Check out some new/old music from my band, the Freshman Senators!
So – this is my college band, formed in the 1980’s. This last year, we have started getting back together, doing what we always do best – jam and make music together.
So it’s been a blast! It’s also been fun attempting to record the practices. Back in the day, we simply plopped a cassette tape into a simple recorder, and got whatever we could with it.
This year, I’ve been using my Focusrite Clarett 8Pre to capture the practice sessions. The Focusrite gives me 8 channels to work with. Here’s what I’m doing (take a listen above to see how it came out):
- 4 channels for drums (kick, snare, two overhead mics).
- 3 channels for bass and two guitar amps, all with mics.
- 1 channel for vocals. This gets tricky:
- 4 vocal mics going into a cheap Behringer board
- two outs, each going to a guitar amp used as a vocal monitor (hey – it’s what I have)
- Headphone out of the board running into the final channel on the Focusrite, to capture the vocals.
Vocals is (obviously) the hardest, and you can hear that in the mix. Some vocals aren’t very balanced (i.e., background vocals are louder than the main vocal, one mic was a lot quieter than the others, etc). Also, I’m singing some of the songs from behind the drums, so my vocal mic is acting as a 5th drum mic. Works great … until you put reverb on the mic, want to raise the volume up for that quieter vocal mic I mentioned, etc.
Oh well. As far as a recording of a band practice goes … this is pretty freaking good!
