Recording Live Vocals

[guitarman13]

I'm not going to be doing this anytime soon, but I've always wondered how live vocals are recorded. Are they recorded directly, or are they recorded some other way? I don't understand how they could be recorded directly sometimes, because you can hear the reverb and it sounds like actual reverb created by the venue.

[rty13ibz98]

the reverb is the bleed from the other instruments. you should end up either taking all the channels to a multitrack so you can mix later(this is what i do) or just take a stereo mix from the house board and hope the guy behind the board is doing a halfway decent job.

rich

[Jamie]

On am extravagant live recording, the vocals will be recorded directly, and you'll also have house mics which record the band from a distance and pick up everything in the venue - crowd noise, reverb etc.

These are timeshifted back into place and mixed into the track. Dependent on extravagance, the vocals will be going through processors which will provide reverb and direct outs, and more may be added later to those direct tracks in mixdown.