I am filming a gig for my friend's band in 3 weeks.

It is not supposed to be a special video - i place the camera in one place and press record (it is what they wanted).

Yet they want it to sound good. How do I go about this? I have a SONY HDR-FX1E. What mic's do you suggest I get? And what set up?

At their last gig, they were mic'd up on the drums, on both the amps for guitars and obviously one for microphone for singer. Yet it sounded awful.

Thanks in advance.

can handle it---where you at

Your best bet would be to get a submix from the board (mixed to sound good through a line using an aux send), but you might have to settle for just a main out. It won't sound amazing but it would be better than nothing.

You might want to consider renting a good condensor mic to place near the back of the room to get room sound. Your local music equipment rental place should be able to suggest a mic that would work. You would most likely need to convert XLR to 1/8".

i am in the UK - Wolverhampton.

btw, thanks Mark, I will check into that.

I am filming a gig for my friend's band...
...At their last gig, they were mic'd up on the drums, on both the amps for guitars and obviously one for microphone for singer. Yet it sounded awful.


Well, if they don't sound good in the room, there's not much you can do about it.

Micing the room can be good. A single mic or stereo pair *in the right place* is frequently very good. Frequently, the right place is in the middle of a dance floor, which doesn't work out too well unless you are able to fly the mics.

Usually for small rock performances, a board feed is not so good because the drums and the bass and guitar amps put out lots of direct sound. Even if they are in the house mix there might not be much of those instruments in the board feed.

Mark is right that a submix could be better, but you'd need lots of attention from the sound operator - would he/she be willing to mix you something separate from the mains?

Yeah, I am sure they would actually.

I will do that then. Thanks guys.