Hi, this is my first post, hopefully of many. I’ve been reading gearspace for years and I’m hoping for some suggestions.

I play with a 3 piece acoustic band- singer/guitar, double bass/backing vox, guitar/backing vox.

We want to record a handful of songs just for the sake of documenting them.

I’m looking for some suggestions on how might be a good way to record. We want to play and record them live.

The gear we have access to is:

DAW:Reaper
Interface: Motu m2 (only 2channels)
Mics: Sennheiser md441, oktava 012 x3 (1omni, 2 cardioid, 2hyper cardioid capsules available), beyer m201, techzone audio stellar x2.

My initial thinking is Oktava 012 omni for the guitarist and bassist and the tech zone stellar x2 for the singing guitarist. This will give a little control over the main vocal/guitar hopefully.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks.

What I would recommend you do is to just use your two Oktava cardioid mics spaced so they pick up the entire group performance and self-mix in your performance. Old-school style. Lead vocalist should sit a little closer to the mics, maybe.

You have six sources of music and only two inputs! I think a good performance in a good acoustic captured by a decent stereo pair is likely your best hope for success. But I'm curious what others think, too.

Unless you use the two mics to capture each player at a time, then glue it all together. Or record each instrument, then the vox. It will likely sound like squeeze, and you'll tinker with it forever. Knock three times at the door of unhappiness.

Any chance of saving your money and hitting a studio? You'd get better results in a fraction of the time, sans headache. If you know your songs cold and split the cost three ways, you'd have the whole project done in a matter of weeks. Maybe. And it would be cheap considering.

A little confusing here. I assume that "oktava 012 x3" means you have three Oktava 012 mics? Whereas the "X2" in "tech zone stellar x2" is just part of the name of the mic?

That's a plan, but with only two mics to record what is essentially 6 sources, IMO, you not only need a plan, you need to get lucky. Personally, I would set up two 012's in XY or ORTF and balance yourselves by playing "as a band". It will sound a lot more natural and you can skootch your chairs or move the mics up and back, high and low, to help yourselves get a good balance.

You get also get a little outboard mixer with enough mic preamps to put a mic on each guitar, a mic on each singer and one on the bass, mix it down to stereo and send into your daw. You will of course have to do a considerable amount of trial and error to get the stereo mix right before you actually "go for takes" but you would have more control.

Conversely, for $100 less than the above linked mixer, you could get a Behringer U-Phoria interface that has 8 mic preamps. And then you could save all your fiddling for mixdown. Just put up the mics and start capturing. Total control.

Get a nice stereo mix of the rhythm instruments sans vocals. Then overdub vocals and any leads, trombones etc.

makes sense, except the OP specifically said "live":
They have a Sennheiser md441 - that would be good for trombone...

Progger and hat have the right ideas, imo. Keep things simple. Keep focus on good performance technique, not the recording side, at this initial point especially. Have fun.