two-track recording drums

[rats]

Is anyone experienced in two-track recording a live drums set? Well I am faced with this challenge and trying to make a call on which route to go. My problem is that I won't have a real lot of time to experiment with different configurations so I want to have maybe two or three different set up options when we start tracking.

When I say two track I'm saying two MONO tracks so there willl be no option of stereo seperation.

I'll have on hand 4 or 5 dynamic mics and a condenser mic. I was thinking about keeping it simple, maybe a dynamic on the snare, a dynamic on the kick, and two over heads? But say I was going to do something like this, which should I combine together on a track, the kick/snare and OH/OH or OH/snare and OH/kick? It would seem like the kick and snare would be most beneficial to have seperation between but I don't know.

[Shailat]

I'm not sure I understand your problem.
If you have a mixer, why not close mic the kit and send it to the two tracks pre mixed?

2 OH panned left/right
Snare and kick center
Toms balanced between the left right
Send all this to the two tracks.

[soundprizm]

You can get a pretty decent sound with 2 mics. Depends on what kind of sound you want. I've done a song with 2 mics for the drums. The sound that I got fit perfect for the song. If you would like to check it out go to http://www.mp3.com/Nation_Earth. It's the song title "Time". It was done with a CAD NDM11 on the kic and a Sennheiser MD735 for an overhead.

[jgourd]

If you are going to use just 2 on the drums, try overhead & kick or overhead and snare combinations until you get it just right. There are some neat ricks you can do with micing a drum set from a distance that can help the overhead (or front) mics evenly pick up the whole kit.

[memriloc]

jgourd - There may be, but I've never been inclined to do any of them....Now if it's alisons or ambers...well...that's another story...lol

[rats]

When I say two track recording I'm saying that yes I can pre-mix the mics and can use up to 8 mics (but I don't have eight mics, so lets's just say up to six mics). I'm afraid of pre-mixing for some reason. For one thing, the mixer and everything is in the same small room as the drums so it's a real bitch to get a good mix. It's like, "OK drummer, play..." record...I fiddle with the faders, compressor and EQ, "OK stop", rewind, listen, OK this sucks, "OK drummer, play" record, fiddle with faders. EQ, compressor, etc.... you see what I mean.

[Track Rat]

Back in my eight track days, I used to do mono drums in three tracks; kick, snare and a submix of the toms/overheads. even if I fucked up the balance between the toms and cymbals a bit, I still had controll over the kick and snare so I could make it work.
By the way, sorry it's taking so long on your remix but I was having problems all over the place. I found the missing files finally, they were in another folder. Then I was having a problem with CEP (the version that came with my old Gina card) so I had to convert all the files from the 32 bit format that CEP uses to 24 so I could import it all into Cakewalk. Seems like it took forever. I'll actually get started mixing today.

[pratt]

Originally posted by rats
When I say two track recording I'm saying that yes I can pre-mix the mics and can use up to 8 mics (but I don't have eight mics, so lets's just say up to six mics). I'm afraid of pre-mixing for some reason. For one thing, the mixer and everything is in the same small room as the drums so it's a real bitch to get a good mix. It's like, "OK drummer, play..." record...I fiddle with the faders, compressor and EQ, "OK stop", rewind, listen, OK this sucks, "OK drummer, play" record, fiddle with faders. EQ, compressor, etc.... you see what I mean.

I recorded drums like this for a good while prior to getting more than 2 inputs (and I did it alone most of the time!!).....look at it this way - you either spend time getting a good drum sound/mix prior to recording your tracks or you do it after...

submixing to 2 tracks just forces you to be absolutely sure that you're getting a good mix and are happy with the sound....'cause it's too bad if you don't like the sound that you got

it's not the worst situation to be in....

[rats]

Tracky - check your PM!

Pratt- yeah I suppose it's not the worst situation to be in, but it still makes it difficult. The last three songs my band recorded had our drummer play one drum at a time while we recorded him 5 times on 5 seperate tracks. That sucked. We did have good control over the seperate drums but it was very awkward.

[Shailat]

Try using 5 mics like this:
Kick - 1 mic
Snare - 1 mic
OH - 2 mics Pan them to the left- right using a X,Y or "/\" formation
to enable a wide stereo image.

Then use the Condensor as a "room" ambience mic. ( move it around from back of the kit to in front to find the best placement- not to close to the kit).
Use the ambience to add some excitment to the sound by little by little adding the Ambiance untill you get the right balance.

[rats]

Hmmm. Now that sounds interesting. I'll give a whirl and post what I come up with in the clinic for you all to laugh at.