Dude, WTF is your problem? You are taking this WAY too personally. It's not about "being cool". Being a fanboy has skewed your comprehension of what I said. Everything I do is about knowing where I come from. And since you brought it up, I don't come from Bonham, therefore it does not really matter to me how he recorded his drums. That's not a slam on the guy. I know Bonham is the greatest rock drummer of all time. Duh. My point was legends and rock and roll stories are embellished and mis-remembered. I believed the "only two mics in a stairwell" thing for a long time myself, then I didn't. I found information that made me think differently because it seemed more logical than an urban legend. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't change anything. The reality is that none of us are Bonham, none of us are playing his kit, and none of us are Bonham playing his kit at that point in time in a stairway of some english castle, so again, it doesn't really matter how Bonham recorded his drums.
recording drums with just one mic
- Thread starter Btyre2013
- Start date
Dude, WTF is your problem? You are taking this WAY too personally. It's not about "being cool". Being a fanboy has skewed your comprehension of what I said. Everything I do is about knowing where I come from. And since you brought it up, I don't come from Bonham, therefore it does not really matter to me how he recorded his drums. That's not a slam on the guy. I know Bonham is the greatest rock drummer of all time. Duh. My point was legends and rock and roll stories are embellished and mis-remembered. I believed the "only two mics in a stairwell" thing for a long time myself, then I didn't. I found information that made me think differently because it seemed more logical than an urban legend. Maybe I'm wrong, but it doesn't change anything. The reality is that none of us are Bonham, none of us are playing his kit, and none of us are Bonham playing his kit at that point in time in a stairway of some english castle, so again, it doesn't really matter how Bonham recorded his drums.
famous beagle
Well-known member
Wait ... huh?
R
RAMI
Guest
Didn't you know? Rock was invented in 1969, 2 years before the female orgasm.
Led Zep invented rock and roll right after they stole it from everyone else.
MrUserNameIV
SenselessActsOfCreation
Rock n roll was ripped off from rhythm and blues... Before the 60s...
MrUserNameIV
SenselessActsOfCreation
Art is subjective. Science is not.
R
RAMI
Guest
Wow! That's so enlightening, Captain Obvious. I actually thought rock was invented by Led Zep in 1969.
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R
RAMI
Guest
Totally irrelevant to the conversation. Nobody was talking subjectively about "art". Either Bohnam's drums were miced with close mics, or they weren't. It's not subjective. But nice try.
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famous beagle
Well-known member
Well, in hindsight, you're right. But before we can prove something, science can be subjective or speculative as well. Before they had any way to test it, they assumed that the earth was flat because that's what their senses told them.
Just like today, there are still plenty of things we don't fully understand, like dark energy, the interior of black holes, or what caused the big bang. So and theories on those types of things will certainly be speculative and subjective.
famous beagle
Well-known member
But in the world of quantum mechanics, they could be both close-miked and not close-miked.
If it's possible to get the drummer in before your session, have him/her play while you move around the room and carefully listen with your ears for the sound you want in different positions and place your mic there. Use the mic's response pattern to focus on the part of the kit you want to be prominent. With a live jazz trio in a 20 ft x20 ft somewhat dead live room I placed a cardioid condenser about 7 ft away & 7 ft high from the kit with good results. For the upright bass I used a blanket to control bleed from the drums (so that the players could maintain visual contact with another) condenser about 1/3 (in my case about 2+ ft.) the distance from the bass. The bass was somewhat 'boomy', so I positioned the mic's horizontal axis with vertical angle of the bass, directly where the strings were 'plucked', and the f-holes somewhat off-axis of the mic. I also picked up the midi output of the keyboard and replaced its sound with a sampled 9 foot German Steinway in the DAW. Musicians absolutely LOVED the results.
MikeyCanzonetta
New member
I apologize if I was rude.
I posted a picture of Andy Johns and myself. Andy was a good friend and co worker. He was the engineer who recorded that album (along with many other classics) and we've had many discussions on how he recorded it. He passed away about a year and a half ago and I miss him greatly.
Maybe I take it a bit personal when I'm talking about his work because I was so close to him. Again, I apologize.
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grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
According to Jimmy Page in the book "Light and Shade" about the drums on When the Levee breaks
when asked "How on earth did you get the drum sound on When the Levee breaks ?"
Levee is a total one off.
Page says he worked really hard with mic placements on drums during Zeppelin {he rates it as his major contribution as an engineer/producer} because he felt drums sounded crap in the 60s. His mantra was "distance = depth."
Obviously, I had much to learn !
I used to put three mics through a mic mixer, balance and then record on one track. Sometimes, it sounded good......until I mixed in everything else. I specifically moved over to digital and the ability to record on 8 tracks at once so I could capture the drums as I wanted {took a while though, through much trial and error}. Anyway, a few years back, I was recording with a friend in the warehouse of my workplace and in addition to my standard miking, I had a single crummy superlux mic rigged up in the back of one of the vans to act as a kind of poor man's room mic. It was about 8 or 9 feet away from the kit, about 4 feet off the ground, pointed somewhere between the the top of the bass drum and the top of the rack toms. Later, when I listened to the 9 or so songs we recorded that night, I could not believe that one mic. It sounded neat {to my ears}. It was better than the overheads and the kick was so clear and prominent. The snare had a lovely snap to it that I've rarely achieved.
It was a dynamic mic, to boot. Maybe if you have a dynamic and a condenser, you could set them up next to each other and see which sounds better.
For all that though, I wouldn't ever again record with just the one mic !
when asked "How on earth did you get the drum sound on When the Levee breaks ?"
Later, when asked if he regretted not stumbling on the sound sooner {it was one of the last tracks recorded for the album along with others that later ended up on "Physical Graffiti"} he said
I made the point in a thread a couple of years ago that for me, the significance of the drums on that song is that none of the drums on any of the other songs were recorded that way. Neither did they ever record any of the drums on any other song like that ever again, even though they recorded parts of "Houses of the holy" and "Physical Graffiti" at the same house.
Levee is a total one off.
Page says he worked really hard with mic placements on drums during Zeppelin {he rates it as his major contribution as an engineer/producer} because he felt drums sounded crap in the 60s. His mantra was "distance = depth."
When I started multi~tracking at home in '92 on four and eight tracks, I could never understand why the sound of the drums was never as good as it was back in the 80s on a shitty boom box ! I have tons of jams I recorded while on bass, circa '82~'84 and you can always hear every part of the drums so clearly. So it was a surprise when I found I couldn't achieve the same with vastly superior equipment.
Obviously, I had much to learn !
I used to put three mics through a mic mixer, balance and then record on one track. Sometimes, it sounded good......until I mixed in everything else. I specifically moved over to digital and the ability to record on 8 tracks at once so I could capture the drums as I wanted {took a while though, through much trial and error}. Anyway, a few years back, I was recording with a friend in the warehouse of my workplace and in addition to my standard miking, I had a single crummy superlux mic rigged up in the back of one of the vans to act as a kind of poor man's room mic. It was about 8 or 9 feet away from the kit, about 4 feet off the ground, pointed somewhere between the the top of the bass drum and the top of the rack toms. Later, when I listened to the 9 or so songs we recorded that night, I could not believe that one mic. It sounded neat {to my ears}. It was better than the overheads and the kick was so clear and prominent. The snare had a lovely snap to it that I've rarely achieved.
It was a dynamic mic, to boot. Maybe if you have a dynamic and a condenser, you could set them up next to each other and see which sounds better.
For all that though, I wouldn't ever again record with just the one mic !
BlairKubis
New member
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
Which bit did you miss ?
This is just a recording of us playing around in the jam room. I had one mic in the Heart of the kit and I think it covers the drums quite nice for it only being one recorded drum track.
https://soundcloud.com/john-miker-jr/recording-drums-with-one-mic-boys-of-summer-cover-ending
https://soundcloud.com/john-miker-jr/recording-drums-with-one-mic-boys-of-summer-cover-ending