What do you do if you want to record your session?
What do you do if you want to record your session?
I'm curious, what do you do if you want to record the tunes you heard at a session for the purpose of learning and improving, or you want to listen to your self playing with others critically?
I'm curious about all the gizmos, form the old cassette players, to mini disks. And any tricks or recommendations on miking? Thanks-George
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I'm not one to readily conform, and usually that means just being old fashioned. Therefore, I just stick to a standard tape recorder. The sessions I frequent are small enough or in large enough areas that I am usually right in the mix of things and can get a good recording. If not, I just get the name of the tune, the source, or write down a bar or two, and then go to my CD collection to find the tune. If I desperately want the tune and it's not on the CDs, I just ask a person to record it for me, and more often than not, they oblige. Nothing rocket sciene about my methods, but I've done pretty well IMHO.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I have recently gotten a sony-minidisc. When used with a good microphone, the quality is great. But recently there's been a few newcomers to the marked; a small hard-disc recorder. Try looking at one of the earlier discussion about such a thing. no more than a few weeks ago.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I do what Jason does, but only because I haven't, one, got the extra cash saved up for something nicer, and two, haven't made up my mind whether to go hard disc or mini disc or what.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I use a mini disc and it works great. It comes with all the gizmos you need. Since most people don't need a mic, many new minidiscs do not have this function. However you can sometimes find the older ones with the mic on ebay.
In a session, you should ask the session leader if you can record the tunes. Not only is this more polite than whipping out your pocket recording studio, it also gives the session leader the chance to tell you the tune's name and perhaps even play it once slowly for you to record.
Always announce the name of your tune on the tape or disc. So in 5 years from now you won't be going through old recordings wondering "that was lovely, I wonder what its called?" I didn't do this for the first couple years and now I am greatly regretting it. Some minis will let you digitally label the track. I have yet to learn this feature however I'm sure its useful.
The music is so loud that it really doesn't overly matter where you put your mic. Most people just put it on the table in the dryest spot, furthest from the shakey handed guinness guy and preferably out of the way of dripping flutes. I'm not kidding. I brought my mini to a flute workshop and put it on the floor, when I picked it up to use it it was damp from a girl beside me who I didn't see come in.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
Wow, thanks for the quick responses! Sounds like a trip down to the local circuit city is in order. I wonder if you can get mics beer-proofed to a depth of 50 meters?
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I've been recording our session, but because of the setup and the equipment I have for other purposes, what I do probably won't be helpful to most people.
There's an exposed beam with a depression on top on which lights are mounted, just above where we sit. There's a mic cable there that runs along the ceiling to a remote corner of the restaurant where the sound system for concerts is kept. On nights when I want to record, I plug one of my Audio Technica 3035 condenser microphones into the cable, put it in a shock mount, and balance it on the beam so it points toward the tables in the middle of the session. I bring my Mackie 1202 mixing board (the tavern's sound system phantom power supply is flakey) and plug it in near the other end of the cable, out of everybody's way. I feed the output of the mixer into my Sharp mini-disc recorder and record in mono (160 minutes per disc).
The mic is far enough away from people that the sound is pretty well blended by the time it gets there. If the customers are noisy or the ventilation system is going, of course the quality goes down. And I sometimes accidentally point the mic toward the ceiling instead of the table, or forget to set the MD to mono and miss 80 minutes or so. And it's tricky to set the recording levels and put track markers in, since I'm on the other side of the room.
I guess there's two reasons I go through this trouble rather than keeping the MD recorder near me. One is that the MD battery doesn't hold its charge well anymore and there's no outlet near where we sit. The other is to protect it from spills, which are fairly common.
It is about 4" long and 1 1/2" wide. It has several different quality settings and adjustments to the mic that enable it to filter out the political discussions going on in the backgound. Set it right down 'mongst the candles and glasses of beer. It will record anywhere from 45 minutes to four or five hours depending on the setting.
I can then go home, plug it into my PC via USB cable and play back, save to hard drive, delete, etc. It also has a built-in slower downer which is nice for a musically challenged individual such as myself. I runs on AAA that seem to have lasted quite a while.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
a couple of days ago a friend came for a visit and asked me to play some tunes for him on his little pocket cassette recorder so he can practice these tunes at home. later that evening we took that recorder to our local session and filled the cassette. on our way home we listened to the tape no more minidisc necessary (although the qualitiy is better but at the price of taking care like a sound engineer) ... the tape is much easier to handle and gives you all you need.
a different thing is when you want to make demo recordings - tape is too much LoFi
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I've used a stereo sony Walkman cassette recorder with built-in mikes. That's worked fine. Then I started using a minidisc recorder with an external mike. That was fine, too and you could also later edit it to index mark each tune and write its name. I'd allways record in stereo, cos you can follow everyone's playing (including your own) more clearly. Good luck!
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I have recorded various concerts/ sessions etc onto my minidisc. The playback quality is very good but once i burn it to cd the quality is crap. I have roxio easy cd creator and i am pulling my hair out with the settings, but the cd quality is still crap if the source is the minidisc.I think it's probably using the analogue output from the mindisc but I have a path worn out to the nearest sony centre who have informed me that their is nothing available to send a digital output from the minidisc to the pc. I suspect their has to be something available as anything has to be better quality than what i have at present. any ideas,
celtic1234
I have the cheapest, basic recorder/player (cost about $90) For session recording, you'll want to spend the extra $50 for the pre-amplified mic (which is much cheaper than Sony's)
The BIGGEST advantage to the Ripflash is that it has direct USP UPLOAD capability, so there's no losing quality by transferring via analog.
You can play the music back on the ripflash, on your computer or burn to a CD.
The various models have different memory capablities, but they take "smart memory" cards, so the hours you can record are unlimited.
In addition to being an mp3 player it will record from any analog source, meaning that you can use it to covert your old vinyl albums to digital
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
Hey, Celtic, you need to buy a bit of hardware for your computer that can transform an analogue signal into a digital one. Seems bizarre, I know, since mini-disk is digital anyway. I have a thing called a digi001 that takes inputs from 1/4 inch cables, mic cables, MIDI and RCA and feeds it into my recording program. My system is probably expensive and impractical for your purposes, but there may be something similar out there that is cheaper and does something similar.
Advice for George - I use a mini-disk recorder with a very small stereo mic and plop it in the middle of the table. I love it. It's perfect. When I listen back later it's like being in the circle again because of the stereo, and I can cut out the beer breaks and the tunes that flop. I can label the rest if I caught the names. I think I prefer this to an MP3 recorder because I end up with a stack of encapsulated 74 minute sessions labelled for where I was in the world, who I was playing with, and the date, instead of... well instead of whatever you get with an MP3 recorder. I like accumulating stuff.
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
After carrying around a rather large Sony cassette recorder (the same ones you see in schools. Almost indestructable) for years and putting up with barely recognizable tunes the wife gave me a radio shack digital sound recorder. Luckly it comes with a card because on high quality it's still pretty crappy. The Sony mini-discs sound better and some engineers in our group went to Radio Shack for mini microphones which they connected to a piece of plastic tubing so it looked like cow horns. Plug it into the minidisc and you have stereo.
What do you do if you want to record your session?
What do you do if you want to record your session?
I'm curious, what do you do if you want to record the tunes you heard at a session for the purpose of learning and improving, or you want to listen to your self playing with others critically?
I'm curious about all the gizmos, form the old cassette players, to mini disks. And any tricks or recommendations on miking? Thanks-George
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by rainog
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I'm not one to readily conform, and usually that means just being old fashioned. Therefore, I just stick to a standard tape recorder. The sessions I frequent are small enough or in large enough areas that I am usually right in the mix of things and can get a good recording. If not, I just get the name of the tune, the source, or write down a bar or two, and then go to my CD collection to find the tune. If I desperately want the tune and it's not on the CDs, I just ask a person to record it for me, and more often than not, they oblige. Nothing rocket sciene about my methods, but I've done pretty well IMHO.
Jason
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Jason G
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I have recently gotten a sony-minidisc. When used with a good microphone, the quality is great. But recently there's been a few newcomers to the marked; a small hard-disc recorder. Try looking at one of the earlier discussion about such a thing. no more than a few weeks ago.
Lars.
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Larshansen
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I do what Jason does, but only because I haven't, one, got the extra cash saved up for something nicer, and two, haven't made up my mind whether to go hard disc or mini disc or what.
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Zina Lee
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I use a mini disc and it works great. It comes with all the gizmos you need. Since most people don't need a mic, many new minidiscs do not have this function. However you can sometimes find the older ones with the mic on ebay.
In a session, you should ask the session leader if you can record the tunes. Not only is this more polite than whipping out your pocket recording studio, it also gives the session leader the chance to tell you the tune's name and perhaps even play it once slowly for you to record.
Always announce the name of your tune on the tape or disc. So in 5 years from now you won't be going through old recordings wondering "that was lovely, I wonder what its called?" I didn't do this for the first couple years and now I am greatly regretting it. Some minis will let you digitally label the track. I have yet to learn this feature however I'm sure its useful.
The music is so loud that it really doesn't overly matter where you put your mic. Most people just put it on the table in the dryest spot, furthest from the shakey handed guinness guy and preferably out of the way of dripping flutes. I'm not kidding. I brought my mini to a flute workshop and put it on the floor, when I picked it up to use it it was damp from a girl beside me who I didn't see come in.
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Maple
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
Wow, thanks for the quick responses! Sounds like a trip down to the local circuit city is in order. I wonder if you can get mics beer-proofed to a depth of 50 meters?
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by rainog
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I've been recording our session, but because of the setup and the equipment I have for other purposes, what I do probably won't be helpful to most people.
There's an exposed beam with a depression on top on which lights are mounted, just above where we sit. There's a mic cable there that runs along the ceiling to a remote corner of the restaurant where the sound system for concerts is kept. On nights when I want to record, I plug one of my Audio Technica 3035 condenser microphones into the cable, put it in a shock mount, and balance it on the beam so it points toward the tables in the middle of the session. I bring my Mackie 1202 mixing board (the tavern's sound system phantom power supply is flakey) and plug it in near the other end of the cable, out of everybody's way. I feed the output of the mixer into my Sharp mini-disc recorder and record in mono (160 minutes per disc).
The mic is far enough away from people that the sound is pretty well blended by the time it gets there. If the customers are noisy or the ventilation system is going, of course the quality goes down. And I sometimes accidentally point the mic toward the ceiling instead of the table, or forget to set the MD to mono and miss 80 minutes or so. And it's tricky to set the recording levels and put track markers in, since I'm on the other side of the room.
I guess there's two reasons I go through this trouble rather than keeping the MD recorder near me. One is that the MD battery doesn't hold its charge well anymore and there's no outlet near where we sit. The other is to protect it from spills, which are fairly common.
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by GaryAMartin
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I have used this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=48688&item=3093779501&rd=1
It is about 4" long and 1 1/2" wide. It has several different quality settings and adjustments to the mic that enable it to filter out the political discussions going on in the backgound. Set it right down 'mongst the candles and glasses of beer. It will record anywhere from 45 minutes to four or five hours depending on the setting.
I can then go home, plug it into my PC via USB cable and play back, save to hard drive, delete, etc. It also has a built-in slower downer which is nice for a musically challenged individual such as myself. I runs on AAA that seem to have lasted quite a while.
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Sean Logan
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
a couple of days ago a friend came for a visit and asked me to play some tunes for him on his little pocket cassette recorder so he can practice these tunes at home. later that evening we took that recorder to our local session and filled the cassette. on our way home we listened to the tape no more minidisc necessary (although the qualitiy is better but at the price of taking care like a sound engineer) ... the tape is much easier to handle and gives you all you need.
a different thing is when you want to make demo recordings - tape is too much LoFi
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by crannog
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I've used a stereo sony Walkman cassette recorder with built-in mikes. That's worked fine. Then I started using a minidisc recorder with an external mike. That was fine, too and you could also later edit it to index mark each tune and write its name. I'd allways record in stereo, cos you can follow everyone's playing (including your own) more clearly. Good luck!
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by greenman
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I have recorded various concerts/ sessions etc onto my minidisc. The playback quality is very good but once i burn it to cd the quality is crap. I have roxio easy cd creator and i am pulling my hair out with the settings, but the cd quality is still crap if the source is the minidisc.I think it's probably using the analogue output from the mindisc but I have a path worn out to the nearest sony centre who have informed me that their is nothing available to send a digital output from the minidisc to the pc. I suspect their has to be something available as anything has to be better quality than what i have at present. any ideas,
celtic1234
# Posted on April 29th 2004 by Celtic1234
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I use a "Rip Flash" mp3 recorder from Pogo http://www.pogoproducts.com/products_2.html
I have the cheapest, basic recorder/player (cost about $90) For session recording, you'll want to spend the extra $50 for the pre-amplified mic (which is much cheaper than Sony's)
The BIGGEST advantage to the Ripflash is that it has direct USP UPLOAD capability, so there's no losing quality by transferring via analog.
You can play the music back on the ripflash, on your computer or burn to a CD.
The various models have different memory capablities, but they take "smart memory" cards, so the hours you can record are unlimited.
In addition to being an mp3 player it will record from any analog source, meaning that you can use it to covert your old vinyl albums to digital
I LOVE this thing.
~L
# Posted on April 30th 2004 by Lisa Lawrence
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
Hey, Celtic, you need to buy a bit of hardware for your computer that can transform an analogue signal into a digital one. Seems bizarre, I know, since mini-disk is digital anyway. I have a thing called a digi001 that takes inputs from 1/4 inch cables, mic cables, MIDI and RCA and feeds it into my recording program. My system is probably expensive and impractical for your purposes, but there may be something similar out there that is cheaper and does something similar.
Advice for George - I use a mini-disk recorder with a very small stereo mic and plop it in the middle of the table. I love it. It's perfect. When I listen back later it's like being in the circle again because of the stereo, and I can cut out the beer breaks and the tunes that flop. I can label the rest if I caught the names. I think I prefer this to an MP3 recorder because I end up with a stack of encapsulated 74 minute sessions labelled for where I was in the world, who I was playing with, and the date, instead of... well instead of whatever you get with an MP3 recorder. I like accumulating stuff.
# Posted on April 30th 2004 by Kerri Brown
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
After carrying around a rather large Sony cassette recorder (the same ones you see in schools. Almost indestructable) for years and putting up with barely recognizable tunes the wife gave me a radio shack digital sound recorder. Luckly it comes with a card because on high quality it's still pretty crappy. The Sony mini-discs sound better and some engineers in our group went to Radio Shack for mini microphones which they connected to a piece of plastic tubing so it looked like cow horns. Plug it into the minidisc and you have stereo.
# Posted on May 1st 2004 by jrathbun
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
I love the cow horns, Jrathbun. Is that how they do those stereo recordings?
# Posted on May 2nd 2004 by greenman
Re: What do you do if you want to record your session?
Yup!
# Posted on April 24th 2006 by jrathbun