Best way to record a demo?

[tremoloman]

Ok, I own a BOSS BR-1600 CD as shown:

We're trying to record a demo but don't exactly know what the hell we're doing yet. We've recorded ourselves live as a unit but it came out rough at best. Our thinking thus far has been to to use the live recording as a scratch track so we can play along with it and record our individual parts seperately. Does this seem like the best way to go?

How well do drum mics work vs. using a few scattered about the studio?

Since many of you already have experience in this field, I thought I'd ask the experts!

Take care,
Trem

 

[6STRINGS 9LIVES]

Trem , thats a good multi track unit , have not used it but friends have and it does a great job for demo purposes .
drum mics are a must for a good quality demo ,, shure 57's will work well for most of the kit ,toms, snare and cymbals .. the kick drum needs a specialized mic , check out sennheiser md 421, akg d12e, ev re20 , you may be able to rent these locally ..a good basic method to get it all down is to have the band play the tune , record the band in mono on one track and record the drums on 4 to 8 tracks depending on the size of the kit , next record the bass, the bass player can monitor the ghost track of the band in mono and a mix of the drum tracks while recording his track.. next do the guitars using the same process.. adding vocals last ..pretty basic muli tracking but it works .. that boss unit has 16 digital tracks plus virtual tracks so you should have plenty of room for lots of parts .. mics are the link to the recorder so if you want a good quality recording dont scrimp .. lots of places rent good quality mic kits .. 6S9L

 

[Katastrophe]

The last demo I recorded (quite a while ago), we went into a studio for the drum tracks. It was a small studio, at $20.00/hr. I think it cost somewhere around $140.00. We mixed the drums down to a master, then recorded over that on a little 6 track recorder. It worked great, for a lot less than finding the specialized mics needed for recording the drums. That, and the cost of the tape were our only major expenses.

 

[tremoloman]

There isn't a studio anywhere in Boston that you can get for only $20 an hour now. We've decided to take 6STRINGS 9LIVES's advice and get a drum mike set. He found a really good one for only $150, so we're gonna chip in and get it if all goes well.

 

[Robert]

Hey Trem, did you get anything recorded yet? We all want to hear!