Drum recording tips

[foolsfortune]

Hello fellow Slutz!

I've agreed to help a drummer friend (who also plays guitar, bass and sings) re-record one of his tunes in my little studio and am looking for some tips on recording acoustic drums.

I haven't got the most serious mic collection, but this isn't the most serious recording so I'll just have to do the best I can with what I have!

I've got the following mics:

1 - Shure SM57
1 - Nady SCM900
1 - Audio Technica Kit Pack (2 snare/tom mics, 2 kick/tom mics)
1 - Superlux drum mic set (1 FK-2 kick and 2 FT-4 tom)

The only outboard gear is a Behringer Compressor and an Art Tube MP mic pre and a Behringer ADA800 ad/da converter. Audio interface is an M-Audio Project Mix I/O recording into Sonar 5.

Drums are Yamaha Studio Customs with new heads, tuned well and no rattles/squeeks.

Basically, I'm looking for tips on mic placement, tracking tips and processing. I have drum mic clips that mount on the drums rim. Is it best to stay away from them and use stands whenever possible?

Thanks guys, I appreciate the help. I'll post the results when we're done.

Mike

[bleudevel05]

I am by no means a master engineer or an experienced recordist as many other posters are on this site...but i do have a bit of advice that helped me when I was using very average gear to record drums for some of my friends. Firstly i think it is important to find a good sounding room... For a while I was somewhat disillusioned in believing my equipment was the problem. Good performances are also important and make the tracking process a lot easier. Now when I track drums I insist that the drummer practices to tempo maps for hours.....a solid performance means less processing necessary for fixes and leaves a bit more headroom. I'll let someone else comment on the mics as I'm not familiar with the kits you mentioned---but I have used the 57 on the snare succesfully as many have (avoids a lot of HH b/c of its off axis rejection). Good luck with everything!

[foolsfortune]

Hasn't happened yet....supposed to this Sunday....tips?

[donsolo]

my take on the matter can be found here
http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=93435

[wallace]

Question: do you have a stereo pair of mics?

I think the main thing with recording drums it to make sure you have a clear sound with your overheads and room mics first. Focus on getting a good image that sounds good with all the cymbals going. The overheads will be compose roughly 90% of your sound. From there, add your kick and snare to the mix and try to add what is missing from the overheads (probably punch). If this is a first attempt you can either throw up as many mics as you can with the understanding that you might take some out later in the mix, or you can make it as simple as possible (like I said, a pair of stereo overheads and a kick and snare mic). Lots of old school drums were done with just a handfull of mics (albeit expensive). The room is really important to the sound too like others have said.

[PhatStax Drums]

Generally it's best to use stands instead of clips, if you can. However, if, for the tom mics, you're just filling in where necessary (and if necessary, even) the overheads, as a previous post said, then you're probably going to gate the toms anyway in the final mix, so it wouldn't matter that you're using clips, too much....oh...EXCEPT.....see, clips pick up the vibration from the rest of the kit through the tom as you probably know, it's like (well, it IS) an echo chamber. so, that can actually trigger a tom gate and be problematic that way.

I used to be against gating drums entirely due to some bad gating at a studio years ago, however, if you set the gate to come in very quickly so you don't lose attack, and then usually fade out pretty slow (like maybe one second although I don't do this every day, see what sounds nice.....better too long than too short, that's for sure).

So if time and energy and stands permit, yes, use stands for all mics.

(the echo chamber effect of a mic clipped to a tom can actually sound cool sometimes, but that's only sometimes, best to have more options to control that type of low humming reverb rather than to have it there from the get-go)


There's a lot of good advice in the previous posts. yes, DEFINITELY get a good overhead sound and a good room mic to boot.

I've gotten very good (not specacular due to the room, but very good) results on a kit, just in a regular basement room, by putting two ribbon mics about five feet in front of and maybe five feet up (aimed at the kit so as not to get too much of the cymbals) and then another pair across the room so that the kit sound focuses back at the other side of the room (perhaps like a very primitive and crude parabolic whispering gallery). You can hear that specific technique on a recording I did, of drums, here:

http://www.robdrum.com/files/Daryl_B...e_4_13_mix.mp3

The performance and room sound certainly could be better but it's okay.

(the sax player on this worked with Elvis on about seven live dates, just before Elvis left for Hollywood in 1956 I guess it was)

I got the snare to sound like it was miked closer, by EQ'ing afterwards to emphasize the slap of the snare I guess you'd call it. I mixed this on a digital Behringer mixer that has since died.

If you wanted to try room miking with the mics you mention above, I guess I'd just see which one sounds the best in that application (pretty much which one as the widest frequency response at least that would be the primary focus at first and perhaps the only factor in this situation, depending on what kind of sound you're looking for, of course....if you want a vintage vibe then perhaps you'd look at other factors as well.

Then again with the mics you mention above, you might just go for close-miking as much as you can, and a pair of overheads which you'll get most of your sound from....then, maybe use one or two mics still as room mics, even if they're not great for that, the dialed-in room sound still would help the sound a lot.

Compare the above post, using the combination of semi-close front-of-kit mic and farther room mics (both stereo ribbon pairs (Nady RSM-2's close in and Royer R-121s across the room), with the following, which is all close-miking as well as close overheads on the kit, because I wanted to control bleed in the following situation (this was a live-in-the-studio first take of playing with the people on the following song). Plus, my room's acoustics probably pretty much suck anyway, so that's another reason for me to consider just going close-miking depending on the sound I'm after. I LOVE room drum sounds, but in this case, I'd take the following close-mking over the above tune. Then again I'd probably take a jazz tune over an old rock-and-roll remake tune, the latter here just seems to work better, anyway, here's an example of all close-miking (miking each drum closely, then using overheads to get only the cymbals as much as possible. In this case, I was NOT trying to get most of the sound out of the overheads, because we had a cello near the kit and actually he liked to hear himself so he had his cello amp near my drum kit!!! wasn't fancy enough to use cans for everybody. Still came out nice, despite all that):

http://www.robdrum.com/files/Track012.mp3


If you have the time to try some test recordings to be sure you're getting a good drum sound, that's of course very recommended.

I've done live recordings where I hauled out my drum kit, AND the live recording multitrack stuff, and thought I had it all under control, but, because I only do this part-time (hey, just a mismanaged life, really, is what it boils down to...), I used, for example, a pop filter on the kick drum mic because it was a ribbon, placed not too close to the kick drum (an inexpensive ribbon)....it was okay (although I wouldn't recommend that for long ribbon life and would NOT do it with a valued ribbon mic), the pop filter vibrated on the stand that particular night, so the entire bass track for the whole evening has this flopping sound going on.....so the b.d. track was completely useless, or perhaps you could get part of the bass frequency out of it but not much, so ended up getting the bass off the rest of the kit by turning up the bass....wasn't horrible, but that led to a muddier sound because you then get bass guitar bleed.

Also, on that same night (fortunately I think it was the very same night, although this perhaps messed up ANOTHER night), I was a good boy and had the floor tom mic on a stand, not clipped to the drum, and I even had the mic in a shock mount, I though I had it so covered. Well, in this kind of situation, you're lucky not to pull all your hair out and also get everything set up in time to start the gig, so of course no opportunity to monitor or do a sound check/test recording, so, the whole night, the shock mount was configured in such a way that it was vibrating against itself or the stand, so every time the floor tom was hit except perhaps for very light hits, there was this flapping sound. I think I was able to somewhat deal with that through EQ but it was not ideal by any means. For the music I was playing the floor tom wasn't hit a whole lot, although we did do a few tunes that actually had the ride-pattern on the floor tom thing.

Just some thoughts, hope this all helps. It's an art, not a science, use your best judgment with the mics you have, make some test recordings by all means if you have the time, and make sure you're getting a nice clean signal with no vibration or other problems like that, and try mixiing it to be sure that none of the mics are placed in such a way that for example a tom gets cancelled out due to phase problems.

For miking the bass drum be sure the audience head, if it has one, isn't vibrating objectionably....it can even be intact, just make sure it sounds good and isn't flopping around the mic too much or the sound again won't be good. In a halfway decent room with room mics you might get a better kick off the room anyway but usually the close kick mic does add punch and helps keep the bass sound clean in the mix.

One last thought...you mention your collection of "drum mics" in your post. Do you have other mics as well? Ones that probably have a wider, flatter frequency response? These might be best used for room mics and/or overheads, just be sure the drummer doesn't lose sticks in the air or otherwise hits the mics unless they're drum mics...

[ozraves]

I agree that you start with the room. Drums need an area of a room that sounds OK with percussive sources. I do things such as walking around and clapping my hands and listening to different parts of the room. I listen to the sound of the space.

After that, I'm purely onto Fletcher's three mic drum technique. I generally use four mics as I also spot mic the snare but his technique is also the starting point for mic'ing a kit even if you want to mic everything.

Here's Fletcher's description of his technique: http://www.mercenaryaudio.com/3micdrumstuf.html

I think the most important mic for me is the one that I put over the drummer's left shoulder about 42 inches pointing at where he hits the snare. I usually put a Blue Dragonfly in that spot.

[foolsfortune]

[QUOTE=wallace;997070]Question: do you have a stereo pair of mics?
QUOTE]

Unfortunately not. I've just got the 9 mics listed above. The drummer has a large diaphragm condensor of some sort (Audix I think). We could try the Nady and the Audix as room mics.

At his place, he just throws the Audix up over the kit and a cheapie dynamic in the kick. It sounds pretty good but not very present in the mic. It sounds like the kit has been recorded....well, with only a room mic above the kit! No tight, snappy snare or nice kick sound with a combo of the boom of the drum itself blended with the impact of the beater.

I'm off to digest the rest of the replies. Awesome stuff guys, thanks for the info.

Mike

[5down1up]

dont place the individual kit mics to close to the soundsource, nasty sound !
use 2 mics on the snare drum, 1 on the top 1 on the bottom.
the bottom mic is usually phase reversed.
a mic inside the bass drum will give you the kick, a mic outside of the kick drum will give you the bass. you can isolate those tracks very good by building a " tunnel ".
lay a blanket over the bass drum and cover the mics.
this way you decrease the bleeding in those mics of the other instruments.

be careful with the recording level. drums need a good amount of headroom.

good luck !