Connecting Mixer to Audio Interface

[Victor Flores]

Hello forum: I would like to record drums now that I bought the "Focusrite Scarlett 18i20" and to practice, I was going to track my church band first, and track the drummer later by himself. Here's my dilemma;

 

Our church computer is in the back of the last bench connected to a scarlett 2i2 which is connected to a mackie 3204-VLZ3 via the 2 main outs. That would be fine for our purposes of live streaming, but for recording separate tracks, that wouldn't work. 

I looked at the back of the mixer for line outs, and there's a spot where I see 6 outs, but I want to record 8 tracks. Other hardware we have is a 12 channel mixer, and a 16 channel snake. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.  

[msmcleod]

You have 6 aux sends and 4 sub-groups out on that mixer - that's 10 channels, so you should be able to use a combination of aux sends / bus sends to go to your 18i20.

[Alan Tubbs]

Unless your drummer is very good or your band very tight and steady you’ll want to record drummer first.

use the snake to hook 8 or as many as inputs as you want and can to the 18 20 and record those to your computer to record.  You don’t need to involve the mixer at all unless you need to feed the master output somewhere via analog.

[bluzdog]

Assuming you have 10 channels, enough mics and want to add tracks after the performance, I would do something like this:

1) kick

2) snare

3) tom 1

4) tom 2

5) floor tom

6) OH left

7) OH right

? bass d.i.

9) vocals ( scratch )

10) room mic for reference and/or ambience etc.

Then I would track guitar, keys, vocals, etc. 

Rocky

 

[Victor Flores]

Thanks guys for the responses. Some one private messaged me saying: 

"Unless you’ve got a snake that’s very old, snakes will have no issues in carrying the 48v phantom power from the mixer to the condenser mic on the stage (or wherever the mics are located). 
Of course, the mixer itself has to have phantom power to be able to supply the mics with voltage, but if it does, there should be no problems with the snake/cable carrying phantom voltage to the mic through its XLR cables/jacks. "

 

So between all the comments, I should be all set in whatever route I choose to go. I haven't been able to do anything with the band cuz of a death in the drummers family, so when the air clears, I'll get back to work. Thanks forum. 

[Victor Flores]

Snake worked like a charm, Over head mics with phantom power were not an issue either, which was the part that concerned me most. I ran into a lot of other issues; but I'll open up different threads for those. Thanks again forum.