New at recording, need some help

[youngstarter]

At the church I am at we are starting to finally start upgrading everything throughout the church. I have a Digital Recorder Yamaha AW16 or it might be AW16G I believe.
We have a mixer and are trying to do recordings, I have done 2 services and found out that because I have like the keyboard/organ/drums mic'd up in the mixer that when we do playback you hear the instruments over the singing when it really isn't the case during service lol, at times we are. So is there a way i can run  just the instruments through the Digital Recorder then somehow have it go through the Mixer so it goes out the PA Speakers?
If not what suggestions do you guys have for getting these clean recordings where the music is not overpowering? Its killin me lol

[themidiroom]

If I'm reading correctly, you have a house mixer and you are feeding that signal to your Yamaha recorder?  Are you sending the main outs from the house mixer?  I don't know off the top of my head how many channels the Yamaha will record at a time, but if your other mixer has group outs, you could assign the music to a pair of group outs(for stereo) and then assign the vocals to another pair of group outs.  If you want the ability to manipulate vocals individually, you could use a direct out or insert for that particular channel and feed that to the Yamaha on its own channel.  I hope this helps.

[youngstarter]

oook, so basically i group all vocals in the Direct I/O on the mixer, then from there I do the same with the instruments into the 2nd channel?

WHY DO YOU MAKE IT SO EFFORTLESS lol...
I'm sitting over here about to have a heart attack and u just think it out so easy.
seriously tho thank you soooooo much(no homo) lol

[youngstarter]

now my only question now would be what kind of cable will i need to buy? is there one i can get with a group of (4-6) 1/4" to just (1) 1/4" and then have them all just go into the one channel on my Yamaha?

[themidiroom]

now my only question now would be what kind of cable will i need to buy? is there one i can get with a group of (4-6) 1/4" to just (1) 1/4" and then have them all just go into the one channel on my Yamaha?

Unfortunately it doesn't work quite that way.  If your house mixer has group outs that would just be 1 or 2 1/4" jacks.  You feed those into the Yamaha.  Every channel or group out from the house mixer goes into a corresponding channel on the Yamaha recorder.

[youngstarter]

I went to the church yesterday to try and figure it out, i'm not quite sure if i was putting the chord in the right place. Here's the Mixer we have: http://cachepe.samedaymusic.com/media/quality,85/brand,sameday/PMP3000_FRONT-b8551d011cf38db8512134a245d11048.jpg
Heres the Yamaha we have:http://www.futurestyle.org/archives/images/y/yamaha/yamahaAW16g.gif

What I did was plug from the house mixer where it said Insert I/O right under where you place the Mic's, when I put it in from the mixer i placed it in the corresponding plug in the yamaha when I tested to see if the mics was working there was no sound at all coming from them, keyboard also, there was no saound coming from the house speakers.
I turned up the stereo output on the Yamaha and the sound started coming out but when it did, It was garbed and was breaking up pretty bad, so im guessing I had the hookup incorrect. So was I placing the plugs in the right place in the beginning?

[themidiroom]

Youngstarter,
Looks like your house mixer doesn't have group outs so you were correct to use the inserts.  What's you'll have to do is only push the 1/4" plug in half way to the first click on the insert, then signal should still come through the house mixer as well as go to the Yamaha.  If the sound is distorted and/or your peak light is on check the input trim and adjust it down a bit.

[tkeys86]

Or try some of these:

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-HOS-DOC106

(so you don't have to have a whole bunch of cables half-way into the channel inserts )

[themidiroom]

Or try some of these:

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-HOS-DOC106

(so you don't have to have a whole bunch of cables half-way into the channel inserts )

Sheesh 10 bucks?  What I was planning to do is use TRS cables and solder a wire between the tip and ring.
Some people frown on the half inserted cable but I've never had a single problem with using that method in over 6 years of recording live.