Actual live performances are amazing. Sometimes, a wonderful live (not a post mix, a real, on-the-fly!) mix of a live show is amazing. That's my holy grail.

I spend a lot of time doing "Taped/Live" and "Live to Track" these days. Nothing is as exciting, as seat-of-the-pants as Live/Live. I get hired because I keep my cool, follow the director's shots, and make a decent mix while maintaining good PLs and monitoring my bird feeds & satellite & webcast returns. I wish I got hired because I'm the best music mixer in the biz, but sadly that's not the case. I still hear mixes that blow my socks of from other people (John Harris & Bob Clearmountain are two good examples) and I am in awe, and feel lucky to be getting the work I get!

I still dig going back to old mutltitracks and throwing them up, putting together another live mix of an event...but hearing my 2-mix of that show done on the fly is where I can judge how I did on that event.

What made me do it? I was always working on live shows- live concert sound for broadcast, live Broadway shows, live Met Opera performances... dealing with the recording people was really cool. I had toured the USA doing live shows, done a lot of studio work, done a few dozen live recordings...and then I was the "theatre guy"/A2 on a series of national broadcast recordings (one of which Steve Remote was the A1) and I was brought in to deal with the house sound guy, fix the RF issues and mic placement, and work with the A1 to make sure the truck was set...and I was hooked with the remote truck.

I got a referral from a friend in 198? (near 1983) and it was STEVE REMOTE!
After I saw a gutted truck I was hooked. I haven't had a truck, yet, but, it's in the plan. I'm going to see if I can swap my van for a red bread truck up the street.

Steve is good!

Then I met a guy named "Guy" who worked for Effanel and recorded some of the shows I mixed at the Bottom Line.

As a music major every recital we play is recorded. Except "recorded" is subjective because what it sounds like is arse. So I decided I could do it better with some gear lieing around the school's music lab. I really enjoyed it so I bought my own stuff. Fast forward 5 years and here I am with a lot more and better equipment and a decent income. I want to do this full-time when I get enough work - right now I'm about to graduate as a music educator. Screw teaching - I want to record stuff!

I started last week,.... seriously.

Why?

well i just moved to japan, and i dont speak the language well, and i didnt know anyone here in nagasaki. having done some mixing for a few hip hop acts where i was before, i figured a great way to meet people was to mention my mixing and offer to do some for local acts,....

mehh,... didnt quite work as well as i figured.

but i stumbled onto a street jazz band last week, and got to talking to them and they were on their way to play a local cafe. now i love sampling stuff so i grabbed my lil zoom H4 and offered to record them.

i think i got bit by the live bug that night, cos even though they werent that good, i got a massive buzz off of getting the bits that were really really tight. seeing as how i was just using the zoom, i cleaned the recording up a bit with eq and gave it to the band,.... its quite something for guys who have never recorded themselves apparently.

anyway, its a great way to make new friends and hook up with local acts in a new scene, especially if you dont speak the language that well. i mean tonight i recorded quite an awesome guitarist singer song writer, kind of a japanese joni mitchell vibe, who has never been recorded before surprisingly, and she's asked me to record her next gig which is a showcase with about 10 artists.

and i just wanted to say thanks for all the insight and the advice you guys have shelled out on this forum. i've been going through thread after thread for the past week trying to learn as much as i can, and while i realize i've got a looooooong way to go, i cant think of anything else i would rather spend my down time doing.

but i know my wallet is going hate me for this.

Awesome!

IMHO, you will never be able to make it "big" (or to the next level and beyond) if you're not willing to risk it all.

I got into recording live through collecting old bootlegs of bands i loved.. I slowly stopped playing drums and started doing more engineering and via my love of old bootlegs it sparked my interested in live recording...

For me its the best, more enjoyable than the studio... I liked being in the studio as a musician playing drums, its got a vibe with friends hanging out and being creative... But from an engineers perspective live is hands down what i prefer...

You are out and about at different locations, working with different enviroments and logistical aspects.. Its got an edge to it since there are no second chances... Also its great to hear different venues recorded and discover how they translate when mixing..

Plus i love real musicians playing live.. I started doing music on computers in 1993.. Cakewalk 3 was my first program, i got it when it just came out and went through the 90s quantizing and cut and pasting everything under the sun until it killed my love of music.. I realised the energy of people playing live is what i like most..

When the band is good the gig is packed and the technical side works well i find its very rewarding..

https://gearspace.com/board/remote-p...ipment-13.html

Bottom of page, post #389 basically tells the whole story.

being a musician, i'm totally obsessed by sound. i started recording 10 years ago, at wind band concerts where my friends were playing with a sony md and ecm stereo mic. despite the lack of quality, they loved it! it was also because there was a real lack of a recording market - only the national orchestra seemed to be doing recordings

a couple of years later i was in the national youth orchestra and the armed forces band, and my bass trombone teacher happened to have his own remote company so i started following him around and picking up little pointers now and then

usually i work in his company, but figured i'm not learning very much as everything had pretty much been preset after years and years of experience in the same halls (all i had to do was place the mics in the same place), plus there were smaller groups that simply could not afford the company. so... 2 years ago i started to get a little serious with my hobby and started buying a little bit of gear, trying new techniques in new places
with smaller groups

i'm currently a political science scholar, so recording is a way for me to escape the mundane life and the depressing state of things around the world.... but besides that, i'm considering working full time in the remote company in the future when i've fulfilled my bond with the government

SONY MD and ECM mic, eh?! Me, too. I took one back to Mexico when I was living there and recorded a local jazz band and some marimba and ambient stuff. I was hooked. I had a lot to learn.

I showed up at a Holy Modal Rounders and Freak Mountain Ramblers gig in Portland, OR, with the SONY Hi-MD rig and the ECM stereo mic. I loved it. The pull was awful, but no matter. I started recording Freak at the saloon they worked and branched out to recording every thing in the Astoria, OR, area. I still do. But there is not a whole lot to record. But I record every decent venue out here and some not so decent. I get some lucky pulls.

I moved up from the SONY Hi-MD to some SD recorders and some high-end mics. I need all the help I can get. heh

The real beginning was as a child: I was raised on Fats Waller and the Metropolitan Opera and hung around Birdland, the Five Spot and the Vanguard in NYC during the late 50's. The 70's are kind of a blur but I think there was some music in there; yeah, there was. I am a big, big fan of live music. As good and nearly perfect as studio sessions are they are just rehearsals to me. All the time I spent listening to live gigs, pop. jazz and classical, prejudiced me in that form's favor. The interplay between the audience and the musicians is vital for me.

The gigs I do are "guerrilla" with either an ORTF or MS plus omni AB on the stage lip with a SBD tap when I can get one. Classical is usually AB with spots as needed. Small groups I will do with MS/ORTF.

I am retired and this is a hobby so I get the time to screw around with it, hang around on this board which is my grad level seminar/master class. Nothing I have found out on the Internet comes close to the collegiality and expertise of this forum. Steve deserves a real tip of the hat for the labor he puts into this and his gentle hand in keeping it civil.

The track I attached is Freak Mountain Ramblers. It is a Schoeps CMC64 ORTF plus DPA 4061 ~30cm AB and a mono SBD feed. Recorded at 44.1/24bit on an SD 788T and mixed in SAM 10.21. Compression on the SBD track and then added, also, on the final mix. I hope you enjoy the band.

Thanks to all who help me keep from repeating the same mistakes over and over..

Cheers

Hi guys, I don't know if I fit into this, but here goes:

I'm really more of a "musician who's into recording" than the other way around. However, I've been obsessed w/ sound and the gear that makes it for a long time now. I started out by reading Sweetwater catalogs, and learning about (and fantasizing about) the kind of "mid-high end" gear they had in there... Then started getting online and checking out forums like harmonycentral.com and other gear review stuff. Then I stumbled on this site, and as they say, the rest is history. Many an hour frittered away reading about the relative merits of this or that U47 clone...

Anyway, I'm a drummer, but I've been slowly amassing recording gear (I've got a day gig that finances this, but seriously takes away from my time making music...) I had gotten a Zoom H2 at one point, but hadn't used it much. Then, an old friend of mine who I had recently re-connected to invited me to do a gig. He's an amazing keyboard player who I grew up playing with, but hadn't played with in 25 years. I got excited, and decided that this would be a perfect time to debut my H2! I got a 4 gig SD card, put it in, and went to the gig.

It was a total pick-up gig, which was cool, because the musicians were all pro and I hadn't had the chance to play w/ pro musicians in a while. We pretty much showed up and played the gig. The only guy I had ever played with was my friend, and that was 25 years ago! It was supposed to be a jazz standards gig, but when we got to the bar, people ended up wanting us to rock! I set up the H2 about 5-7' in front of the stage. We were all strung out along the stage, not my favorite configuration, but we had no choice.

My friend (who is also a pro engineer), gave me some advice setting up the H2 (which was on a mic stand), pointing it slightly away from the drums (which were on the extreme right when facing the stage), and made sure I turned down the levels (which was a godsend, since we ended up playing much louder than we thought we would).

The gig was totally spontaneous - you can hear my friend (who, I guess, was the "bandleader," such as there was one), shouting directions to us as we played. That's the thing - it captured the spontaneity of live music in such a great way. Luckily, we were all listening to each other. There was some mild distortion, but the recording came out mostly great! I had no idea the H2 would perform so well under those circumstances. BTW, there was no bass player, that's left-hand keyboard...

Anyway, I took the unit home, transferred the files to my PC, did a little "mastering" with my UAD-2 Pultec Pro eq and Fairchild models in Cubase 4, and then I made mp3's and emailed 'em to my friends! (Ain't technology wonderful?) The Fairchild model was so cool, it was like "mixing" a stereo recording! Everything just sat better in the mix! All this gear was pretty new to me, so it was a huge learning experience for me! All in all, I got 2 hours of music, some of it great. Anyway, my first live recording experience!

Here are a couple of mp3's. We did a version of Superstition ala SRV, I mean the guitarist just started playing the riff, and we jumped in. Then he steps up to the mic, and he's got this great voice! The whole night was like that... Anyway, there's some distortion on that tune, 'cuz we were way loud, but it's definitely listenable (the out-of-tune horns however....)

Anyway, enjoy, I'll shut up now...

P.S. - I just listened to the "Superstition" track again - it is pretty distorted! But it does capture the whole "spontaneity" vibe of the gig, so I'm going to leave it in - sorry for any fried ears! I also like how all the crowd noise blends in - people were really having fun that night! OK, now I'll really shut up...

That's how it starts! Just wait... I'm glad you had such a good experience for your first time. Welcome to the addiction!

I only had a Rode NT4 x/y a little preamp and an ADAT.
The meager money I got doing a few stereo recordings for bands jump started the project studio where I much prefer to work. I don't like on location recording so much. For me it's a pita. We still offer remote recording but it's a drag to pack up and un pack all that gear now. Old n' lazy I expect.

That is exactly my situation...except I started back in high school, and our recital recordings are pretty good. The major thing was that the recording company that recorded the honor band concerts I was in in high school was absolutely terrible.

Here is an example...good gear, bad everything else.

frankly, i kinda dread "live" situations. especially sound reinforcement. i've been around many gigs but only on the recording side. i usually check what mics the engineer has, split what i need and add what i want(with the permission of the sound reinforcement guy, of course.)

the reason i dread it is i haven't had a chance to apprentice on how it's done and although i consider myself fairly inclined towards taking risks, there's no one here i've met who can show me how it's done. shows are always rife with feedback, underwhelming sound, and a welter of other variables that drive me nuts. aside from engineer duties i also participate in carrying most of the heavy equipment including musical instruments, flying mics from very high and dangerous places all in a very compressed time frame. by the time i need my ears i'm already a rattled and distressed tangle of nerves. don't get me wrong though. i have no illusions about the hard work involved and will not shun any of it if i could watch somebody do it while i learn. heck,i'm willing to carry all the equipment, place all the mics, line check them, make all the coffee, bring all the fries if there was somebody who i could really learn from.

my perception of this kind of audio has been colored by this and feel bad that i don't enjoy it as much as i know i can.

if i ever get to new york i will take remoteness' offer and hang out and ask too many questions.

Sure, the offer still stands...

When you have an opportunity like this, it's not about asking too many questions; it's about asking the right questions!

Well to get started....
I have worked for CBS Television in NYC for 20 years and several other recording studios.
So, I walked into Aura-Sonic (found the place with no problem) spent about 4 hours with the remote guru Steve who turned me on to some tunes in Elroy and it sounded spectacular!!!

I've been in Hidley designed rooms that didn't sound as tonally neutral.
After having lunch with him (thanks again for 5 guys burgers Steve) he offered me a job starting on Monday!!!!

Thats how I got my start!!!

I'm also happy to be a new member to this forum and look foward to speaking to you all!!

John Molinaro

The following story is 100% true, nothing has been changed and no one was protected.

My first long professional and long term client was the International Poetry Forum - while poetry doesn't seem like a real barn burner for location recording - this organization did music and poetry - the musicians and artists included Gian Carlo Menotti, James Earl Jones, Paul Winter, and the list goes on - stellar artists.

Now for the background on how I got the gig. They were paying a hobbyist to record their programs (some included full orchestra) and one evening he set his rig up in a small room under the ladies bathroom and during the performance, the ceiling collapsed pouring human waste all over his gear.

Let's just say his gear was s#@#&er than mine

-D

i had a small home studio in my various apts in boston, but i kept moving around from apt to apt which was annoying in itself. i ended up falling upon hard times, and moved in with my brother in CT. i still had clients up in MA, so i decided to go mobile. its kinda strange setting up my small mobile rig, to mix when im at home, but the consistancy is nice.

I like toys. Always have. My Dad was a preacher, and in the late '60s I stole (OK... borrowed) the church's Wollensak 1500 (?) R2R and his two Shure 565SDs and little Shure M67 mixer to record the stage band for which I was the bass trombonist. I was hooked. I also started taking photographs, and that skill put me through college. However, as it became a job, recording live events became a passion.

I still have cassettes done on a TEAC 450, with mixable mic and line inputs... and, yes, Loretta... I, too, started with a pair of Sony ECMs... kind of like the old EMC-18s in the picture, but without the foam... they must have weighed all of two ounces... but they worked better as "room" mics than the 565s... at least, until leaky AA batteries did them in... and lots of mid-70s recordings done on the A3340S that still resides in my living room. I did my first (and only) vinyl record project on that machine at a church in Waco... they liked it enough that they hired me a year later to do their second one. That gig paid for the pair of Sony C55FETs that were my first "good" mics.

In the 80s, after moving to Nashville to start a freelance photo business, I started recording choral events at First Baptist Church on a ReVox B215 cassette machine. In the mid-90s, the photo business had grown to include a video component, and I began a long-term association with the International Church Music Festival, producing the souvenir tape (then) or DVD (now) of excerpts from the week's music making, in venues including Coventry and Chester Cathedrals in England; the Casino Konzerthaus in Bern, Switzerland, and at St. Paul's Outside the Walls, Santa Maria Maggiorre, San Giovanni il Divino and the Pantheon in Rome. I moved from that pair of C55s direct to the Toshiba Hi8 camcorder to tracking Gefell M296s, DPA 4061s and Sennheiser MKH8040s through a DAV BG8 and Mackie Onyx 1220 split to the master camera and through Logic to hard drive.

Tracking through Logic has led to a few live tracking gigs (just did my 5th Lee Roy Parnell show last night at a small club) and a small, but growing, client list here in Nashville for live acoustic events... my favorite of which is the Nashville Unlimited Christmas Show, a benefit concert where I get to hang out with Dave Sinko, one of my mentors.

This forum (thanks, Steve) and the 3dB bunch have, indeed, provided a post-graduate learning resource in all things remote. It's a pleasure to lurk, read, learn, and, occasionally, spout off about something or the other. Special thanks to Rich Mays at Sonare (my primary mentor) who pointed me here a long time ago, and whose advice has always added value to my little world.

It is truly my joy, and a blessing of God, to be able to make my living playing with my toys, photo, video and audio.

Ooh, I like that idea...

Not "Show us pictures of your latest acquisition", but "Show us pictures of the first gear you used".

New thread?

Steve, I still have mine: MZ-N1 and an ECM MS957. Rawkin'!

I knew even less than now but had so much fun being able to take home a sound copy of the evening. It was marvelous. And today, some ten years later, bringing home a sound copy of the evening is still a thrill. The sound has gotten better but the thrill is the same.

Maybe a bit late but what made me do it was just the honest vibe.
There's only SO much room for fixes later on, since we're not usually recording individual instruments. Legit recording studios are beautiful, do not get me wrong, but GOD DAMN I LOVE THE SUN! I hate the fact that there are usually NEVER any windows in studios. Nice furniture, awesome gear, blah blah blah but I always come out with my head in a weird haze!

Plus... the pack & go'ness of it all. Just make sure your gear is in check and in working order and you're pretty much good to go... unless you have to fight for parking. I usually carry a grenade launcher for that.

I was bit by the bug in high school. I witnessed an attempt to run FOH sound for a fundraiser night in the school gym, and after seeing the pain and hearing some of the pain, I wanted to learn so I could do better. After a few run ins with both the AV club and the drama program over the rest of high school, I came out slighty ahead, but still thought there was more I could learn.

A couple months after graduation, I took some cash from a college fund and bought some tools for my 'education'. I emerged with a rode NT5 pair a presonus firepod, and cubase 4 and got to work. For the first few years, I've mostly done stuff with the old high school, small area choirs and ensembles. Some of the fun I've had is running FOH and recording at the same time! Lets just say some of those recordings will always be 'learning experiences'.

Now, my passion still lives with live recording, but has also expanded into video/film and photography too! I also managed a few decent recordings too! (samples later, once I make a demo reel) I've also since gone back to the old high school and for 3 years running have been their FOH guy for the fundraiser night, and every year I'm told it sounds great.


Steve, I would come to NY just to spend a week vacation just to ask questions and/or hump gear for you. I'm young, still wanting to learn, and relatively fit!thumbsupheh

There is no soul in there when they sing and play for studio walls.

I've been packing gear up, loading it into vehicles and going off to do gigs since I was 12 years old. Gigging bands, then location film/video work of all kinds, then location sound for same, which expanded into location multitrack for same, often with music. I have a small audio post business too, and some years it keeps me out of the field more often than not. But the old location recording thing is in the blood, can't shake it--get too easily bored if I do studio work all the time. I didn't turn out to have much talent as a musician, but like a lot of recordists and engineers I like being part of the making of music, and this work is how I ended up having a place, however small, in that world. (34+ years now.)

Philip Perkins

Back in the late 1970's I hung around friends who had sibs in various bands, and I had always had an interest in music and sound, as well as electronics. So after 'helping out' with a few of these entities (I became known as the geek who loved gear) I started to do some free-lance sound reinforcement; this sometimes led to the band requesting a tape copy of the show (usually this was a mono or stereo send to a Revox B-77 at 7 1/2 ips).

I still had not decided whether or not to purse my BSEE, so at the time, I decided just to focus on sound and electronics rather than committing to university (that came years later). I took some classes in recordiong technology / broadcast production at a local community college, and part of the classwork was field recording. Right away I thought how interesting it was to have to assess and adapt to each location and try to get the best sound from the mix - it was never a dull moment.

After that I continued to do some free-lance mixing (live sound) which led to more recording gigs - always live. After some changes in my life (marriage, moving out East, enrolling in the BSEE program at university) I kind of put that stuff back on the shelf, but after getting my degree, I ended up working in the field of NVH as well as sound quality and perceptual audio...and at that point, I decided to pick up the remote recording once more.

At that point I started shopping for used microphones, electronics etc...and pretty much never looked back.

I really enjoy remote recording because every single gig is a challenge, and affords mic placement / mixing options that are often rather unusal; there's a very real blend of the mathematical side as well as the creative side, and I love that blend.

Actually my first ever recording gig for money was a remote gig. I was about 80% done with building my first studio in Berkeley and as way of promoting its opening offered to record a local band for free during a live gig at Ashkenaz. We hadn't yet installed the desk or recorders so we just hauled them into a back stage room and wired em up on the spot. Captured 90 minutes of great music. A real baptism under fire as I was so green that I had maybe 2 demo projects under my belt.

Then we un-wired everything, hauled it back to the new studio and installed and wired everything up for real and mixed it the following week.

10 years and thousands of projects later I started doing it for real for bands I'd already engineered multiple projects with and ended up being hired to do the remote as I best knew what they were going for and best knew how to translate it. I'm still primarily a studio guy, but I have no fear and love recording the live stuff -- love the sound of musician's sweating it out on a stage.

Cool story watadoo!

My buddy in film school wasn't pleased with the sound he was getting from his built in mic, so I brought a SM57 and a broom stick to his film shoot. The rest is history.

I didn't choose it, it chose me.
As a young engineer, I was starving for source content just to play with on that video game we call DAW. I had to go where the music was...
I was already a live engineer, so I just got a few pieces to start capturing it, and next thing you know I'm getting emails asking me to do someone else's show. Once I decided to make it my business, more effort has been put into reliability, quality, sales, ect.