When close micing toms...

[69 Sound]

Just curious.... Thought this might be an interesting subject

When close micing toms vs say a minimal mic setup does your approach to positioning the overheads change?

ie: do you still try to achieve a full kit image bringing up the close mics just for added punch and detail?

Or

Do you rely mainly on the close mics for your tom sound?

[Waylon]

If I am micing the kit so that the overheads are the bulk of the drumsound, then yes, the top mics are strictly used for added "punch" or for fx if desired, and they are placed to match the location of the toms in the overhead image.

If I am recording something that doesnt benefit form this approach ( read, most pop, country, hard rock, progressive music...) then I generally still place a pair of "overall" mics over the kit, but will also place "cymbal" mics as needed...

as a side note, to me close micing Toms means the mic is within 6" of the skin... I have NEVER had a situation where a mic was 1/2" from a Tom and I could make it sound good... I see other guys pull this off, but I have allways perferred giving the sound a little bit to develop.

[LittleDogAudio]

Depends on the song.
Regretfully, bad metal has made a come-back in Cleveland and I have the "pleasure" of producing 2 full-length cd's of the stuff.

With metal/heavy, I'll close-mic the toms in order to get good attack/focus on the rapid hits (there and gone quickly) I will generally go for a wide spaced pair when using close tom mics.

When I'm recording more "organic" songs (trad. jazz, slow folk/blues) I'll try for the absolute minimum number of mics (usually 3 or 4). With this setup I'll try an x-y overhead.

For everything in between, I'll mic the toms seperately and only use them if I really need more focus during mixdown.

btw. I only gate toms for the fastest of metal.

My .02

Chris

[69 Sound]

Waylon, LittleDog and Everyone else...

Do you find that when close micing toms you are more, or less, critical of your overhead placement?

Personally, for the past year or so I've been going with a minimal mic approach, large diaphragm spaced overheads, kick and snare. On the most recent project I tracked (a nu metal band) I went back to using close mics on the toms at the bands request.

The first thing that I noticed is that although I had great imaging of the whole kit in the overheads, when I brought up the close mics the toms didn't seem to sit well. This prompted me to reposition the overheads to slightly in front of the cymbals and narrow the spacing.

Littledog: What gate are you using for toms? In the past I've never been happy in my attempts to gate "speed metal" type drummers. I've always ended up with the gate being too slow or too fast. User error perhaps??? Just seems like I could never get it sounding right.

Regards,

Chris

[LittleDogAudio]

Well, I can't say that because I mic the toms seperatley, that I am any less concerned about the overhead sound. I still use more of the Ov's then anything.

Believe it or not, I usually manually clean the toms up in PT. It's a lot of work, but worth it. I'll usually take the tracks home and clean them up while eating or playing with the cat. It's at least on "my" terms, if I'm doing a bunch of grunt work.

Chris

[six_wax]

on manually automating the toms. well worth the ten whole minutes of mindless PT work, I've discovered.

[LittleDogAudio]

Drummer has 7 toms and plays them a whole lot.
And, it's Grind-Core.
More like several hours of work to get it perfect.

Chris

[69 Sound]

7 toms?!?!? What the... (having bad 80's neil pert flashbacks) I think I'd have run the other direction and not looked back!!!

Editing the drums for the last nu metal project took me a good 3-4 of hours and he only had 4 toms. I'd love to be able to spend only 10 minutes and call it a day!!!

[LittleDogAudio]

Dude, I'm in Cleveland.
We are just getting started on the 80's around here.

Well at least I have a cool Irish Folk band coming in soon. Kind of an aural sorbet'.

Cheers.

Chris

[69 Sound]

So I take it you haven't yet had the joy of tracking some of the new and wonderful screamo/emo kids with their valvestate marshalls, mxr pedals and pods cranked to 11...

... Who then insist that every track should sound like it's been run through an overdriven telephone (cause it's "the" sound) with enough 7-12K to rip your head off at 30yds!!!

Oh the joy!!! And yet for some still unexplainable reason we actually choose to keep doing this. lol

Regards,

Chris

[alphajerk]

i dont allow emo in my studio.... or valvestates, or pods.