Location Recording

There are various situations in which a location recording might be more appropriate than a studio session. Recent examples would be the choirs I have recorded, which would have been a little too large for my live room, and which benefited from the acoustics of the halls we used, or the Sheffield Philharmonic Orchestra (which would have been much too big for live room!)

It might also be a sensible option for bands: if you just want a quick demo, a tracking session in your practise room might be the quickest way to capture your live sound, and you still have the option to overdub vocals or guitar solos in the studio before mixing.

If you have a reasonably good practise room this approach can actually produce very good results, and if you are the type of band that needs to capture the feel of a live performance you might want to adopt this approach for 'proper' recordings as well as rough demo's.

Compromises?

In terms of technical quality there aren't any: I will bring a laptop based recording setup, a firewire audio interface with up to 18 inputs, and a box full of microphones. Each mic will be recorded at 24 bit resolution to its own individual track allowing full control over the mix once we get it back to the studio.

In practical terms there are few possible problems: if your room is on the small side it will probably have acoustic issues, and possibly there will be too much background noise. Of course, the room will need to have a safe and reliable power suppy. If in doubt get in touch, and we can arrange for me to check the room out in advance.

Live Recording

I can provide various different levels of live recording. These include:

Stereo recordings. I will use a pair of high quality microphones to record the event as it sounded in the room. The results acheivable this way depend on the room itself as well as the style of music, but can be very good.

Small to medium venue multi-track recordings. I will bring the same laptop based setup I use for location recordings. For small pub gigs I can run the PA sound at the same time. On larger stages I will use a combination of splits from the PA mics and dedicated recording mics, plus ambient mics if needed.

Medium to large venue multi-track recordings. For a small extra charge I can bring a recording rack with a pair of HD24 hard disk recorders and 24 mic pre-amps. I can then take splits from the main PA feeds plus extra instrument or ambient mics if needed, and record them simultaneously to two seperate recorders.

Get in touch to discuss which would be the best option for your show.