Live Recording

Capture the essence of your performance

Podcasting The Nelson Readers & Writers Festival

Live Record Any Performance

Capturing your live performance turns a one-off show into a treasured keepsake or valuable product for ongoing use.

Whether you prefer to create physical merch or free online content, live recordings are a fantastic way to provide your fanbase with a product that authentically reflects the experience of your live performance - This also makes it an excellent marketing, promotional and festival submission tools.

We regularly record shows for our artists, most of which go on to be published as live albums or EP's, podcasts, or combined with live footage as youtube content.

Creating a live recording is possible for all performance styles, not just live music.

Musical theatre, lectures or dramatic productions can all be recorded. Live recordings are particularly accessible when specified in conjunction with live sound engineering services.

We simply ensure the console used can communicate with recording software or can supply inputs to a portable recorder. Depending on the event, we may dot a few audience mics around the room, or run multiple mics in parallel on challenging instruments.

Even events that are not amplified can be live recorded.
It would be more correct to call it location recording - but we can do that too!

live recording, location recording

We're videoing, that will get the sound, right?

Yes, but probably not very well.

This is most definitely the case with any consumer or semi-pro camera set-up.

Even professional videographers (including ones who are incredibly good at what they do) tend to be visually oriented, while the sound quality often suffers by comparison (this coming from fussy-ears).

This may be ok for a dance recital or mime convention, but if sound quality is important to your product, I strongly recommend having it recorded professionally.

Once processed it can be supplied back to the videographers and put in sync with their beautiful images to create a stunningly seamless product.

live recording, location recording

Live Recording Approaches

Basic live recording

A basic 4-Track live recording consists of two stereo sources; the mixing desk outputs and a stereo microphone located in the room.

Capturing and blending together the direct and ambient signals creates an accurate representation of the performance.

This approach is easily integrated into almost any equipment configuration and requires the least amount of equipment and time (both in set-up and in post-production) - so it is the most economical option.

Once the recording has been captured however, levels of individual instruments or sources are unable to be altered.

Location recording equipment

Basic live recording

A basic 4-Track live recording consists of two stereo sources; the mixing desk outputs and a stereo microphone located in the room.

Capturing and blending together the direct and ambient signals creates an accurate representation of the performance.

This approach is easily integrated into almost any equipment configuration and requires the least amount of equipment and time (both in set-up and in post-production) - so it is the most economical option.

Once the recording has been captured however, levels of individual instruments or sources are unable to be altered.

Live multitrack recording of a 32 channel concert

Multitrack live recording

A multitrack live recording captures each of the onstage sources to its own channel and is an investment to generate quality content for your fanbase.

Every microphone or DI used for the live sound production is available as its own channel, able to be processed and balanced in isolation during the mixing process.

Live recording considerations

Additional care towards preparing for a live multi-track recording will improve the resulting recording.

Studio-grade microphones may be deployed alongside stage microphones for the sole purpose of the recording. Similarly, additional ambient studio microphones enhance the capture of the room acoustics or the energy of your audience.

In order to have control during the mix-down process, we want to isolate each sound as much as possible. Depending on the instruments involved we may investigate re-arranging your stage layout to avoid instruments bleeding into microphones intended for other sources.

Live Recording Examples

Jasper Hawkins Band - Man in The Arena
Recorded live at the Theatre Royal Nelson
Raw tracks supplied to the artists and mixed offsite

Bryce Wastney & Paul Ubana Jones - The Brightest Star
Recorded live in Old St Johns Church
Raw tracks supplied to the artist and mixed offsite.