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Watch: Md20 Recording


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Last fall, thanks to some generous benefactors, my church purchased a dream stage system: MD20, 2xL2T and 2xL2M, 4 AKG wireless vocal mics, Lewitt overhead and bass drum mics, and a pair of Rode mics for our Yamaha grand.  We've used it monthly when our 5-7 piece band (drums, guitar, bass, piano, cello, backup vocals) plays a special service, performing covers and original music.  
 
I'm sharing a video of an original song that was recorded to SD card on the MD20, and mixed just using Garageband, then mastered with Ozone 5.  I think it's a pretty good representation of what can be done with the MD20's discreet recording. 
 
Let me know what you think! 

 

http://youtu.be/15F4vZa1AKM

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Very nice track, karmicfreak. I love all the rhythm changes and how wonderfully orchestrated it was. Congratulations on such a great live take.

 

I would very much like to hear about your experience with the tracking process. Did you use any processing on any of the instruments from the M20D?  Did you provide monitor mixes for any of the musicians during tracking? Did you manually set the gain for each channel or did you use the "Auto Trim" feature?

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Thanks!  I have the pleasure of working with some great musicians in that band.  FYI, you're seeing the second time we played it.  Ever.  I'm the man at the mic, and the lead guitarist and I wrote the piece.  I notated it in Finale and let the musicians take over.  We call ourselves the "8:14 Band" because the first service begins at 8:15, and that's about when we all first look at the music :)

 

As far as the setup, I chose the MD20 for its ability to not only deliver great sound, but be able to save the scene and re-create it each time we set up with a minimum of tweaking.  I did auto-trim each instrument, although I realized I didn't do that for the second guitar until after the first service this Sunday - he usually plays bass, and it was the first time we'd added his instrument. 

 

We use 2 L2Ts as mains, and 2 L2M's as monitors.  There's one in front of me and one in front of the pianist.  We decided on the L2T's so we can use them as stand-alone sound systems when we do small outdoor services. 

 

In the first service, I found my lead vocal seemed way too loud - we do have in-house mixing from an iPad as we play, but the live sound seemed to be bouncing back to me so loudly, I turned it down between services, and ended up starting that song with almost no monitor feedback for my lead vocal - hence the slightly overdriven sound of the vocal.  I did have to compress that in mix down to compensate, and it's not too bad, but I wish I had trusted and not over sung to compensate. 

 

The workflow from the live performance to mixing the mastered track to final video was super simple: 

 

1. Press "record" just before we begin playing.  Stop when done. 

2. Later, with SD card in my mac, each instrument appeared as a separate file.  I dragged the files into an open Garageband new song.

3. All instruments appeared as separate audio tracks.  I mixed, tweaked, and played until I was happy. 

4. After exporting the stereo mix, I mastered in a new Garageband song using Ozone. 

5. Using Final Cut Pro, I mixed the HD camera video, my iPhone on my music stand video, and the mastered track. 

 

Dave

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Cute - "Shinyheadmusic.com" - I wonder where THAT came from?!? 

 

VERY nice video - I'm the Sr. Pastor, lead guitarist, singer and sound tech at my church... LOTS of fun every Sunday - so I could relate to what you're trying to do there. It sounded great!  As a guitarist (Martin HD-35, Taylor NS-25, JTV-69), I appreciate the sound quality!
 

What are you using for video shooting? It looks like you're bouncing between a couple of cameras? I'm right in the middle of a video install at my church - HD projector, larger screen, touch screen video mixer with the ability to live video podcast (Roland VR50-HD, and cameras. We are looking at adding a couple of Sony HD PZT cameras - a little pricey, but then I won't need to have them manned during the service.

 

Thanks!

 

Larry

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LDB - the video is from 2 sources, a tripod HD Canon Vixia HF300 up in the choir loft, and my iPhone on my music stand.  Next time around, I'm going to have the band all use their smartphones to record themselves so we can focus on each of them as they play.  Final Cut Pro X makes it super simple to import multiple sources, where it uses the audio to sync them, no matter if they start at different times or stop and start, and then click to make rough cuts, finally dragging cut edges to make fine cuts between cameras.  Then, I can use the audio from multiple sources or only one (like I did in this video). 

 

If I designed a video recording install in my church, I'd look at capturing all the angles to SD cards, then doing my mix after the fact in FCPX.  Get your angles covered, and if you need another one added, a tripod camera can fill what you need for that service. 

 

Dave

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Thanks for that, Dave - wouldn't have believed video from an iPhone... pretty cool!

 

We're looking at doing a couple of things with video.. first, being able to use the video switcher to record an entire service from multiple sources (at least 2 cameras, a pc for song words, and maybe video clips), and routing audio from the main board (in our case a Presonus 24.4.2) to be the audio for the video. The cameras would be switchable from the desk and able to be remotely panned, zoomed and focused, mostly by presets (hit 1 and it captures the preacher, 2 and it gets the choir, and so on), and all the audio and video would be merged into a file that could be then edited and streamed to YouTube or wherever.

 

These PTZ cameras aren't cheap - at least $2k per camera. I had hoped that something like a GoPro would work, but they aren't really set up to be remotely controlled or send their output somewhere else - you basically take the card and edit the file. I'm trying to get out of that business as much as possible.

 

I've had to video a few services using multiple cameras (I have a Canon XA-10 and Canon XF300, and sometimes use my Panasonic GH-3), and it's a bit of a pain to line up the footage manually in Premiere Pro (what I use). There are add-ins that can sync the files based on the audio, but I don't have one... yet...

 

Thanks for the behind the scenes! Great Job!
 

Larry

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