Hi SOS community....
Basically I'm in a band and we have some studio time booked in the next few weeks. It's all very budget and to be honest, it's for our first batch of demos.
we want to hear oursleves recorded first so that we have something as a reference point when we're fine tuning the arrangements etc.

i'm hoping to record our band in 1 live take using the limited equiptment we have.

The drums will be mic'd up using 2 overheads, one snare and one kick. these microphones will go in channels 1-4 on my alesis multimix 8.
Everything else (vox, guitars, bass) will be mc'd into the PA system then i'll go out of the PA into channels 5/6 on my alesis. Everything will then be recorded as a stereo mix wia usb from the alesis to my laptop (using reaper)

I figure that if I get the eq and panning right first, that should give a reasonable representation of how we sound. Am I missing something?

One thing I've thought about is that everything coming through the pa speakers will feed into the drum mics. there's not much room for manoeuvre in our space and the pa speakers are just behind and to the sides of the drums so the mic drums are sure to be blasted by them.

Would micing the guitars into the alesis and the drums and vox into the pa help?
how about unplugging the speakers of the pa? but then we wont all hear the vocal.

Once we have the live takes, I'm going to use them as guides and get the drummer re-recorded her own, maybe with some extra mics so then, at least we have a stereo drum track and the option to over dub everything else....

There are so many questions that I have but no answers as I've never tried this!!

If anyone has any kind words of wisdom then I'd be most grateful.

Many thanks,
Chris.

ps. the equiptment we have is as follows..
1x Laptop
1x8 channel usb mixer
1x mountain of cables (XLRs, J-J, phono-jack etc)

not quite enough stands but plenty of tape and will to improvise.

9x microphones. 2 regular dynamic mics, 2 small diaphragm condensers and 5 dynamic drum mics.(i plan to use condensers as drum oh's)

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www.soundcloud.com/cats-on-the-beach

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