Mixing Live Performances

Hello fellow friends of the recording & production world,

We have all been challenged with recording or mixing a live show. Mixing a live performance is nothing like doing work in the studio. I have done numerous of live recording sessions and let me say that there just as much work or can sometimes be more than one could bargain for. It is true that your live recording will only be one take with the songs but we must keep in mind that we have to make due with the tracks we have. Understanding when recording in the studio we may have many different takes and of course if something doesn’t work out then we can always re-record. Right?

Still, lets keep in mind that it’s a tuff world for all engineers when recording a live show. We often run into the following:

Which way do we face the amps, where do we position the microphones, which microphones do we use?

These are all very good questions to think about.

No doubt about it, knowledge is key when running into phasing issues or extra pink noise during these recordings but it’s important to understand the difference between live versus studio recording. One issue I run into a lot is trying to keep the amps at a volume that is easy to record and keep the audience satisfied with sound. For this I always aim the amps backwards from the audience to give me optimal sound. I use dynamic microphones and position between the cone and edge of speaker. I try to keep the drums with two overhead microphones and put a microphone on the kick and snares. I would use the SM27 for drum overheads. I like to use very simple microphones for live recording. The reason for this is because I had way too many of my expensive microphones destroyed during live shows. I really like the idea of using the SM7B microphone on live vocals when recording live inside a building or if outside I would prefer the SM58.

The main reason for using the above microphone placement is for the later use of editing within my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). I notice that the sonic sound is a little more mature, clear, and allows me much more possibility to warp or time shift as needed to line up the tracks to the grid. If this is your first time recording a live performance I would recommend finding a good book on live recording or sit in to observe a group or production company. Most of the time assisting another company will be no issue along as you seem interested and your ambition shines through. 

Here is another solution to a very simple live recording technique. Of course you would need to be very creative to pull this off but here is a youtube video of me actually using only one microphone from the Q2 ZOOM camera. I had to do some quick edits within Final Cut Pro X and I needed to master the audio a little bit but here is the idea:

So rock on and let me know if you have any further questions!

Thank you all very much, Joshua Knight