How to record without separate rooms

[socalmicskills]

Ok, so you have a recording device, a few microphones and only one room to record in. Huh? Well, recording is an art and no one can tell you how to do it, especially with your particular budget and/or gear. There is a trick that will help you though. One way to accomplish this full recording in this situation is to:
1. Record a live recording with mics on the complete band. (be sure to start with a metronome or someone counting off so that later you know exactly where the song begins.
2. After you have verified that each peace is clean enough to hear clearly, and that the rough recording has no timing issues, than you can begin recording over the original recordings instrument by instrument. Or, if you have enough tracks on the device you can record on all new channels. We usually start with the drums and move on to bass, guitar, then vocals last. Any overdubs should be done while you are working with each instrument respectively so that you know all of the levels come out correctly.
3. Delete or mute the original rough tracks. You should do your best not to use any of the original rough tracks in the final recording to ensure that you have no bleed-over from the other instruments.

Of coarse this is much more time consuming and tedious than the high dollar studio recording but you can definitely get a clean recording following this process. Here is my latest recording of our intro/instrumental, it was all recorded in my garage without any soundproofing or booths.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=diBJFekGgtg

Good Luck,
Pete, vocalist, G String Stranglers

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[BRC]

Excellent. That's definitely the way to go if you are recording without separation booths.

Sometimes you can line-out of your amps into separate channels and you can use those tracks as there won't be any bleed on those, while the whole band plays the song. Then build your other tracks on that. It depends on weather you feel you are loosing "the sound" by not mikeing your cab. That way you will preserve the band energy (interaction) on the song, and still get clean tracks to record the drums and vocs. You can still edit your original tracks in post if you need to.

Checked out your song. Aptly named. Nice.

[pianoman]

cool song, Pete. thanks for the link