Hey, folks. So my mother and I are planning to perform a vocal duet in the style of those Trad. Pop/Big Band vocalists from the 40's and 50's at our church's upcoming Christmas party. I wrote out an actual big band chart for two trumpets (plus an 8va), three trombones, and three altos, plus a virtual bari and rhythm section. But allow me to cut to it:
 
She and I will be doing EVERYTHING. She's playing alto, and I'm playing trumpet, trombone, all rhythm sec., and production.
 
I simply want all of the tips you guys can give, in one shot. Especially about mixing, recording, etc.
Thanks a lot!!

Real instruments! good on you, MIDI brass is not my favorite of what midi can do. 
 
My approach for a project like that to speed things up is to look on line for a free midi download of the songs.
 
Type into Google " Song name midi"   You might strike out on some, but a some can be well done. I look for good drums first. If the drums suck I move on. Some freebies are pretty sad affairs. Some are not even quantizied and contain huge mistakes. But midi downloads super fast and you can pre view them with MS wave table GM in Win Amp or Media Player. 
 
If your lucky you'll  have a good foundation to build a mosnter backing track. Just add your own parts and delete the rest as you go. I mostly use them to anchor the arrangement. When I'm done there might not be anything even left of the original. I will only keep well played parts. 
 
Midi is so easy to cut and paste, change key and tempo so makes a great start for a song if you use it correctly. Most popular songs have been done and there are many hobbyist who share. 
 
 http://www.dongrays.com/midi/archive/jazz/bigband/
 
 

If I get you right, you're recording a backing track that you can then sing to later with your Mom and you want it to sound like you're singing with a live Big Band (rather than to a backing track)
 
My advice would be to treat the whole process in your studio as if you were micing up a stage, the only difference being you're pressing record rather than sending out to a PA.
 
Close mic ALL the instruments, preferably with dynamics not capacitors. You want them as dry as you can get, there'll be plenty of room reverb to worry about when your playing back at the party.
 
Assuming you're going to be using a "standard" PA setup with speakers either side of a stage area, group similar instruments, then push them hard(ish) left/right,  maybe upto 75% pan, to create space on the stage for your vocals.  A real Big Band is physically a big thing with instruments grouped.  Copy it.
 
DON'T go overboard with effects, use limiters to catch peaks and nothing else. Record quieter than you're used to because brass has a very big dynamic range and can get very loud, very easily. To fake a live performance you want to keep that dynamic range, not tame it.
 
Be very sparing with eq.  It's easy in your studio to listen back, not like what you hear and spend hours sweetening things up to make it sound "nice".  Except it won't sound like that when played back through a PA in a large room/hall.
Spend time on your mic position and recording levels, keeping the mics close, to get a good clean recording and you shouldn't need to EQ very much.  Your aim here is to replicate from the PA the raw sound of each instrument as if it were on the stage with you.
 
Mixing...
Are you running playback from 2 track or from a portable DAW?  
If you're mixing down to stereo you're going to have to guess at the instrument balance.  This is the easiest on the day, you just plug your iPhone with the backing track into the PA. It is the hardest to produce because you're not mixing in the space it will be heard.  Different instruments will (or won't) resonate in the performance room and you'll have to adjust for that, but you'll not know until you get there and listen,  so you'll have to guess at it and go for a middle-of-the-road compromise mix.
The best option, if you can, would be to take Sonar on a laptop so you can balance the instruments in situ.  You can then treat it like a real live event and you're doing FOH.  A stereo feed from your laptops built in sound card straight to the PA is plenty good enough in this situation.  Remember to turn off system sounds 
 
 
Or, you could record and mix just like you would any other song and take that to sing to,  but it WILL sound like karaoke !!
 

johnnyV
Real instruments! good on you, MIDI brass is not my favorite of what midi can do. 
My approach for a project like that to speed things up is to look on line for a free midi download of the songs.

Yeah! I'm really excited to get to the recording days! I just do wish I did that... I started from complete scratch, which definitely wasn't the wisest decision... but haha, the arrangement is done now. Great tips, wish I thought about that before I started writing.
 

Karyn
My advice would be to treat the whole process in your studio as if you were micing up a stage, the only difference being you're pressing record rather than sending out to a PA.
Close mic ALL the instruments, preferably with dynamics not capacitors. You want them as dry as you can get, there'll be plenty of room reverb to worry about when your playing back at the party.
A real Big Band is physically a big thing with instruments grouped.  Copy it.
Be very sparing with eq. 
Spend time on your mic position and recording levels, keeping the mics close, to get a good clean recording and you shouldn't need to EQ very much.  Your aim here is to replicate from the PA the raw sound of each instrument as if it were on the stage with you.
 
Are you running playback from 2 track or from a portable DAW?  
If you're mixing down to stereo you're going to have to guess at the instrument balance. 
Or, you could record and mix just like you would any other song and take that to sing to,  but it WILL sound like karaoke !!

 
I love these back-end tricks! I didn't even think about the fact that a LIVE band, besides the real room, wouldn't have added reverb (unless it were an outboard effect), so I'm certainly going to keep this stuff dry.
 
I'll definitely get a close-mixing situation, I'm sure that will assist with keeping the individual detail of instruments, plus I'll have some assurance that I can really place them exactly where they sound best.
 
As far as the no-EQ'ing, I'm wondering which voices are generally going to be up? Should it be more bottom-heavy in general? Or should the top-end dominate? I would definitely love to hear a studio-recorded, completely dry big band for reference, because I realized I was referencing with a track that HAS lots of reverb and stuff, so it wouldn't fit my needs as a ref.
 
I'm about 90% sure I'm going to be dropping it in two-track stereo. I think I'll create a small number of mixes to test out in the room- probably one with more first parts, one with inners, one heavy on the bottom.. and some composite version with more rhythm section.
 
I started recording demos today, and it sounds awesome! I haven't been able to get my mom on sax yet, so I'll be using some dummy MIDI tracks until then, but the brass stuff is sounding pretty awesome! I guess it's going to be difficult to REALLY tell until I get to the performance though. Thanks a lot!!

Here's another production tip that may not have occurred to you..
 
Brass instruments are LOUD, a full band is VERY LOUD, (not in comparison to Metalica, but way louder than acoustic guitar or piano for example).  It seems obvious when spelled out, but when recording you must play quieter during the parts where you'll be singing.  You can't just pull down the faders during the mix to quieten it, that would sound like someone is playing with the PA volume.
If you listen to some of the old big band recordings done before modern technology you'll see exactly what I mean.  During vocal parts, a good half of the band will stop playing so the singer(s) can be heard, and the rest will be playing quietly.  This is often punctuated by bursts of maximum volume "stabs" or 4 bar refrains between verses/choruses.
 
The same goes for solo instruments. As loud as a trumpet may sound when played in your kitchen it is no match for a full rank of assorted Saxs playing at full blast.

Don't cloes mic at the bells, come further up the instruments on saxes, so the mic faces the front of the instrument. Play high to low to find a position that balances this range nicely.

Thus, I've reached my dilemma- today, we recorded saxes, andI can get a decent micro-balance in sections. But I'm having trouble with overall section balancing.
Basically, I went in to record my final trombone tracks, and see, there's a shout chorus in this song where the entire band is playing the same rhythms in chords. It's VERY loud, and I had to turn my input down quite a bit on the interface to account for that.... but now the dynamic range is too extreme for it to really sound the proper volume next to the saxes, which obviously can't get anywhere near as loud as a trombone, and so didn't need low input levels. 
 
How do I solve this? Play quieter? Record at multiple volumes? Compression??

If you mean the trombones are drowning a solo or melody line by the saxes, then that's where the trombones need to play quieter.  If it's just a case of the whole band is playing and you can't hear the saxes because the trombones are (naturally) too loud,  then that's the nature of Big Bands and the reason you have a 4:1 ratio between Saxes and trombones.  It's not a problem, it's the nature of the beast.
 
Listen to Glen Miller, Count Basie, Syd Lawrence and you'll hear how the balance changes as volume increases. The horns take over almost entirely in the loud sections leaving the woodwind providing the harmony, where they're easier to hear.
 
Be careful that you don't artificially boost the saxes to much to hear them. A little balance here and there is ok, but if you overdo it, it will start to sound false because a sax simply isn't as loud as a trombone.
 
 
Something else to consider,  it's only US that will notice most of this during your performance, 98% of your party audience wouldn't know the difference between an alto or tenor sax.  They're certainly not going to turn into music critics just because the trombones were a touch too loud during the chorus

Well, I think you and your mother will drive yourselves crazy trying to do what you are trying to do. Come back down to Planet Earth. Planet Earth to davdud101 and mother. Borrow a good synth if you do not have one, and one that will sound excellent in the first place. (perhaps you need to try out a synth from the local music store and need it for a week. Before going to a local music store, practice the parts on the synth you have.)
 
Next record the parts from the synth that uses way better players and sample software than probably both of you can actually play. (maybe not but then again, it is professional sounds on a synth done that way in the first place).
 
Combine the parts (changing the effects out of the synth recording it (and having some reverb and other things may just help add to the effects of the room, but never over-do it, always less but not dead effects).
 
No one that I know of in the world does this kind of music and stuff without having professional people around, professional rooms to do it in, and in the end - sound stages set up by professional people. It is all fine and well to think that way, but really in reality it is a lot harder to achieve without years of experience and practice. Come back down to Planet Earth and do what will make it sound as good as it can be.
 
If you think a lot of people will know the difference between real instruments and a synth, then I think I would have to disagree with that. If you have real instruments, then they may decide that your egos are so big, that you could not find the other people who can play the real instruments and did not have a room or sound stage to record it on in the first place, and well, it came out like it did, an attempt to sound professional but could not be done or the people could not get together and show up in the church in the first place (??). Nothing wrong with not being able to afford it in the first place, but with a synth and a decent attempt that what you did, still was done by both of you, it did not sound bad, and was not an attempt to feed your egos about what actually could be done and was done in the end when it came to perform it.
 
Yes, other people have gone through the same things, and still perhaps some people will try it. Fine, if you attempt this all with real instruments and playing the real parts of the music, make sure you can do it all in the first place, or just get back to reality and do what will not sound bad, playing the parts on a synth and making sure it comes out correct in the first place. Unless doing a solo adding to a synth, the synth wil probably be smoother overall for the music and good luck trying to balance all the real instruments out to sound good as a mix in the end. That is a lot of work, and you and your mother may not really have the time to actually finish it before the Big Event. To me, get the real people, get the real sound stage (or church), get the time and get it together before when the Big Event comes, or really think of what can really be done, and solve what you both are doing by really thinking about how it will turn out, not dreaming how it should turn out, because a lot of times, it may not turn out in the end, and all that time will end up with nothing but cancelling out of it, because it could not be done.
 
Just an opinion, not a reference about anyone and what they can achieve. Make sure you both can achieve it.
And there is a volume pedal on a synth like an organ in a church and well, playing the part better may be all that has to be done, even if it does not sound real to either of you and you wish it was real instruments.
 
Well, good luck with it.
 

spacealf, I'm not sure if you've misinterpreted me... The performances are excellent, everything sounds great individually, and sections sound great together. It's really coming together quite well.
Mine is a MIXING problem- not real life dynamics, but rather the fact that I'm having trouble matching them properly in the DAW with my present mic input setting. 
I'm just gonna keep messing with it to see what works best.
 
I mean, you're probably somewhat right, but I don't have money/resources to go and buy a synth of that caliber- plus, part of this is the idea that it IS live music and NOT recorded stuff. It's about false reality, a sort of stage production.