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anonymous 14 August 2003

I am hoping that someone will be able to help me (and my band) out with this situation. This may be slightly long winded: but I want to setup the scenario as best as I can... and I'm new, so please keep that in mind :)
Here's the deal:
We recorded a session (10 songs) live off the floor using 2 condenser mics placed right and left in the room. one dynamic mic in the middle and one around the snare/hithat. We lined all of those mics through a decent PA mixer and into one track on a Roland 840 (the 100MB zip disk model 8track). I assume this wasn't the best method, but without getting into detail, we were limited with cables and we are now left with 1 track, with all instruments in it, sounding pretty muddy and ugly,

This is what were attempting to do;
I have a mac with the free version of Pro Tools (figured 8 tracks would be enough). We recorded into PTools from the Roland 8 track creating 4 tracks (one for drums, one for bass and 2 separate guitars...( vocals will be added later..our drumemr is our singer, anyways..) Our goal is to TRY to separte the sounds so that the 4 tracks in Ptools represent each instrument. But since every instrument is present in each track (ie: when EQ'ing the guitar track, the snare is still very present), its been a nightmare... I'm trying to EQ it acccordly to pick out the frequencies associated with instrument.

I was hoping that someone could give me some advice on what I should do... compression? effects? specific EQ tips? anything? I would greatly appreciate it... if it would help if I gave more specifics, I will.

Thanks.
bazzer.

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Comments

AudioGaff Thu, 08/14/2003 - 14:27

Dude, That recording is hosed! Chalk it up as a lesson learned.

Here is what you can do and the best you can hope for. Use that one recorded track on the Roland and feed it to the others via headphones and either re-record your parts one by one on the other tracks, or as a band playing at the same time. To do this all at the same time, you'll need all the things that prevented you from doing it corectly to start with.

AudioGaff Fri, 08/15/2003 - 17:52

This would be a good project for you or someone else to use as practice for mastering/sweeting skills. While this is more of the polish a turd type thing and can't be salvaged for pro results, there is still a lot that can be done using tools of the trade in software and/or hardware. I do these all the time as favors for friends or for real cheap just for the challange of my tools and skills. In fact I've gotten many clients from them hearing the before and after of some of these type of turds.

anonymous Fri, 08/15/2003 - 20:33

I have to agree with the experts. I do not believe that what you hope to do can be done. I might be misreading you're post but your're saying you want to "pull out" tracks of separate instruments from 3 tracks that were done like room mics and one track of a snare mic. Think of it as pouring for different types of wine into a barrel, (play your instruments into a room where the mics pick them up), you can not now retreive the original wines: you have a blend.

You might be able to salvage the recording. Some of your problems may stem from the mics being out of phase with each other. Listen to each individual track and judge it on it's own merits. Some of the tracks might be completely useless. The key is to change your goal to simple get a usable recording if you can (you may not be able to, but you'll get a lot closer to "getting a useable recording" than separating the instruments).

I've done audition tapes for bands I've been in where one of the mics in a the stereo pair I set up in a room didn't work and I had to go mono with one room mic. Most audition tapes I made have been made using a pair of mics in a rehearsal room. I like that kind of recording a lot.

But you could try the same exercise with a new goal, get a good recording of the room sound. Depending on what equipment you have, you might be able to set up a nice stereo pair into preamps then into your Roland 840.

Definately next time record a bit and check the results and adjust the mic placement and if your using like two cardiod mics in a coincident pair x-y set up, tweak the angle to meet your needs.

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