ok, as i've mentioned a few times here already, i'm recording my band's demo on friday. we're a three piece (guitar, bass, drums) and i have a tascam tsr-8 and a studiomaster 24-8 desk. we're going to record all the music live and do the vocals afterwards. it's all going to be done in the same room. i think i've got the mic placements sorted (in my head!) as well as basic mix ideas.
i'm going to use an oktava mk319 and a shure sm58 as overheads, with a no-brand bass drum mic for the, um, bass drum and a beyerdynamic mic (whose model number currently escapes me) for the snare. i'm considering micing the toms with sm58s as well, but we'll see how the overheads manage first.
for the guitar i'll be using a seinhessier 421 and a cheap no-brand mic together (the 421 for the mids / lows and the cheaper one for the high frequencies) and an sm58 on the bass amp.
i know a lot of the mics aren't ideal, but it's all we've got to work with, so please don't bitch about the shittyness of sm58s etc! the vocals, as i've just mentioned, will be through the mk319, and probably with some cunning coathanger / old tights 'pop filter'.
anyway, aside from recommending new equipment, has anyone got any hints or tips as to how we can best utilise the above gear to getting the best possible sound out of the 6 hours' recording time we have (we'll be mixing back at my house on the saturday). i'm thinking here of mic placements etc., as well as drum micing, which is the thing i'm most worried about.
any help appreciated!
cheers,
jon
p.s. i'll probably post some mp3 links here once it's all done, if anyone's interested.

don't move. while tracking. this came up here once before, but in an all-at-once kinda approach, with everybody in one room, and when you're all cramped in and stuff, the guy playing guitar moving 6" to one side or the other can drastically change the sound of what you're tracking. think for example of how things will change in your overhead mic if the direct line of sight from the gtr amp to the overhead happens to be right around where somebody is standing, and then they're kinda lurching back and forth as they play. it ends up sounding, well, it has a sound to it i guess. most folks would probably think of it as "not good". so maybe be mindful of it. there's nothing i like more than being the guy who's telling the people in the band "try to not move while you're playing" or "stand over there" or "please don't step right where my cable plugs into my effects box" etc. j/k, i fucking hate that.

i just tracked a song in a similar environment (give or take) to what you're doing, live to a TSR-8... it turns out that by total and i mean TOTAL dumb luck, the beta 52 on the kick drum happened to be *directly* in line with the tweeter on the bass cabinet, about 5 feet away. and right in between the kick mic and the bass cab's tweeter is where my legs were. i determined this by listening to the recording and going "what the fuck is going on here?!?!?!?" wondering why there's this awesome growl on the bass that's sometimes there and sometimes not. and then i noticed the straight line that i was weaving in front of. D'OH!

heh, tmh, you are a leg end: that's the exact kind of thing i'd never have thought about, and can see me getting baffled by it and worried that my tape machine was fucking up. we're normally quite an 'active' band, even rolling around on the floor etc. during rehearsals (though not, i hasten to add, to the extreme of rites of spring!). i'll try and make sure we calm down a bit on friday

I usually find it useful to close mic the toms. Sometimes I'd rather do that than close mic the snare. Obviously it depends on the song, the players and the instruments. I would check the toms with guitars and bass to see if they survive...
If you guys are all in one room take your time checking phase between drum mics and amp mics. Specially the bass amp which I recommend you separate if at all possible (unless this screws up your bass player...). I find I have to sometimes take a short break because the right polarity setting seems hard to ppercieve After a couple of minutes its pretty obvious.

Sorry if you already new this stuff

Hope the session is good

Javier Ortiz

mmm, i remember from when i used to practice recording by setting up mics at gigs i was putting on, the snare was hella loud as basically came through every other mic! i'll have a few spare sm58s that are in the rehearsal place (which we shall turn into our recording lair!) so i'll probably stick them on the toms. it's just that i'll probably be submixing the drums down to four tracks (bass, snare, left OH, right OH) so it's not as if we'll have the luxury of just being able to blend it all nicely afterwards.
that's an interesting point about phase problems; from what i remember in other threads about said topic, it manifests as a sort of cutting out of certain frequencies, right? will this be easily noticable? and is it as easy to solve as just moving mics around (my desk doesn't have phase-reverse).
cheers for the advice: more, more!

Yeah, close mice the toms, otherwise you'll get two tracks of mainly cymbal. It might be an idea to compress just the tom mics (if you've got a compressor to hand) when going to tape, as the overhead tracks will sound weird if you compress them at mixdown, due to guitar/bass bleed.

and, erm, put a hamster in the bass drum......

shit, we've only got a gerbil; do you reckon that'd do? but we are without a compressor, and i don't know anyone who i could borrow one off of. shiza. it's certainly the next bit of gear i should get.

No polarity switch... Do you have time to solder some short phase reverse cables? I'm not sure just moving the mics is going to be practical, although it obviously helps. When checking phase I usually look out for low frequencies disappearing. It helps if you listen in mono or with both signals panned to middle. If the bass guitar in the drum mics is out of phase with the bass in the bass mic, well... Keep in mind that you are going to have a little of everything in every mic (stating the bleeding obvious here...). Use mic polar patterns to your advantage...(figure of eight ribbons are great for this).

Take your time when setting up. If something doesn't feel right, sort it out.

Good Luck!

Javier Ortiz.

ahaha, the "bleeding" obvious... that's amazing!
hmm, how would one go about making phase-reverse cables?!
yeah i think i'd rather spend several hours making sure everything sounds right (by the laborious process of playing a bit, recording a bit, listening to a bit ) but i think that's probably the best way to spend the time: we're fairly tight and we've only got about 25 minutes of music to record, so the actual recording (assuming we do just one, maybe two takes of each song, including a listen-back) shouldn't take more than two hours.