Drum newb shopping for a first kit

Well, I'm personally not a fan of Evans coated heads. Their clear heads are great, but their coated heads don't really act like coated heads IMO.

If you really want that vintage-type thud, go HEAVY on the heads. Remo Controlled Sound or Emperor X are 2-ply coated, heavy, black dot heads. Very "vintage". Pinstripes are pretty dark. Evans makes these oil-filled heads that are super dull.

Your toms are pretty resonant. I like that, but that also tells me there's room to tune them flatter. Detune the top heads until they almost wrinkle and see what that does. It's gonna affect the feel but it will also lower the pitch and lessen the reaction from the reso head. Then you can dampen that further with moongels. If you put moongels across from each other it really helps to dampen instead of just one or more moongels placed randomly.
 
Greg_L said:
Well, I'm personally not a fan of Evans coated heads. Their clear heads are great, but their coated heads don't really act like coated heads IMO.

If you really want that vintage-type thud, go HEAVY on the heads. Remo Controlled Sound or Emperor X are 2-ply coated, heavy, black dot heads. Very "vintage". Pinstripes are pretty dark. Evans makes these oil-filled heads that are super dull.

Your toms are pretty resonant. I like that, but that also tells me there's room to tune them flatter. Detune the top heads until they almost wrinkle and see what that does. It's gonna affect the feel but it will also lower the pitch and lessen the reaction from the reso head. Then you can dampen that further with moongels. If you put moongels across from each other it really helps to dampen instead of just one or more moongels placed randomly.
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Cool, thanks. I think that my main issue right now is that I'm just in the head-spinning information overload honeymoon period. It's been a whirlwind of learning, experimenting, tuning, adjusting, placing and replacing, and more tuning. Doing all of this with zero previous experience makes every simple component a project unto itself. And with zero experience, I have about zero ability to properly judge what I'm hearing.

The tom sound is growing on me. I'll try tuning them just a smidge lower. Plus, I've yet to even try spaced pair, XY, or ORTF overhead spacings, or close-miking the snare. So many things to try!
 
Yeah do not give up on those heads. They'll also warm up with playing. I happen like heads a little worn in.

Your toms sound good, so you have that going for you. You got them in what seems to be a happy place. Tone, resonance, all good things for toms. Keep in mind that what might seem too boomy by itself will sit in a mix very nicely.
 
You can always pull out a measuring tape and make sure that the mics are both the same distance from the snare. That will help put it in the center of the image, if the gains are set the same.
 
Farview said:
You can always pull out a measuring tape and make sure that the mics are both the same distance from the snare. That will help put it in the center of the image, if the gains are set the same.
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Thanks! I ended up doing exactly that. I switched to more of a Recorderman setup this time around. Since I don't have spot mics for the toms, I don't like it as much. I put both overheads right at 32" away from the snare, and it ended up nerfing the toms. I think that I'll go back to a Glyn Johns, but actually measure the overhead distances next time, like you suggest.


Anyways,
This is another silly, simple project from ages ago, just guitar and drums. Recorderman overheads with a kick + snare mic. Oh, and a room mic, just for the hell of it. I played with compression and gates just for the fun of it, but I went a little overboard and crushed everything too much. Also I put up my gobos on either side of the kit because I could actually hear some slap-back from the adjacent wall on that last recording. Having a mic basically pointed right at a wall turned out to be a bad idea :)

 
I am just learning the drums. The drummer I gigged with and recorded with died recently. I said that to say this. Listening to recordings of his drumming that I set up mics on, and listening to my recent drum recordings that I also set up the mics on I realize one thing for sure. The drummers skill and touch plays a HUGE part in getting a decent recording.
If the cymbals are too loud....I'm hitting them too hard. If the snare isn't loud enough I need to hit it harder.If the floor Tom is making the over head clip I'm hitting it too hard.
You can drive yourself crazy with mic placement when the problem is performance. The more I improve the more I see that
 
Wow Tad, I'm so far behind on everything, I missed you buying a drum kit....Clips sound good for your first few attempts, & as usual, you're giving me GAS for a real kit...Nice dude!!!

Just curious, how big is the rug your kit is sitting on???
 
jimistone said:
I am just learning the drums. The drummer I gigged with and recorded with died recently. I said that to say this. Listening to recordings of his drumming that I set up mics on, and listening to my recent drum recordings that I also set up the mics on I realize one thing for sure. The drummers skill and touch plays a HUGE part in getting a decent recording.
If the cymbals are too loud....I'm hitting them too hard. If the snare isn't loud enough I need to hit it harder.If the floor Tom is making the over head clip I'm hitting it too hard.
You can drive yourself crazy with mic placement when the problem is performance. The more I improve the more I see that
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Tell me about it! My hi-hat hand gets way too heavy, and my kick foot is way too light. It's something to work towards.

minerman said:
Wow Tad, I'm so far behind on everything, I missed you buying a drum kit....Clips sound good for your first few attempts, & as usual, you're giving me GAS for a real kit...Nice dude!!!

Just curious, how big is the rug your kit is sitting on???
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Hey miner, good to hear from ya! I tried to measure the rug but all I had on hand was a 60" tape measure. I'd say it's over 5x7, probably 5.5' x 7.5'. It's a good-sized rug. My room is just under 13' wide, if that gives any perspective.
 
Tadpui said:
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That's not too bad, but you have no spread. Was that intentional? My experience with recorderman is it gets decent spread but it's very sensitive to comb filtering and kit placement in the room. It's basically just a modified Glyn Johns.
 
I would bet it's the room mic that I mixed in. It's just a mono mic, and I bet that it's mixed in just enough to bring everything towards center. It was just a flight of fancy to add that mic, it's putting the cart before the horse. I do like what it added, especially since I just mindlessly placed it. But its not worth losing the stereo image.

I was thinking of spot-miking the toms today, but I don't really have enough appropriate microphones for the job. I have another SM57 and an Audix i5. Other than that, I just have an MXL990 and a pair of MXL991. Oh, and the LDC that I was using as a room mic. Oh wait...I don't have nearly enough stands for all those mics. OK, so 4 mic setup it is :D
 
"Vintage Premeire drums are killer." as are vintage Ludwig, Slingerland, Rogers, Gretsch. You CAN get by with lower cost shells, but DO invest in a good snare and cymbals.
 
Taking a break from my chronic trolling and worthless posting to try more drum recording tonight :D

Over the last few days, I've tracked down some tom mic clamps and one more mic for my toms. My hodge-podge tom mics are an SM57, and i5, and (as soon as the UPS guy gets here) an MD-421ii. I'm gonna try them in that order from hi to low toms.

I'm also gonna move to a spaced pair configuration for my overheads. I have a feeling that I'm gonna have to try a few different placements in order to get it right. I have the classic beginner's caveman touch on the hihat, which makes it a bitch to mix the kit. It bleeds like hell into the snare mic, and dominates the left-hand side of the overheads. Hopefully I get better about that with practice. For now I've just raised the hihat to distance it from the snare by a few more inches.

As far as mixing, so far I've just been gating the hell out of everything except the overheads. I think it sounds cool, but certainly isn't right for everything. Smashing the kick and snare with a good compressor sounds cool too, but again isn't a universal kind of sound. I have a feeling that I'll do the same with the toms until the novelty wears off.

So, any advice for a first-timer on spot-miking toms, spaced pair overheads, or entry-level drum mixing?
 
Spot miking toms - a good starting point is about 45 degrees, capsule even with rim, point the mic to land on a spot about halfway between the rim and center of the head. A drum is sort of the opposite of a guitar speaker. The center of the drum will be fatter and more resonant. The edges will be brighter with more overtones.

Hi-hat bleed - Try to get the snare mic ass-up so the cable end points at the hats. You can get pretty good rejection if the hats are directly behind the mic. As you can tell, your technique matters too. If you baby the snare and bash the hats, there will be problems. I subscribe to the idea of bash the drums, go easy on the cymbals. Besides sound and tracking benefits, you won't break a drum with hard hits. You will break cymbals with bad technique.

Spaced pair - My advice would be to determine what parts of the kit you want as left and right. Most commonly people want the kick and snare center. But the snare is rarely physically in the center of the kit. So what do you do? What I do is envision an imaginary line connecting the center of the snare to the kick drum beater contact spot. That's my centerline. It runs at an angle, but that's the line. I base my L and R overhead positions off that centerline....and voila, I get an even spread in the overheads, centered kick and snare, with no weird phasing.
 
hitting the snare and toms hard and babying the cymbals sounds hood on a recording....but it's very hard to be smacking the hell out of the snare and Tom's on a fill and then lightly hit the crash.
I'm usually like "Damn that crash was loud. It hit it too hard again"
 
Greg_L said:
Spot miking toms - a good starting point is about 45 degrees, capsule even with rim, point the mic to land on a spot about halfway between the rim and center of the head. A drum is sort of the opposite of a guitar speaker. The center of the drum will be fatter and more resonant. The edges will be brighter with more overtones.

Hi-hat bleed - Try to get the snare mic ass-up so the cable end points at the hats. You can get pretty good rejection if the hats are directly behind the mic. As you can tell, your technique matters too. If you baby the snare and bash the hats, there will be problems. I subscribe to the idea of bash the drums, go easy on the cymbals. Besides sound and tracking benefits, you won't break a drum with hard hits. You will break cymbals with bad technique.

Spaced pair - My advice would be to determine what parts of the kit you want as left and right. Most commonly people want the kick and snare center. But the snare is rarely physically in the center of the kit. So what do you do? What I do is envision an imaginary line connecting the center of the snare to the kick drum beater contact spot. That's my centerline. It runs at an angle, but that's the line. I base my L and R overhead positions off that centerline....and voila, I get an even spread in the overheads, centered kick and snare, with no weird phasing.
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Greg_L said:
Those are just my opinions. It's recently been brought to my attention that I've never recorded drums before. :D
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Yeah, us trolls have to stick together :D

Thanks a lot man, I'm going to give this all a try this evening.

Do you point your overheads towards the snare, or just straight down, or in any particular direction?

jimistone said:
hitting the snare and toms hard and babying the cymbals sounds hood on a recording....but it's very hard to be smacking the hell out of the snare and Tom's on a fill and then lightly hit the crash.
I'm usually like "Damn that crash was loud. It hit it too hard again"
Click to expand...

One thing I've actually trained myself to do through a few years of playing an e-kit is to ease up on the crash. Those max-velocity crash hits in sample packs sound ridiculous. I'm actually having to hit real cymbals harder than I'm used to because they're disappearing in my mixes. I never did get myself trained to ease up on the hihat though. I'm right-handed and play crossover style, which puts my dominant hand in charge of the hihat, and I have the damndest time dialing it down a notch or two.
 
I'm watching/reading this thread with great enthusiasm, as one day I'll tackle real drums myself....That is one of the big reasons I'm thinking about buying a shed/garage/building & soundproofing it...The shed wouldn't be just so I could get my loud guitar thing on, real drums are in the picture too, eventually...
 
Mental hi-five, I just watched that one yesterday! I'm totally gonna try that one out. I'd heard Glenn Fricker go on about the "rippled head" thing. But I have to take his advice with a grain of salt since he's coming from a heavy metal perspective and his methods don't always translate to some doofus like me making rock/folk/dad-rock. But it's the same basic concept. And I'm itching to try it. Jeez, so many things to try, so little time! Thanks man, I appreciate it.

Oh, I should record a snippet now that I've got spot mics for my toms. And I've been tuning/retuning about every 3rd day, so hopefully I'm honing in on my sweet spot (plus the sheer amount of practice in tuning is helping). I'm starting to realize what you've said about the Evans coated heads. They may be wrong for me, or wrong for my drums. I like the thud for a dead 70s AOR tom sound. But I have a feeling that I'm gonna want more resonance now that I hear what spot mics sound like. Seems like more resonance will be way more versatile, and I can deaden them by other means if I want.
 
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