Recording drums... help please!

[rottedham]

I want to record my band as a whole. I used to just be solo doing only guitar and vocals, but I am really itching to record my whole band since we got together.

My first question is how many mics would i need to record the drums with a good sound? I have heard 2 is an absolute minimum, and I am using a Fostex MR-8 which only allows 2 tracks to be recorded simultaneously. I am wondering if I were to buy a cheap mixer like a behringer, how many channels should I go for? and would I be able to hook it up to my MR-8 without any problems?

My next question:
Should I have the drums recorded first or should I just record everything and then record the drums after everything else? I have heard that people record drums first with the band playing along with him without being recorded, but how would i do this without the guitars and vocals bleeding through on the drums tracks? How do you all do the recordings of your drums?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[Bulls Hit]

If you can only record 2 tracks simultaneously, you're a bit restricted. Put the kick on one track, and put the snare and overhead on the other.

Record the drums first. Not much you can do about bleeding, unless you rerecord the drums on their own

 

[Ronan]

If you can only record 2 tracks simultaneously, you're a bit restricted. Put the kick on one track, and put the snare and overhead on the other.

If I am using only 2 tracks for drums I actually put the snare on its own track and the kick and overhead together. This give you a lot of flexibility. the way process and mix the snare has a huge impact on the sound of a mix, also if you want to EQ stuff, you can fix the kick with low EQ and the OH with high. There is some cross over, but its amazing how fexible it actually is.

 

[thundercage]

Recording Drums

To get the best sound, mic with a 8 channel mixer into the 2 channels. Run 2 overheads (you can split to stereo), bass drum, snare, tom1, tom2, tom3, either hi-hat or floor tom (usually hi-hat cuts through because of the overheads). As always when not getting each mic on a recorded track.. it has to be the right mix the first time because adjusting later is not possible.
ONE MORE THING: mics you use for drums are very important, borrow the best possible if you don't have good ones.