Benedikt:

Hello and welcome to the Self-Recording Band podcast. I am your host, Benedikt Hain. If you're new to the show, welcome. So glad to have you. If you are already a listener, thank you for coming back. Thank you for hanging out with us again today. Today we're gonna talk about how to capture your live show, your live performance. We talked about that briefly on one of the past episodes or we mentioned that we wanted to do more on the topic of like live related things and... you know, recording your live show, maybe other things that come to mind. But we'll start with this and this is going to be, we're going to talk, we're going to walk you through different ways to record a live show, different things that you probably shouldn't do, things we see bands do all the time. And we're going to make sure to give you some actionable, easy ways to get started there. And so as always, I am doing this with Malcolm Owen-Flatt, my co-host and buddy from Canada. Hello, how are you?

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Hey Benny, I'm great man, how are you?

Benedikt:

I'm doing great, thank you.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Fantastic.

Benedikt:

Very excited for my trip to Canada this week. So

Malcom Owen-Flood:

like a couple more days and you're gonna be on Canadian soil.

Benedikt:

Yes, by the time this airs I'm probably already back home

Malcom Owen-Flood:

guess so.

Benedikt:

still there. But this is very, very exciting. Yeah,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, it's going to be a historic day for the self-recording band.

Benedikt:

For sure, for sure, absolutely. So yeah, this is all I've been thinking about these past couple of days. I mean, I had a great weekend with the kids and everything and that was cool, but like other than that, yeah, I was planning the trip. And so I don't have any other banter really to talk about.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

We definitely have, but what I will say, and this is again in advance of it actually happening, but it's thank you to whoever made it to the self-recording band meetup that we're doing

Benedikt:

Oh yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

on the island while Benny is here. So, shout out to Richie for our community member for throwing that together, helping organize it, because I'm way too busy with my wedding. But to everybody that was able to make it, super great that we could do that. And like I said, that's happening in the future. So I can't really tell you anything that happened yet. But thank you.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, Richie's awesome. The fact that he sets this all up is really, really cool. And I can't wait. I can't wait. I even saw, like today I think it was, I saw someone join the Facebook community just to confirm that he's going to be at this meetup or something that. I don't know who it was, but somebody joined and then commented that he's going to be there.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, fantastic. That's wicked. Yeah, now to segue into our episode though, while Benny is in Canada, we're going to the festival I'm playing, Lake Town Shakedown, and there is a live music aspect to this topic today.

Benedikt:

Yes, there is. And I don't know why we haven't talked about this earlier actually because like playing live is one of the main goals if not the main goal for most bands or the thing why the reason why they are in the band is that they want to be on stage and play live to an audience for many people at least and

many of us especially these days since it's gotten easier and easier to do that many of us capture ourselves record ourselves or ask the sound guy or sound person there to record us. There's many good reasons for them because recording your live shows is, it shows you, like I put it in my notes here, the honest and brutal truth sometimes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah

Benedikt:

So, I mean, we all can relate. Probably everybody who's ever recorded their own shows has probably had an experience like that where you watch the video or listen to the recording of it. And you're like, really? That's how

Benedikt:

we played this? Yeah, exactly. But that's valuable, that's good, because that helps you improve. So that's one reason, if it's just for yourself, for practice reasons. And then also it can be great content, in between your actual releases, you can record it really well, especially if there's a bigger show, or like a certain event with a special vibe, or a really cool audience, or I don't know. could be good content in between. There's even bands doing entire live records that are being released that way, so you can do that. But unfortunately, most bands do it, or many bands do it in a less than ideal way. I've mixed so many live shows. I stopped doing that a while ago, but I've mixed hundreds of live shows, and I was often asked by bands to... to record them or if there was a way to record them or if I could help them with that and more often than not they came to me with something like hey, can we just get the main outputs from the board? We have this recorder here or a thumb drive or whatever. Can we just record the show? And as much as I love to help them, that's not how you should do it in most cases. There's better ways to do it. That's not a good idea and we briefly touched on that in one of the past episodes, but let's maybe start here and tell people that what seems like the easiest solution is, and it probably is the easiest solution, it's not the best way to go about it.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah. Maybe we, I wonder what the most common scenario is because like you, I've been pretty removed from live sound for such a long time. But what was common was people having maybe like a little portable recorder, like a Zoom H1n or something like that, I think they're called, or maybe the bigger one that has an XLR input at least. And then just handing that to the sound person and saying, can you just send a mix into this? So they'll just, you know, record. what's coming out of the speakers in theory, right? And that should sound like a decent mix. And that's the first mistake, I think, right? And I think describing why that's a mistake pretty much outlines why most of these easy routes of recording a live show would be a mistake because it's not gonna turn out like you think if you just rely on a non-multichannel mix being recorded to your device. You're gonna end up with something. pretty subpar.

Benedikt:

Yeah. So the first reason is that, and this is especially true for small venues, what you hear when you're in the audience, when you're watching a show like that, is a mix of what comes from the stage directly, what comes off the stage directly, and what comes out of the speakers. So it might be that the guitars are crazy loud already and they're just coming from the stage, there's like a full stack and it's like loud and everything. Probably cymbals. Yeah, big part of the drum kit is like coming directly from the stage and maybe what comes out of the speakers is the kick drum, the vocals and a little bit of the other stuff, the rest. But yeah, it could be that if you just record the main outputs of the board that that's all you get. Like a loud kick drum, a loud vocal and if you're lucky a little bit of everything else.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

So that could be it because you know, we're just reinforcing when we're mixing live, we're reinforcing things and amplifying things that already happen on stage and it's not the same as like mixing something for a record where everything goes through the mixer or the DAW or whatever. This is the first part of it. The other part of it, and this is something that is not even on our outline here, but depending on how much time you have available, how many bands are playing, and who's doing sound and everything, it could be a big distraction and could be pretty annoying also for the people running sound because I mean if it's just plugging the cable it's not a problem probably but ideally you could do the recording independently of the local sound team or the sound guy or person there because I remember some gigs where there's like three or four bands a night or like a small festival or something with like quick turnovers and I don't really when I was doing that I didn't I mean I'm calm and I hope so at least I'm a decent human being and you know You can talk to me and ask me for things, but I didn't really enjoy it when people came to me with requests like that because I was busy trying to make this evening the best it could be and I didn't want to worry about bands recordings, you know. So that's a whole different aspect of it here and depending on how complicated it is, it's just better to do it yourself, I think.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to juggle as the sound guy at a show. It can be a nightmare. That's why I stopped shooting it. I hated it. It was always a nightmare actually, even when it went well.

Benedikt:

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, it's just always hard no matter what. And if you have to start repatching stuff just to get a recording happening, there's so much room for error because you're doing it in a rush no matter what. And, and you have to then repatch after that's done for the next band because they You're not meant to record the whole set or whatever. So it's a bit of a nightmare. You always want, if you're planning to record a show, you should really be communicating that in advance, I think. That should just be a general rule of thumb. And if you're not, maybe that is when the thumb drive is actually kind of the way forward, just because it can be less intrusive than something that requires a bunch of patching changes. But... Yeah, we're going to talk through a bunch of scenarios,

Benedikt:

yeah, yeah. So the next best thing, I mean, this is highly depends on, as I said, the sound staff there, like the people running sound and the whole setup and everything. But maybe if you have your own touring mixer with you, maybe even your own board, like these days with digital boards, a lot of bands have their own bring their own board and they just set this up. And, you know, if you can do that, then you could record from the board, in you send, yeah, you send the individual tracks to a hard drive or you create a You could even do that in theory on an analog board where you just, if you have a spare, you know, send and return sort of thing. It's not a multitrack, but you can in theory create a second mix that you can record. It's not going to be very, you know, good sounding probably because, you know, you have to still make decisions and commit on the spot. But that way you could at least, yeah, get a different balance from what comes out of the speakers. So a separate mix from what people are hearing in the room. But if it's a digital board, then you can pretty easily record the multi-tracks if everything's mic'd up.

Benedikt:

And you can worry about the balance later. Just make sure you have like, yeah, if the gain staging and everything's right, you could just record multi-tracks from a digital desk. So that would be kind of the next best thing I think you could do.

Benedikt:

that requires a bit of preparation and other things that we get into, so yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, it is a really good solution, though, because it doesn't require a bunch of extra patching on the sound team's side, right? They're just plugging in a hard drive, making sure that is enabled in the menus or whatever needs to be done. And in theory, you're just gonna end up with, yeah, a pile of multitracks that are totally unmixed, and you can do what you want with the matter. That is a great solution. That's not a lot of work, not expensive, but the downsides are it only works on some boards. Not every board can give you a multitrack. recording just from a USB stick or hard drive, right? And then the other downside is that nobody's monitoring that and making sure that recording's actually working. And I was a part of one of these, we did a show where that was the plan, where it was like, we're gonna record directly from the USB out of the board and we couldn't hear it. And there was an issue on the bass track was like cutting out and just nobody knew, right? Because nobody can hear what's happening on that side. So there's it's not a perfect solution and it's not what I would do as my primary recording if this is Like live recording first priority kind of thing So if you have hired, you know videographers and stuff like that and put money into capturing a live performance relying on a USB connection that nobody can hear is like a really dumb idea

Benedikt:

Yeah, for sure, for sure. What is the alternative to that?

Malcom Owen-Flood:

alternative. Now we're kind of jumping to the opposite side of the spectrum, the most work, but the best solution would be in my mind an XLR, or like what's called a split box usually I think, or a split rack, or just splitters. But when I picture a splitter rack, it is a case that I pick up from the studio that has XLR ins and then two XLR outs, or usually an XLR out on the back and an XLR out on the front. And what this allows the sound person to do is grab the XLR1, which is coming out of the vocal mic, let's say, plug that into the first slot on the splitter box, and then use another cable to come out of that to continue to their own snake. And now you grab the other XLR output from that same channel and plug it into your own recording device. So you could bring all the recording channels and gear you need and your caption. Everybody's getting their own direct feed, their own XLR, essentially, rather than sharing. Right? So it's just done. You can do whatever you want to app once you've got it. And the sound guy can do whatever they want once they've got it. And you can have a clearly labeled splitter box with kick, snare, you know, everything labeled, printed on there if you want to. Dead simple. Just more work setting up. But once you've done that, like, it's really in your control now.

Benedikt:

Yes, exactly. And because there's one thing we haven't even mentioned, that could happen if you do the multitrack directly from the board thing. it's likely that during the show for whatever reason, the mixer is changing the gain on some channel or

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yes.

Benedikt:

something, or you have to make sure it's like pre-EQ, pre-compression, everything. If that's not possible, then they might even change the EQ and compression and other effects. But

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

even if it's just the gain, they'll reach for that at some point and change it. And then you have weird volume changes throughout the recording, or maybe there's, maybe they accidentally mute the channel or intentionally mute it because they don't need it live and they didn't think about the recording. or you know

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

things like that so you have no control or little control over that and if you have a completely separate signal coming directly from the mic that stuff doesn't matter and everyone can do their focus on their job and the live mixer doesn't have to worry about the recording and vice versa so that's ideal

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, I think honestly a splitter box is the only professional solution. So if it's like a mission critical thing that you have professional multi-track audio from your live show, like this is the literally the only way to do it beyond just having a second mic ones.

Benedikt:

not many. There's just a couple of them anyways, at least in Europe. It's like not too easy to get one even a good ones, like active ones. Um, and then, um, yeah, but it's, I still, I still think it's worth it. And especially if you do that more often

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

and, and maybe there's, I might be wrong there, but there is, I think. There. There might be some digital desks now, I think I remember that, that have that sort of built in where you can do, if you do your own monitoring on stage, for example, where you can use the board as a splitter, basically.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right, yeah, definitely. Yeah, some definitely have that additional out, which is super handy. The good thing about this method is that a lot of bands are starting to, or are already doing this anyways, because they like to have their own in-ear systems on stage, which we haven't talked too much about, but some at least, right? And this is like the ultimate for that, because you're grabbing a direct feed of every mic or input on stage, and now you can use... do what you want with it for recording, but also for sending individual mixes to every member on stage without having to talk to a sound guy. And

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I love that. Being able to just be like, I want more guitar and I don't have to talk into a mic during the show to tell them, you know? I don't have to be like, hey, can I get more lead vocal just in the middle of a song, you know, like, or like

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

between songs. Like that's so, I hate that. It takes people out of it. You don't want people thinking about the sound, right?

Benedikt:

yeah, totally.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So. So yeah, just having your own control on stage is great, and you in addition get this clean direct feed for recording, and you're gonna end up with, you know, multi-track that the sound guy can't mess with by accident.

Benedikt:

Yes, exactly. What's become like a modern classic there already is like people having a rack with an M32 or X32 sort of mixer, that type, you know, rack mixer thing, where they control, where they do their own monitor mix. You can even have like, you can process it like in any way you want and you can set that all up and then you even have the additional outs or a splitter and that same rack. And then instead of the sound guy, instead of plugging their cables into your microphones, they just plug it into the back of the rack. to bring everything, like bring additional cables and stuff because you need twice the amount of XLR cables and you can't really, you have to communicate in advance but you can't really count on them having all of that available. Maybe even bring your own mics, like a lot of bands bring everything from the mic to the mixer and then the sound guy or person like just grabs it from the mixer. That would be ideal. But either way, just communicate, tell them in advance and it should be no big deal. If you don't tell them, it can be stressful at times because then you have to maybe combine your mics and theirs and then you have to make sure they have enough cables and you know

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

things can get stressful there but if you clearly communicate that upfront shouldn't be shouldn't be a big deal and actually most mixers I think will actually be grateful for that because then they don't have to worry about monitoring anymore and can focus on the front of house mix which is awesome like this is something I always loved I just didn't like the setup in between if they didn't tell me but if they did then it's great because then yeah my job gets way easier

Malcom Owen-Flood:

just to try and visually paint it out for the listener, if you have your splitter, it can still be a pain for the mixer, because he may have already patched in the band before you into his snake, and now he's got to undo that, go into yours, run back into that snake, and then at the end of your set, does he have to repeat that whole patching process again? Like it's still, you know... pain.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So definitely communicate in advance that this is how it's going to go and you know ideally that could be set up from the start and then just left there all day and you just click record during your set right? That

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

would be ideal. Now I wanted to clarify that your job does continue after that splitter box. You of course need to have your own interface that you're recording Ideally again if this is mission critical and you're doing it professionally somebody has to be monitoring that recording. You should have somebody whose job is to be listening. and making sure that you are actually getting this multi-check recording and seeing the waveforms come in and potentially gain staging those as well, right? Well, definitely gain staging. Somebody's going to have to do that at some point. The gain that's coming off the stage isn't just going to magically be perfect. So you have to individually, like you were in the studio, set up a recording.

Benedikt:

Yes, and that brings me to another thing that we have on our list here. Whatever you do, especially if no one's monitoring it, leave plenty of headroom, like with 24 bit recordings, it's not a big deal. It's not a problem at all to record really quietly. And in a live situation, you should absolutely do that because

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Mm-hmm.

Benedikt:

proximity to the mics changes all the time. And there's other things that can happen, you know, that just leave plenty of headroom, record quietly, turn it up later digitally. It's not a big deal if you have a decent interface and decent pre's and like built in pre's, like any modern thing that can do 24-bit recordings and is half-decent will work like that, and you don't have to capture it as loud as possible, especially if no one can monitor it.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, now this sounds, I'm sure somebody's been like, oh, well, what I could do is just get a YXLR cable and then I don't have to buy this expensive or rent. You should just rent, honestly,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

if you don't need it, one of these splitter boxes.

Benedikt:

True.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

But these little YXLR cable splitter cables are notoriously garbage. I'm sure there's good ones out there. And there's definitely individual boxes that do really good jobs at this for just like a single in and two outs. But the cables that you find on Amazon or something, I've had just so many bad experiences with. And when you think about how important what you're sticking that on, often it's the lead vocal that gets one of these and they're just grabbing a mix for everything else, which is again, a terrible idea. I've just seen a break cut out. I've seen there being grounding hums issues or it's just not wired very well. So many reasons not to do that. Don't do that.

Benedikt:

Yeah, also it just doesn't technically work. It's not the same because it changes the impedance

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yes.

Benedikt:

and you can't just plug. one microphone with a cable into two different preamps, that's just not gonna work. The preamps are not gonna see the same signal compared to just it being one mic. So the best way, the proper way to do it is an active splitter that has separate channels that are shielded and there's no crosstalk or minimal crosstalk and all of that. That's the proper way to do it. There are passive ones that work, but there's still a circuit involved that makes sure that it's done properly. There's still, yeah,

No, no, just no. So don't do that for various reasons. Yeah, but I could see that people would think that this works, but just know that it doesn't. Yeah, but other than that, I think that's really the best solution. So to sum it up, bring a rack with splitters and maybe your own mixing board where you do your in-ear monitoring or like monitoring on stage, and then just get in touch with the... the venue or the mixer before the show and make sure you have everything you need and everybody knows what's going on. And then ideally share it between bands so they can stay there throughout the whole evening. And yeah, and bring a person to monitor all of that. And then it's gonna be great. And it's the best for everything actually. You have a recording, you have your monitoring the way you want it, and you have a person who can just focus on front of house sound. So that's the way to do it, I think.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah, it's better for everyone for sure. And once you get to a certain level, it makes sense to kind of build your own little rig for this that's portable and, you know, can travel around and it's very repeatable. Like I said, you could have every input on your splitter box labeled permanently, which is really cool. You just hand over like literally a spreadsheet to the sound mixer and this is our patch sheet. They use the input list, done. So

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

simple. And yeah, you'll love having control over your own monitor mixes. It's the way to go.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah, totally. Now, what about the other side of it, the other extreme? What about like, maybe it's someone's thinking, hey, I could just like put a pair of mics somewhere in the room or a field recorder and just record what the audience is hearing and that's going to

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Right.

Benedikt:

be my recording.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, I mean you could do that but I would never release it. It'll sound bad.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, I mean venues typically don't sound very good and as you've probably figured out when you aren't close micing something it doesn't really sound like it sounds to you.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Like I wouldn't say a drum kit really sounds like what room mics sound like, you know? Usually it just doesn't feel as you don't feel it as much. You need that close mic on a kick to feel. You know?

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

So, like, it's just not going to translate anywhere near to, like, what a professional recording would be with just an ambient set. The only exception to that being, like, classical theater recordings usually are quite dependent on, like, a spaced pair out in the rafters, but, like, that's, you know, also really expensive mics well positioned. It's... It's a different thing really. We're talking about rock bands generally. This is gonna suck.

Benedikt:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. No, so yeah, I agree. Then the other thing that people do, and we do that too, but that's not to release things, but just for practice reasons is the GoPro or phone or cam somewhere in the room. I mean, not much to say about this. I mean, you can absolutely do this, I think. But we do it just to sort of, yeah, analyze our performances and that's pretty much it. Or maybe

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

you could use it for like some. behind-the-scenes content or whatever, some snippets or... Usually those also sound terrible. I don't know. There's some people who do like drum cams and that's a thing, obviously.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep, that can be cool, for sure.

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

It's important for our listeners to realize that Benny and I are being like, that's a bad way to do that, but we're talking about trying to get a usable recording.

Benedikt:

Yes.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

If you don't need a usable recording, any of these are better than nothing. Just record the audio with whatever you have available. You've got something to look at and watch and learn from. But it's also not that hard to take it a step further and figure out a way to get something that's At least you can tell who messed up when you notice something's messed up in the recording. Be able to learn from it by hearing it and sound listenable or like somewhat audible is really cool. And I think worth the step, you know? But if you can take that step further and be getting potentially like potential content from this, right? Like if you have that drum cam, but you have multi-tracks of the drums, you can make a really cool video. because you could actually mix something, and that's awesome.

Benedikt:

Absolutely, absolutely. That brings me to our list of pro tips here that we have. So when, so let's say you've decided you want to do it properly and you want to record a live show. There are some things you can do or maybe even should do to get them to make the most of it and to get the best possible results. So you just mentioned it. One could be, and that's not really audio related, but you can think about those things because it could be pretty easy to set up. One could be to just set up multiple camera angles or cameras. You could have like a phone somewhere, with GoPro, different angles, different stuff like that, just for content. I mean, it doesn't hurt to just set that up. It might be a pain to just sync that all and make it work together in the end, but I would just do it probably.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep, okay. Pro pro tip,

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

if you play live to a click track, you're gonna end up really loving this because now every camera angle you get at every show can be cut together because you're playing to a standard time. So you just have to go find that song in each set and then find that on every camera and then line it up and it should sync pretty darn tight. And now you've got usable footage. that you could put live footage as a music video to your studio recording because of this, right? If you use the same tempo map. So it's really powerful.

Benedikt:

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, totally. I didn't even think about that, but absolutely. Yes. Another thing that we didn't mention up there is like when we talked about your own monitoring and stuff is to keep the stage volume quiet if you record your multi tracks. I think that's a good thing to keep in mind is that ideally, I mean, if you have an in-ear monitoring, system, you probably don't need wedges like monitor speakers on stage. Some people do in addition to the in-ears, but if possible, I would keep them at very low volume or like don't use them at all.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

At bigger shows, you have side fills and stuff like that and maybe you can't turn them off or don't want to. But either way, I would just keep the stage volume as quiet as possible for the recording. And of course, you don't want to compromise the live sound that day, but everything that's just for your own monitoring, just minimize

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah,

Benedikt:

that, I think.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

yeah, less is more. But why is less more, Benny? Why is it a good idea to keep stage volume quiet?

Benedikt:

Because you're going to have all of that into bleeding into your mics. You're going

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Exactly.

Benedikt:

to have a signal to noise ratio sort of is going to be terrible. You're going to and this is going to cause all kinds of phase issues. And it's not necessarily noise. It's your song, but it's going to be delayed and it's going to blend with everything. And yeah, just a terrible amount of bleed in every microphone.

Yeah, you don't want a bunch of guitar in your vocal mic and vice versa. You just want things to sound like the thing they are. So the less that's happened on stage, the more clean those individual mics will be.

Benedikt:

especially if the bleak comes from like 20 feet away and it's like a slap delay and all of that. And yeah, kind of crazy what that can sound like. And so you don't want that. The other thing is I would... There's only so much you want to think about probably while you're performing but things like vocal like mic technique with vocals can be important so Sometimes when we just focus on the live performance, you know We do things that don't really matter as much in the moment, but sound terrible on a recording so the way you hold the mic or maybe you just moving way too much in front of the mic or you You know, there could be things that don't really matter when you see the person and it all makes sense But when you as soon as you don't see it anymore It's just like the audio cutting in and out and you don't know why it sounds like that. So if the recording is really important, if it's like a release, then maybe you have to think about those things. Because yeah, it might not matter in that moment, but on a record without the picture to it, it might sound just weird. You know what I mean? Like when someone, they don't finish the sentence and they go away, but they still scream into the audience or something, but you can't see that and then you feel like the vocal's gone, or they constantly change distance, or they cup the mic.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

and the mic was what I was thinking about. Getting the crowd to sing along. I mean, this could work in or against you, like for you or against you. Because if you stop singing and encourage them to sing, now there's no lead vocal in the recording. And if you don't have perfect crowd mics set up, now it's just this weird hole in the recording and you can't use that anymore. So you have to kind of plan the live performance and arrangement to suit how you want the live recording to turn out as well.

Benedikt:

Absolutely, which is another thing on our outline actually here. I would highly if you have the channels, I would highly encourage you to set up audience mics because this can add yeah, a vibe and a live energy to it that feels like a live show, which can make it so much better. And you can like automate that stuff. You can bring in the crowd in between songs or when the song ends or like singalongs, especially, like you just said, and just having those. You don't have to use them or you don't have to use them all the time. But to be able to automate those and use in the mix when you need them is really amazing, and especially if there's going to be video with it and it just recreates that experience. So a professional like live recordings of shows, There'll be a couple on the stage and maybe somewhere in the back of the room or at the top or at the ceiling or somewhere. But if you have spare channels, I would just at least set up a pair of mics pointing at the audience somewhere.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, it's totally a wicked thing to have, especially if it's like a crazy bonkers show where everybody's losing their minds. So you'll be grateful to have that captured.

Benedikt:

Yes, totally. And then, yeah, and then maybe add, that's also something to think about. Maybe you need to add additional mics on your instruments just for the recording, because maybe it's a small club or like a, yeah, maybe you don't. mic the hi-hats or whatever or maybe you do a ride cymbal or

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Mm.

Benedikt:

maybe you just have one kick mic that does the job for recording for live but you want to add a second one for the recording or something maybe you know just think about these things or a snare bottom mic or whatever you think you need if the recording is really important then you might have to set up a bunch of mics that are not going to the live desk or are going to be muted there but you want to record them if there's no mic at all on it. Like a kick drum, you could do with one mic probably, but if there's elements that are not mic'd at all because they are loud enough in the room, don't forget to record them if it's critical.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

that, yeah, I mean, I remember playing tiny little rooms where they were like, there's no way we're micing the snare. And

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

like, that's not going to work if you're recording it, right?

Benedikt:

Or overheads oftentimes

Malcom Owen-Flood:

And you absolutely need those for a recording. So yeah, you'll just have to supplement. And this goes back to, I mean, I keep saying if you're doing like a Mission Critical live recording, you need to hire an engineer to be the recording engineer. But that might be you. Like it can be you, but somebody's got to do the job, right? Is kind of what I'm saying. And that person needs to communicate and have this conversation with the front of house engineer in advance of the show. So, hey, we're recording this show. We're trying to get like, you know, professional recording done. What is your live plan? Cause they know the room. They're going to have their own plan for how they're going to mix the show for the audience. And you need to know what that is so that you can figure out how you're going to record the show for. whatever you're using these recordings for essentially. But those plans might not be the same plan. So you have to communicate and then figure out what's missing and go from there.

Benedikt:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. So any other things that we didn't get to yet? I think that's...

Malcom Owen-Flood:

You know, camera sync is probably worth talking about.

Benedikt:

You have to talk about that. I have no idea about that sort of stuff, or like very

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're going to want to just make sure your cameras are all on the same frame rate, so that they're recording the same amount of frames on each camera. That'll make syncing them up much easier. If there's an audio settings, you know, throw them up 48K, if you're recording at 48K. Again, just try and get things to match. And then, I mean, there's, if you were doing like a really... crazy multi-cam professional, like you've hired a bunch of videographers with real cameras, a timecode system's probably the way to go where every camera's getting fed the same timecode and you've got that recording onto a track into

Benedikt:

Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

your recorder as well, then you with the click of a button you can sync everything perfectly. So that's, but that's a pretty major thing and if you're doing that you're probably hiring a professional like video team. and hopefully sound engineer that can handle, you know, how things gonna work internally, but just make sure it's brought up.

Benedikt:

Oh yeah, I've heard...

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Otherwise, if you're just, you know, using GoPros and your phone, you kind of have to make audio work or a visual thing work, which can be a lot harder than you think, because if you picture a GoPro stuck on like a stand above the drummer, it's just getting blasted, so you might not be able to kind of even tell what the waveform...

Benedikt:

Mm-hmm.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

like looks like. So lining it up visually with the waveform can be really tricky. You have to, yeah, it's harder than you think. Um

Benedikt:

Yeah, you're right. You're right. Totally. Also, if you're using a phone, then know that the stock camera app might not do it if you want to do this. But there are apps for that. For example, with my iPhone, there's a pretty cheap app that's called... There's other ones too, but that's just the one that I use. It's called Filmic Pro, I think, where you can adjust things like shutter speed and frame rate and stuff like that. And it's more... Maybe you can do it on the native thing as well. But I know there are some apps that let you do more than

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

your stock camera. app and it depends on the phone probably, but might be worth looking into something like this and just buying an app like that for 20 bucks or so. So you can set it up properly and make it look good together with the other cameras and also to just be able to sync it up.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Ultimately, do a test shoot at your rehearsal space. You'll figure out and then try and take those files, both the audio and the visual into your computer and make sure you can make it work. Because if you can't do that, don't expect it to work live. And especially if you're hiring people, you don't want to waste money on this.

Benedikt:

Yeah, totally, totally. Well, what else is there?

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Probably so many things. Ha ha

Benedikt:

So many

Malcom Owen-Flood:

ha.

Benedikt:

things, yeah, so many things. But I think if you do all the things that we already talked about, then you should end up with at least a usable recording or a starting point that you can then later improve. And there's always things you're gonna just, you gotta just learn by experiencing it, trial and error, and just make sure that the same mistake doesn't happen twice.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, like, just to give people an idea of how unlimited this topic is, you could go as far as thinking about, are your effects pre or post on, like, say, your guitar track, you know? Like, you, reverbs and delays sound vastly different menu to venue, and I would say that, like, you might want to go drier than you normally would, and then add from there in the mix kind of thing. Now, can you figure out a way to split that so that your effects aren't being maybe throw an extra DI in stage and grab a clean guitar DI and reamp all of your live, your, you know, recorded stuff in the mix. Or like, there's kind of endless possibilities for how you do this. And it just needs to be thought about as all.

Benedikt:

Yeah, totally. Good point. I haven't even thought about that. The same is true for in general, like guitar tones.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

Maybe you completely change your amp settings because the room is sounding super dark or super bright and, you know, everything's like brittle and harsh and you have some weird EQ curve that just works for that room. But then the recording sounds totally weird on the close mic. That could be the case. Or maybe the sound person is asking you to change something about the tone or the two guitars don't work together well. Or there's all kinds of things that could happen. But what the mic here is close to the speaker could be completely different to what it sounds like in the room so maybe you want to grab a DI even to be able to reamp or You know, maybe you have a sort of a yeah something like that. I don't know

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah.

Benedikt:

Maybe maybe you have some sort of pedal or like if you're using an amp sim or something Like a hardware model or maybe you can grab both the actual tone and the DI But yeah, that's totally a thing. I

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, definitely a thing. You know, if you're playing to a click track, which again, for many reasons is a great idea for live recording, recording that click track is also a good idea. You know, having that in the system as a reference, it's gonna come in handy for syncing for sure.

Benedikt:

Yeah, also if you're running like backing tracks, samples, stuff like that,

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Oh yeah,

Benedikt:

Yeah, that's a whole can of worms there, but probably want to record that as well, because even if they are pre-recorded, and you might think that you can add them later, depending on how you've triggered them on stage, and

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yep.

Benedikt:

it might not be the same, you know, like if the drummer like fires them off a sample pad or something, you might have to record that, because you can't

recreate it, or you know, all kinds of things. Yeah.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, unlimited. It's a whole can of worms, but I think the main takeaway is we're encouraging you to take it a step beyond just grabbing a feed from the mixer, because that will almost certainly be less than you want it to be. And yeah, if you can get multitrack, absolutely do it for sure.

Benedikt:

Absolutely. Yeah, I think we can wrap it up there. That's

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Awesome.

Benedikt:

enough for this episode. And let us know if you want more of that, more life related things. I don't know what else we could do, but there's certainly more.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

I'm sure there's stuff for sure. Yeah, actually, shout out to Russell Bobble. He's the guy I'm mixing for right now. He messaged or emailed me, said that he liked our last live episode. So, wanted more of it and here we are. There you go, buddy.

Benedikt:

Russell's awesome. I talked to him on one of our coaching calls that we

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Oh cool.

Benedikt:

offer. He talked to me about the coaching program and I got to know him there. So he's amazing.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah,

Benedikt:

I had no idea you're working with him right now.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

great guy. Oh, cool, yes, small world. You know, it's a country divide. We're working with the same people in the same community, but I'm in Canada, you're in Germany,

Benedikt:

totally, totally. Well, that's good, that's good. So you're mixing for him or what do you do?

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, yeah, mixing an EP right now.

Benedikt:

Awesome, so cool. Yeah, so thanks, Russell, for the feedback. If you liked that episode, then we're gonna try and do more of those. Let us know, give us feedback like that

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Yeah, we love that.

Benedikt:

 All right, thank you for listening.

Malcom Owen-Flood:

Okay, adios, take care.

Benedikt:

Take care.