4 Mics On Drums

lurgan liar

lurgan liar

Jimmy Page XXVIII
Ok ... simple question regarding micing up a drum kit...

When i record drums i use 4 Mono Tracks

Kick - Mono - Panned Centre

Snare - Mono - Panned Centre

Left Overhead - Mono - Panned Hard Left

Right Overhead - Mono - Panned Hard Right

Here is my question...

Should I be arming the tracks for recording like this???


Kick - Mono - Panned Centre

Snare - Mono - Panned Centre

Left Overhead - Stereo - Panned Hard Left

Right Overhead - Stereo - Panned Hard Right
 
lurgan liar said:
Is there any particular reason for this SSScientist? What are the benfits?
Click to expand...

Recording each mic to a different track has unlimited benefits and at the moment I am unable to determine any negatives.
 
lurgan liar said:
My question was ... should i be recording the overheads in stereo or mono...
Click to expand...

I would record them to separate mono tracks to facilitate easier changes in panning/levels later. For example, if the drums sound too wide with the overheads hard-panned, you could put them closer to the center without having to break down your stereo track.
 
sometimes i like to offset the snare a little in the mix, i pan a tid bit to the left.

but you should leave them as mono tracks. i dont pan all the way either, i pan like 70 each way.
 
Yup...mono.

And, for me, I pan my OH's to about 65 and 70. Seems more realistic to my ears.

Lately, I've been adding a room mic about 3 ft out and 9 ft up to catch a bit more sizzle and have added a mic for each tom to blend in with the OH's later.

But that's just me. :)
 
You could record both overheads on one stereo track, but 2 mono's is better IMO. You can do some cool stuff with 2 mono tracks.

You might want to send all those tracks to a stereo bus specifically used for drums, because that allows you to add stereo effects to all the drum tracks.
 
You can do it either way, but the techniques is slightly different.
If you are recording them as a truely stereo setup, then you hard pan them L&R and record them to a stereo track. This will give you a *static* stereo image. The catch is that the quality or nature of that stereo image will depend upon the mic setup (is it X/Y, non-coincident pair. etc?)

You can, however, also record them as seperate mono tracks. Doing it this way gives you the option of widening/tightening the pan width as wide as you wish - hard panning overheads is not a guaranteed setting in my book. It also gives a bit better control over positioning the OHs on the sound stage. Maybe your drums and OHs are always imaged around the center pan, but that may not always be the case. What happens if you want your drum kit slightly offset from center symmetry (sooner or later you'll want or need to do that)? One can't just pan the stereo track left or a right with the same end effect as one gets with mono track positioning.

G.
 
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