I've lost my perspective.

[getuhgrip]

I've been setting up my studio for 2 years now. Getting a good recording on my drums are the only thing still eluding me. It's a small room at 12 X 13.
I'm playing Mapex ProM's and have tried a boat load of different heads and tunings but can't get the big thump I want out of my toms or the clean sound I want from my snare.
I feel like I need to just pull all the heads off and start over with a fresh persprctive.

Small room, five mic's. Any thoughts on getting tight, big sounds from toms and snare?

[Buck62]

What mics are you using?

How is the room set up?.... Do you have Auralex, blankets, or bare walls?

Are you sure it's the drums themselves that don't sound that good, or just the way you're recording them?

[getuhgrip]

Bare walls still. sm58 on da bass, sm57 between snare and hihat, atm25 between toms, pair of 603s as overheads and a v67 about 5' in front at about 4' high as a room mic.

I think my biggest problem is chasing tunings around a small room. I bought a few drum triggers several months ago and am tempted to find a brain box and dead heads for a triggered set.

[Gidge]

if you cant do any type of room treatment to make the room sound better, you may want to consider deadening it some......hanging blankets around the kit seems pretty common

http://homerecording.com/bbs/search....der=descending

I put in drums and blankets into the search and got the above results........

Also try to get it right with 2 or 3 mics before moving more in....phasing issues are a bitch....

Id put the ATM 25 on the kick, the sm57 on the snare and the 603's overhead.....if you want a really good kick sound, double mic the kick with the sm58(screen off) inside and the atm25 on the outside a bit out front.......

[detuned6]

Gidge, how come you say to take off the screen on the sm58? this does not damage the mic (interms of increasing the spl?) ?

[Gidge]

for the reason, I really dont like sm58's....the ball colors the sound somewhat, but this is a personalopinion only......even for vocals, Id rather have a pop screen that that damn ball.....so in a situation where id usually use a sm57 and only a sm58 is available, id always recommend taking the ball off, making it essentially the same mic.....as far as SPL's, no worry there....you can stick that baby dead on a Marshall stack on 12......

[getuhgrip]

Gets worse Ed. Ceilings are 7 foot! I'm building a new house in the next two years that will accomodate a real theater and studio, but for now I'm stuck. I'm, really leaning heavy towards electronic drums anyway. I can't get a beefy tom or snare sound I want with any heads that I've tried.

If I coulda just won some of that PowerBall!

[getuhgrip]

Gidge, that thread by Bruce gave me a hard on when he first wrote it. Just a bit out of my league.

[getuhgrip]

I'm not going to replace this set with an electronic set. I'm thinking I may experiment with triggers on them and some cheapie brain box. I dunno. I just bought the Mapexs' and I've only got two years max to suffer the small room.

Mic placement isn't yeilding the dramatic change/effect I need, so I'm in search of heads suited to conversion, some kind of module and looking into a way to trigger cymbals.

[Tim Brown]

Okay, here comes Mr. Unorthodox....I'm the dissenting vote here.
What size drums do you have?
What kind of heads do you have?
Give me some examples of what you're looking for as far as drumsound (Start nameing bands and songs).

I had my kit tuned down really low, and had all this stuff close mic'd, gated, compressed, the whole 9 yards, and I was REALLY unhappy with the drumsound. I cranked the heads down pretty tight, I Mic my pair of kicks, my snare, and use a pair of overheads (only because my guitarist is whining about "Come on man, make it stereo! Please, I want the toms to pan when you do a roundhouse!"-(I never heard it calld a "roundhouse" before either what a freaking dork!) normally I would use ONE overhead.)

Anyway,

Here's where I'm unorthodox...invest in a "tension watch". I use a neary drumtorque, but so many complain that it's "cheating", but for me, it allows me to put the exact same tension on each head, every time...a no brainer, and anything that makes my life easier is a positive in my book...Yes, I can tune my kit without the neary, but I can't tune them in complete silence, while the neary allows me to tune them without hearing them.

On the toms. I use 5 on the batters, and 10 on the resonant heads.

On the Kicks I use 5 on the Batter and 5 on the resonant.

On the snare I use 10 on the Resonant, and 25 on the batter, then I crnak each Batter lug 1 to 2 full turns at each lug....depending upon how tight I want the snare.


The first step, is getting the kit to sound good, with itself.
I've recorded in some god-awful places, and gotten some decent results.

The kind of sound I'm telling you about, is going to definitely be "in your face", and aggressive sounding.
The toms will sound kind of "tympani-ish"..sort of like Hugh Jackman's toms from that band The Outfield...they'll cut through the mix very well, without being overbearing.


Tim

[swap]

maybe the room is too small and with bare walls ,each drum is heard on every mic, that happened to me, i have a small room, so i used less mics, and spent more time testing in many places to put those mics and decide where they sound good, i also put some blankets not always in walls, but i put it over the kick so the kick mic is a little bit isolated from the rest, i also eq´d a little bit more its not the perfect sound but its better than what i was getting, i actually only use 2 overheads plus kick, and souns ok to me, cause its small room i suppose, i´m a newbie remember that, so decide yourself....

[getuhgrip]

Tim, you're right about getting the set to sound decent before considering mic placement, and I don't think it's gonna happen.

Contrary to what I said earlier, I spent a few hours playing with a V-Club set today and I am going to go ahead and trade my Mapex set.
It's too easy to configure a bunch of different drums sounds without tuning or EQing. And that's what I need in my situation.

I played the V-Custom and V-Session but couldn't distinguish a difference in sound quality. The costlier sets felt better and the modules were a lot more intuitive. But for the money vs my needs the V-Club should fit the bill.

They had their kits going into Rolands drum monitor setup. I didn't think to ask, but will I harm my guitar amp with these electronic drums? For recording I'll be going straight into my Omni, but I know I'll want to be able to jam with CDs just for fun.

[Fishmed]

Originally posted by sonusman
You are going to have significant standing wave problems in a room that size unfortunately, and this is going to effect the low end a LOT in the overhead mics, and to a lesser extent on the close up mics.

The two things that are going to help you most achieve a decent sound on the overheads are:

1 - Try to keep the overheads as far away from walls as possible (hard to do in a room that small).

2 - Get the overheads fairly close to the drumset. I imagine that you dont' have ceilings any higher than 8 feet too, so, you might consider using your overhead out in front of the kit or behind the drummer at ear level. With short ceiling and using overhead, you get too much phase cancellation on the overhead if they are close to the ceiling, especially since the sound of a drum rises up from the drum. By putting the "ambiant" mics in front or behind the set, and fairly close, you cut down on the reflected sound hitting the mic, and the out of phase freq's will be much lower in volume, thus, you are less prone to have high percentages of reverse phase present at the mic.

This is still not the greatest solution, but probably the best you are going to do. I quit micing OVER the kit in rooms with ceilings less than 9 or 10 feet because my overheads always sound so dull. I started going in front or behind the kit and am getting much better results provided that I can:

a) keep the mics a good distance away from all walls
b) capture the proper tom/snare/cymbal balance I want
c) retain a good stereo image of the drum set.

I am willing to give up a bit of imaging to keep the mics away from the walls, and willing to give up a bit too so I can get a good balance on things. Balance is really what it is all about. Balance is very hard to get though if you have a lot of room phase issues on the ambiant mics. Actually, a XY pattern in front of the kit might be your best bet here. Raise of lower the mics to achieve better balance between toms and cymbals. You will find the sweet spot at some point.

Man, that is really a small room though....I feel for ya'......

Ed

You think that room is small... My drum booth is about 8' X 6' with a ceiling around 7'. The overheads are in a XY pattern, mounted on the ceiling, so they are 3" below it and about 1" to 2" off the wall. In fact, the front of the kick drum is 3" from the wall. I have the room treated with accoustic ceiling tiles on the ceiling AND all the walls. Cymbal set up seems to be my biggest problems with drummers.

[getuhgrip]

3" from the wall?! Damn, that's tight! Where's the door?

I sold the Mapex set and was going to go with the V-Clubs. I'm having second thoughts and considering the Concert Cast set and a $300ish module.

Any comments?

[Fishmed]

Originally posted by getuhgrip
3" from the wall?! Damn, that's tight! Where's the door?

I sold the Mapex set and was going to go with the V-Clubs. I'm having second thoughts and considering the Concert Cast set and a $300ish module.

Any comments?

The door is on one of the 8' walls. The door swings out of course. If I move the snare and high-hat, the room becomes a vocal booth.

[vox]

Originally posted by getuhgrip


will I harm my guitar amp with these electronic drums? For recording I'll be going straight into my Omni, but I know I'll want to be able to jam with CDs just for fun.

The speaker of a guitar amp isn't usually designed to handle high volume, high speaker excursion, low frequency sounds like a kick drum produces, you might actually be better of with a relatively high powered pair of speakers from a stereo system or just using phones. Some drum modules actually have a CD input jack so that you can jam along with a CD in the phones.

[getuhgrip]

I've been looking at this 60watt keyboard amp by Roland for $269. Whatta ya think about that?

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/.../base_id/35243