often used to fool the ear as well. Take out some lows and the sound moves further away. There's also phasing and a few other ways to move sounds around. What you get when you record live is what it actually sounds like without your ears and brain doing their stuff. When you have guitar in a drum or vocal mic EQ is a nightmare. Ambience, or room sound, is printed to disc and can't be removed effectively. What you get is what you get, and usually not what you think you'll get. One might think if you want to sound like you're playing live in the kitchen then play live in the kitchen. One would be wrong most of the time. I always leave myself an out by saying "most of the time" or "often" or "usually". There are no rules in recording. Just a lot of variable probabilities. Once in a while tracking live works crazy good, holy-crap-print-it-we-gonna-be-rich, because somebody left an SM57 in the sink and accidentally bumped the record button. Those little Zoom or Sony stereo recorders are actually pretty accurate. Record your next practice with one. What you hear during playback through small speakers at normal volume is what you actually sound like. It's quite different to what you heard playing at full volume. Try swinging it around a guitar amp or acoustic playing solo and listen to what happens. It's totally whacked. Sounds like a phase shifter on acid. Which also goes to show you the importance of mic placement. So to sum up: multitrack good, live good too, just not as good and way hard.
cosmictunes7