Drum Recording Environment Options

rocart07

New member
So I'm going to be recording a demo for my band this weekend and I have a decent amount of at home recording experience but I have to decided I want to go a little further with this session and treat it a bit more seriously compared to my previous recordings. So I have two options for recording rooms in my house and I wanted some opinions.

1. The basement. Drums in the middle of the room and rugs on the floor with concrete elsewhere. The ceiling is about 8 feet tall or so. Basically it's a relatively dead room in comparison to my second option. There is also some added background noise of the heater


2. The pool table room. Tile floors. Probably about 1.5 or 2 times the footprint of the main basement area I'd be playing in otherwise. Ceilings are about the same height as the basement. oddly i think they're 7.5 feet tall. I would obviously put down some area rugs and possibly a few other things to deaden the sound a bit. Also the benefit of less background noise.

Any help would be great thanks.
 
Neither room sounds worth a damn to me. Whichever room you decide on, take some time to experiment with where to put the kit and how to mic it. Don't just set it up and go with whatever mic placement you start with. If the room sounds bad, which both most likely will, then minimize the bad room effect by not using room mics. There's no point in using room mics in a shit room. Find the spot for the drums, find the right mic placement, and for God's sake make sure the kit has good heads and is tuned up. There's no point in doing any of this to record a bad sounding drum kit.
 
Yea, honestly drum rooms are probably my weakest area of experience, which is sad because I am a drummer haha. I figured the larger room would be better for a more "live sound" and my friend offered up some of his acoustic panels that might help a bit. I realize neither of them are good areas but you have to deal with what you're given.
 
Yea, honestly drum rooms are probably my weakest area of experience, which is sad because I am a drummer haha. I figured the larger room would be better for a more "live sound" and my friend offered up some of his acoustic panels that might help a bit. I realize neither of them are good areas but you have to deal with what you're given.

Larger is usually better, but you're not gaining any height.
 
I find that a big room with a low ceiling can work if you place an omni or figure 8 mic at the right spot between 2 parallel walls. I use in ear monitors and shooters muffs while the drummer is bashing away. It takes a lot of playing around but you can find a sweet spot that represents a good "room" sound. A stereo image has no up or down, just width and perceived depth.
 
I record all my tracks in a 20X24 foot room with 8' ceilings. It's far from ideal in a text book sense. It's even carpeted which is not ideal. I like my drum tracks, I think they sound very good.

You can by all means get a good drum recording. 99% of it is the drums themselves. A perfect room just makes it easier, but a less than perfect room can still yield great results if the drums are tuned well, the cymbals are good, the mics are placed right, and the drummer knows how to play. While I don't believe in "Fix it in the mix", you can certainly get a lot of mileage towards a good drum sound with EQ, compression, and simple common sense.
 
Just record it however, then replace it all with samples. :D

Just kidding.

You gotta spend some time. Good results CAN be had in a less than ideal room. But just like you have to learn a set of monitors, you have to learn the room. This takes time.

Like others have said;
Good drummer, good drums, good tuning, good heads, etc.

Then experiment, placement in the room, mic placement, etc.

If possible, monitor outside of the drumming environment. You want to hear what the mics are ACTUALLY capturing without hearing the drums in the room.

Don't just set up and hit record. Most likely you'll be disappointed with the outcome.

Bottom line is you gotta put some time into it to get good results.
 
+1 to all input here. Make sure the drums sound good first.

One treatment that I realized made a huge difference for me was stuffing my drum room ceiling with rockwool. Obviously you don't have that option. I would assume that getting your overheads up as high as you can, and placing some absorption between the back of the mic and ceiling will help. I use Shure KSM141's in cardioid pattern.

What are you planning on using for the overhead mics?
 
I'm well aware of the idea of making the kit sound good first. I will eventually build some acoustic panels when I have the funds. Correct me if I'm wrong but I would think you would want to move the mics closer to the source and not further away in order to get a more direct sound and prevent hearing odd reflections?

During practice I usually use a pair of modified MXL 603's which sound decent for what they are but I am debating switching to ribbon mics as my main overheads in order to tame a little bit of the high end you normally get from the 603.
 
I would think you would want to move the mics closer to the source and not further away in order to get a more direct sound and prevent hearing odd reflections?
Correct.

During practice I usually use a pair of modified MXL 603's which sound decent for what they are but I am debating switching to ribbon mics as my main overheads in order to tame a little bit of the high end you normally get from the 603.
Ribbons are typically figure-8, so be careful with that. The back side of the mic will pick up all kinds of probably unwanted shit.
 
Greg is absolutely right about the ribbon collecting bad sounds on the backside. Try underheads; set the ribbons up under the cymbals. Just Google underhead mic placement, you'll see. The null at the side of the mics picks up very little direct from the drums and when done right sounds amazing.
 
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