Recording your bands practice

[Nubus]

Do you guys record your own bands practices? I recently started doing this again, and it is fun to listen back right after you've played, but now I have a big old hole I'm digging in my hard drive. I don't have a DVD burner, so what should I do with all this crap? Erase it? Burn a bounce of it to a bunch of CDs? And if the band starts to get into the habit of having it, aren't they going to keep wanting it all recorded? Maybe I should charge!

[smopo24]

my personal pratice soloution: shoebox full of cassettes. i never go in there, and i always have them stored in my room. if it was of any value, i would find a fireproof safe and store them in my closet.

[Bellringer]

Originally Posted by smopo24

my personal pratice soloution: shoebox full of cassettes. i never go in there, and i always have them stored in my room. if it was of any value, i would find a fireproof safe and store them in my closet.

I agree. Unless something special happens at the practice that everyone wants to keep working on dump it to a cassette and wipe that drive. I have an old 4 track recorder for practices and I have a couple hundred tapes that I've never listened to. Maybe that's obsessive. It's not like I'm gonna run out of ideas.

[Whoopysnorp]

I bought a couple of old DCC decks on eBay and use those to record our practices. I have everything miked and going into a 2-track mix. The only trouble with that is you can't buy DCC tapes anymore, and I have to just reuse the ones that came with the first deck I bought over and over until they become useless. Hopefully those things have a long life.

DCC is a weird format--came out around the same time as MiniDisc and was basically a digital version of the good ol' cassette tape. MiniDisc won out, obviously, but initially the sound quality of DCC was quite a bit better. Of course, it's not a random-access medium, so you still have to deal with fast-forwarding and rewinding. I basically bought them because I was curious about the format and the decks are fairly cheap on eBay (being more or less useless these days and all). I justified my frivolous purchase by using them to record practices.

[Nubus]

Also, all the real magic seems to happen when we aren't recording.

[smopo24]

Originally Posted by Nubus

Also, all the real magic seems to happen when we aren't recording.

do you just freeze when the red light comes on? recording rehersals is a good way to get over that tense feeling because you aren't "on the clock" and don't feel the pressure as much to perform.

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by smopo24

do you just freeze when the red light comes on? recording rehersals is a good way to get over that tense feeling because you aren't "on the clock" and don't feel the pressure as much to perform.

I guess it just is the way that when you can't go back and listen, you only remember all the good stuff.

[lukedavo]

Yeah like the most wicked breakdown that nobody remembers once your finished playing the song. I had a band that was totally improve rock, we would just drink bottles of wine and play, I had the minidisc out, and the songs that were worth continuing we did so, man its hellarious listening back to those sat and sun morning drunkfests.

[Nubus]

That's kind of what I meant. It's hard for me to put it into words. How about, When we don't record we remeber ourselves as amazing. Too bad we weren't recording! Why can't we pull that off again?
But, the more you just practice, the less those little things start to matter. Whittle away the fat!

[smopo24]

Originally Posted by Nubus

That's kind of what I meant. It's hard for me to put it into words. How about, When we don't record we remeber ourselves as amazing. Too bad we weren't recording! Why can't we pull that off again?
But, the more you just practice, the less those little things start to matter. Whittle away the fat!

yea, i can't remember who said it but "edit yourself mercilessly." if only more musicians would do that; we wouldn't have a bunch of crap double (or even single) albums!