Best Cymbal Sound

Sickmelvin

New member
Since a day or two I am recording drums and I am very happy with the sound I get by close micing, but not so happy with my overheads.
The thing is that I don't want them to pick up to much of the other parts of my kit but just the cymbals.
For instance when I am setting up gain level at the OH channel, it peaks on snare but not when I hit the cymbals.

A very important thing for me is my ride cymbal so that one should be heard loud in the mix and not like some sort of ambience.

I have 2 SP B3's and a C1 than have to do the job.

My setup is: kick, snare, rack tom, floor tom, hi hat, ride (between the toms), two crashes and a china.

I've allready tried spaced pair but not x/y. How should I place them, at what height, which pattern should I use and should I switch -10 db or hpf?

Thanx
Marc
 
Remember that soundwaves travel horizontally on the hi-hat cymbals . . . and vertically on the crashes.

So if you're looking to try and pick up as much of the cymbal as possible, then position it very close, and to the side of the cymbal if it's a hi hat, and directly over it if it's a crash.

My personal feeling on the matter is that you shouldn't have any trouble hearing the cymbals if you just use a standard overhead setup. Perhaps you could even do away with the snare or tom mics if the overheads are already picking up too much of them anyway.

Your other option might be to compress or limit the cymbal tracks to where the cymbal and snare hits are of a more equal volume (as opposed to the snare being so loud) ? Just a thought.
 
Have you tried cutting all the low end out of your overheads? This should help with reducing the sound of the other drums on the overhead tracks. Along with the pearls from chessrock, that should get you at least some of the way there!

Steve
 
I think you have the wrong idea... the snare and kick in general should be louder anyway, and a lot of times I end up mixing the cymbal (overheads) tracks down to -8 or -10, and leave the kick and snare at 0 or so. This usually nails a drum mix right where you should want it.
If you want more ride cut, close mic the ride. Otherwise, close miced cymbals sound like dirty ballsack.
The overheads are doing a fine job otherwise, or else there is something wrong.
 
tubedude said:
If you want more ride cut, close mic the ride. Otherwise, close miced cymbals sound like dirty ballsack.B]


That's funny, my dirty ballsack sounds just like a hand hammered Istanbul Crash! (kinda looks like one too)
 
SteveMcB said:
Have you tried cutting all the low end out of your overheads? This should help with reducing the sound of the other drums on the overhead tracks. Along with the pearls from chessrock, that should get you at least some of the way there!

Steve
This is what I do when I want better differentiation between overheads and the closed mic'd drums.
 
I remember someone saying "why don't I just mic every string on my acoustic guitar, and then put an ambient pair a few feet away, too" when referring to using lots of drum mics. The mindset of some is that the drums are a single instrument and should sound and be treated as such.

Food for thought.
 
dirty sacks

tubedude said:
I think you have the wrong idea... the snare and kick in general should be louder anyway, and a lot of times I end up mixing the cymbal (overheads) tracks down to -8 or -10, and leave the kick and snare at 0 or so.

I keep the overheads down real low. Like most people, I do drums first, and the problem is when you start adding guitars the sound of the tubs change, and I tend to start losing the snare before anything else. So I generally keep the snare up real loud (four that White Album sound). It might sound odd when you hear your first sub mix of just drums, but when all those middle frequencies are added, you'll be glad you kept that snare drum up.
 
Were you just swinging more information off what I said, or were you telling me specifically.
If you were telling ME, then by zero I meant 0db on the fader, which is just a hair shy of distorting, right at the red, since I track as hot as possible before I get around to mixing. Maybe you thought I meant zero as in none? :)

Peace!
 
Gee, I always thought the best level for a cymbal track
was muted.

Seriously, I've never had too little cymbals.
I use both overheads and distant room mics,
and spend most of my effort toning down
all the hihat bleed.

If you really want more cymbal, and I can almost
see it with the crash... stick a SM57 two or three
inches out from the outer edge, and two or so
inches above, pointing at the edge of the cymbal.
 
fishtop_records said:

If you really want more cymbal, and I can almost
see it with the crash... stick a SM57 two or three
inches out from the outer edge, and two or so
inches above, pointing at the edge of the cymbal.

Nice thought but I just have to do it with 8 channels right now so that's not an option.
Maybe with an extra adat card in my tascam I will try.

In my last setup I tried the overhead above the outer part of the cymbal on a height the cymbal is a hair away from hitting the mic. This seems to work really well with a little eq.
 
Sickmelvin said:
Nice thought but I just have to do it with 8 channels right now so that's not an option.
Maybe with an extra adat card in my tascam I will try.

Ah yes, recording drumkits was the primary reason
I went from 8 to 10 tracks, and then later to 16.
I find that it just takes a lot of tracks to
do a drumkit right, at least without using
Fletcher's three-mic-setup, which requires
much better mics than I can afford right now.

If you have more mixer tracks than A/D tracks,
you can do things like mix the three toms down
into one, and get the stereo imaging for them
from your overheads.

Now that I have 16, I get spoiled and even use
two separate mics on the kick drum
 
Track 1: Kick
Track 2: Snare
Track 3 & 4: Toms stereo
Track 5 & 6: OH stereo

I use 4 tom mics and 5 overhead mics to catch everything, but as stated before, buss them down to a stereo pair. I might use 10-12 mics to capture the drums but only use 6 tracks to record. Granted, the more mics you have the more problems with phasing etc., but it can work if you're careful with gating and bla bla bla.......I'm rambling.
 
Well, I usually use a track for DI on the bass guitar,
usually amp the bass as well,
at least one scratch track of lead guitar,
and a lead vocal.

While I have not become a fan of top and bottom
snare, two on the kick seems to work for me.

So with your six, I get ten, with a couple more,
I end up in the 12 to 14 range.
 
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