recording a band live

Ok, at band practice we usually record everything to help us learn what we need to change or keep. Usually the recordings are pretty bad, but they give us an idea anyway. My question is, what would be the best way to record a drummer, 2 guitarist, bass, and vocals with a 4-track recorder? What I was thinking was use 2 channels for the guitars, 1 channel for the vocals, and then use a 6 channel mixer to put the bass and drums on the 4th channel. Would this work, or is there an easier way and still have everything close mic'd.

I would think that would work. The only bad thing about that is you get so much cross-talk between mics. I suggest angling the amps/speakers away from each other and having a noise barrier around the front of the drum kit. This will give you a cleaner cut channel to mix. The channels that you've selected would work fine though... from my limited experience in live recording....

I would also experiment with room mics. Sometimes I think the "atmosphere" that room mics create is really cool. Just a suggestion though... it's whatever you prefer.

Yeah, that's probably the best way to do it with a 4 track.

well, if that doesn't work I'll probably just use two mic's and sepparate them left and right for a stereo mix.

Id go with two ambient mics. You will just have to experiment with placement.

Edit* Slight rethink.

I t really depends how many mics you've got, but id say at a miniumum to get
a decent demo quality sound. use 2 overheads for drums and one of your crappier mics for the kick, feed them 3 channles into your mixer along with your bass, use that mixer to create a sub mix so the kick doesent clash with the bass, feed that to a tape channel 1.
and the remaining three for Vox and Gtr's.

This also leaves you with 2 spare channels on your mixer if you have a couple more spare mics kicking about, mic the snare and Hats.