Some Technical Stuff

Believe it or not, I’ve actually had a quite a few folk over the last year ask about what gear I’ve used to record sessions with, what cameras, sound gear, mics, software blah blah blah.

I’m pretty geeky and love technical stuff, sure, but I don’t think I’d ever ask anyone that sort of question, I’d feel like I was somehow showing up my (fairly sizeable) ignorance.

So, in order to both answer some queries, and to give anyone thinking of doing this sort of nonsense themselves some answers, here’s some stuff I’ve used.

Cameras (for stills, not video)

I’m actually dead lucky on this one. This is the most expensive bit of gear I possess, a Canon 550d. It’s one of my favourite things, if only because it’s so clever it can actually negate the effects of me being both talentless and completely smashed. Seriously, I barely remember going to see half the bands I’ve got photos from at SXSW last time round, and tons of them are amazing. Given that at some of those shows, I genuinely couldn’t even stand up straight without leaning on something or someone, this is no mean feat. It’s really not cheap, but I couldn’t do anything good without it.

Camera (for video)

I now use the Canon for video too because it’s pretty amazing at that as well. But that was really a big bonus, we used to get by just fine with either a Kodak ZX1 or Zi6. Both are the size of mobile phones, which, to be fair, doesn’t scream ‘professional’ at anyone, even if we weren’t busy screwing up the shots or falling in rivers ourselves. However, since they (or their equivalents) now cost less than a hundred pounds and shoot in (at least) 720p HD, I can’t recommend them highly enough. Bit of a struggle in low light (‘low’ like ‘indoors’), but otherwise utterly fabulous.

Sound

For this and OTBT, I record everything onto a Zoom H4 digital field recorder. It’s a really groovy little palm-sized bit of kit that has a built in x-y configured set of mini-condensers mounted on the front, which seems to capture sound really very nicely. It’s also got two line-ins (XLR & phono) but I’ve not used them at all so far. Bit pricier this one, the other side of two hundred notes if I remember rightly, but a terrific bit of gear nonetheless – mine’s pretty old now, and the new ones are supposed to be better still.

Put all that little lot together, add in a lightweight tripod and some batteries and you’re good to go – plus it’ll all fit into a pretty small bag and weighs hardly anything, which is handy if you’re not really supposed to be filming a band at your location of choice.

Computer Hardware

I’ve got a three-year old Macbook that does the heavy lifting, an eight hundred quid refurb job that can just about still handle decent sized video files, and I’ve also got a teeny-tiny little netbook that can’t do video at all but comes with me to sessions so there’s somewhere to store stuff if we run out of memory. Nothing special really, so anyone who says you need specialist or uber-powerful gear is lying – it’s nice to have I’m sure, but you don’t need it. I also only use a Mac for the main machine because I’m a total fucking fashion-victim and gadget magpie, there’s no reason you can’t use a (probably cheaper) Windows machine, other than the fact it’s like buying elasticated trousers from ads in the back of the Sunday supplements.

Software

I had no knowledge – at all – of video editing before I started all this, which means that it can’t be that hard to pick up. We started off with just lashing stuff together in iMovie, but soon realised that was no good for anything involving two cameras, so we got ourselves an old copy of Final Cut instead. It’s a bit fiddly, takes a while to get the hang of (especially the very tedious business of making sure that the outputted file format of your raw video can be edited within Final Cut) but once you’ve got past the short but steep learning curve, the basics (ie what I do) are pretty straightforward. Still takes me the best part of six hours to edit down a single song on two cameras though. I don’t like editing, not even a little bit… which is probably why we don’t touch the audio at all, what you hear is what we got, for good or ill.

I’ve also started mucking about with photos for this site, and since I’ve no real experience doing that either, I’ve been learning a bit as I go, and am tending to use anything I can get my hands on, from the basic effects in iPhoto (which are really easy) to some more complicated editing in Photoshop, to doing stuff on some free apps on the iPhone (some of which actually look really cool). There’s no real rhyme or reason to this though, nothing particular anyway.

Website

The site itself is a vanilla installation of WordPress 3, with only a couple of plugins to let me use individual designs for individual posts (not as tricky as you’d think, makes you wonder why more people don’t do it, to be honest), muck about a bit with placements of pictures and so on. Nothing really that clever. The design template itself I built from scratch with my rudimentary HTML, PHP and CSS. Any proper web designers or developers out there, I’ll just apologise now for the no-doubt many coding horrors that lurk beneath the hood.

And that’s it. Hope that helps someone else out there, and points out just how ridiculously easy (and relatively cheaply) it is to set yourself up to do all this live music session stuff.