Record entire band at once or do it by single tracks

Bands do it either way.

One thing is for sure if the band is great at live recording it will be smoking hot.

If the band isn't great it will be humiliating and divisive to the membership.

I've come to realize that either way everyone should know how to play to a click track.

Often times the "we gotta play it live" bands have too many members that can't play to a click... which ends up meaning they aren't good at over dubbing either.

Playing music for recording is a specific skill that requires experience.

A great studio with a really good engineer and producer can set you up for a good experience but there is always a balance between the desire for separation and the unfamiliarity of being separated.

You really just have to see how it works out.

I've worked with live in one room bands that had it totally together... 1 or 2 takes per song and you are finished.

I've also worked with bands where everyone or their amp was in a seperate room because overdubs were anticipated as necessary... often times in those instances I wish we had just started with a multi track process... drums, then bass, then harmonic content approach because if the band already knows it's not gonna make it through the song... having a bunch of tracks of that stuff doesn't make it better or easier.

In any event, all you can do is try... basically your band has to get some experience specific to how it works for your band. It's going to take a few tries.

I once played in a hippy jam band that could do *amazing things*... improvise... turn the song around on a dime... change up without even giving each other a nod... drop another song into the middle and come back to the first... it was smoking hot. Well, we never could record that... it just wasn't in the stars.

Good luck! Keep it fun!

best regards,
mike

Yeh, though I'm myself a one at a time guy, since I'm a one at time band, and you can do it eithe rway, I think that there's obviously going to be some sort of extra mojo that can come from people playing together.

What's often done in the pro world is that they use isolation so that they can record everyone playing together, or at least the basic tracks of the song, but only keep the really good bits from any given take since there's no leakage between them. So you can lay down drums, bass, guitars and keyboards, and vocals all together. Do it to a click track and you can do multiple takes and then pick the best performance from each of them for each player, as long as everyone is being pretty consistent.

Then you can do various other overdubs as required. And, even if you never get a good take from one of the folks, the other basic parts are there to go back and play to so that at least he's now overdubbing to an existing real performance.

Actually, a lot of times what they are really trying to do during that initial phase is get a really good isolated drum track, and if there's anything else that comes out magical, all the better and keep that as well.

It's already been said... either way is good. I've heard some pretty amazing sounding "one track at a time" songs..... full of energy and life and soul.

Learning to play that way in a studio is a learned art form.

Remember, all the singers you hear on CD have done it that way.... 99% of the time it's them, alone in the studio with one mic and the tracks are playing in headphones, and they are belting out the performance of a lifetime.

Playing live is of course many times a case of the sum being greater then the individual parts.

My last band did a lot of recording.  Our rhythm section was REALLY tight, so we'd record the drums and bass live (with a click), and sometimes the rhythm guitar track with it.  To keep the energy together, the bassist played in the drum room (in his socks to not get stomping shoes in the mics) with his amp isolated.
Vocals, keys, percussion, and other guitar tracks were overdubbed.

It was a good combination of live and track-by-track.  The drums/bass kept some energy in the foundation, while the rest had room to breath while recording the more prevalent parts.

When I said live recording, I didn't mean the vocals or leads.  Well, maybe leads, but seldom vocals.  I don't know too many studios with enough isolated rooms for that.  Most of the situations I've been involved with is getting the rhythm section down in one take (hopefully to a click track, tho some just can't do it).  Scratch vocal so everyone can keep track of where it is in the song.  Doubles, leads, vocals and whatever else overdubbed.  Most of the time that is how it is done unless you have a reason not to, like lack of rooms or scheduling.

Personally, for rock and other more "acoustic" oriented styles room bleed helps with the organic sound.  Pop, electronica etc. not so much.

@

Wow, lots of great information. I see most of you do things pretty much the same way. Thanks for all the input. I'm going to share this with my band.

i do full band first. But shooting for a great drum performance only. (with limited bleeding) then we go back and overlay each person individually. so all band members have a full band mix in their ears when they re-record their part.

Thats quite interesting Digi,

I always wondered how they could record drums Live ... without putting the groove meister in solitary confinement.

On the music channels I can usually tell they're faking everything (not just the drums) (99% of the time?)

IOWs, it seems that most artists and producers do it by layers (if they want to survive) ... and this is the current paradigm.

But polished band-performances (though not my cup of tea) are a special breed (1%?) ... and as everyone here states ... recording live gigs in-toto can be a spectacular event for some producers and audiences.

Just don't expect the 'painter's canvas' to prevent excess distortion, bleed, ambience, and/or other stuff.  Wave's software (32-bit haha) has plugins to help with the noise, hiss, etc. ... that will plague your live recordings.  (JMO)