Mic placement for acoustic drum kit

H

habanero

New member
Hey yall,

I am having a lot of fun with recording guitar, harmonica, vocals, etc... and am interested to try out recording my drums.

The equipment I purchased was not intended for recording drums, but I would like to give it a shot, and am wondering where I should begin with placing them on my drum kit.

I think I am going to go for the recorderman drum mic'ing setup, or the glyn johns setup. Here are my mic's:

MXL CR-24 Large Condenser Mic
MXL CR-24 Pencil instrument Mic
Sennheiser e609

I am using a Tascam US-600 interface, with Sonar 8.5 Pro.

Where would you recommend I start with placing each mic?

Thanks,
Habanero
 
Ok
Im not too experienced but ill give some tips :)
Well it looks like you have 2 condensers and a dynamic microphone.
I would start by placing the Sennheiser e609 on the snare.
As with placing the two overheads im not too sure, Because you would need to place it to pick up the bass drum because you dont have a mic dedicated to it.
 
Hm,

The more I research people's setups, I am finding that when using 3 microphones, people use 1 over the snare / high hats pointing down, one above the floor tom or over the drummers shoulder pointed at the snare, (at the same distance as the 1 overhead) and then one on the kick.

I think I will put my e609 on my kick, then the Large Condenser over the snare / high hats, and the pencil mic to the side of the floor tom, pointing towards the snare. I will see how that goes.

It seems that if I put a single mic dedicated only to the snare, then I will have complete gaps missing from my recordings. I will have to mess with it, and see how it sounds with different configurations.

I know this setup is not ideal, but I just spent $500 on my equipment, and want to start messing around with recording my drums.
 
try the recorderman or glynn johns technique. Use the condensers as the overheads and the e609 on the kick. use small movements on the overheads to capture a good overall sound. Google recorderman or glynn johns. There are some videos on youtube as well.
 
recorderman technique is the only way to get quite cool sounding drums with 2 mics.
Is there any other known technique? :)
 
Forget the "get great drums with only 2 mics" honks. You won't get it done and then you'll get frustrated and pissed off. You have what, 6 inputs? Get more mics, use your inputs, thank me later.
 
Slightly based on yep's thread from the Cockos forums....

If you want totally natural sounding drums, then all you need is a couple of condensers 10 feet in front of the drumset. However, if you're looking for a tight, in your face, studio drum sound, then yeah, at least 4.
 
Greg_L said:
Forget the "get great drums with only 2 mics" honks. You won't get it done and then you'll get frustrated and pissed off. You have what, 6 inputs? Get more mics, use your inputs, thank me later.
Click to expand...

With 2 mic's I get a decent sound. Good enough for now. I need another XLR cable to add my 3rd mic that I already have.

My Tascam says it has 6 inputs, however, it only has 4 XLR inputs. The other inputs are Midi and some digitial connection.

I think adding my 3rd mic, then picking up a 4th could produce a pretty good result for me. Thanks for the recommendations.
 
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