Best way to record drums with only 4 inputs?

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mattdee1

New member
I have a Presonus Firebox, which has 4 inputs, and my bandmates and I were trying to figure out the best way to record drums under this limitation (upgrading to a unit with more inputs won’t happen for some time).

Those familiar with the Firebox know that only two of the inputs are pre-amped. We use our external Mackie board to pre-amp the other two. I know, I know… not optimal, but that’s what we’re stuck with for now.

We’ve basically agreed to allocate the inputs as follows:

- top of snare
- bottom of snare
- kick drum
- overhead

Both snare mics are 57’s, the overhead is some Apex large diaphragm condenser that my bass player has, and for the kick we will use an actual kick drum mic, which I assume is intended more for live applications (not even sure of the make, but certainly nothing high end). We plan to start by positioning the overhead about 3 feet above the cymbals, shifted slightly towards the ride cymbal side.

The LDC has a selector switch on its power supply that allows one to select the detection pattern (cardioid, figure 8, etc). Haven’t experimented much with that yet, but figured we’d start with cardioid.

I’m sure everybody has suggestions on what mics I should buy to get the best sound, and that’s fine, but what I’m really asking is for input from experienced people on where they would position their mics on a basic drumkit (only 2 rack toms, floor tom, ride, 2 crashes, snare, hi-hat) if they were limited to 4 inputs. Are we on the right track? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Oh, and not sure if this matters, but our sound is all over the place. It ranges from grungy 90’s Nirvana-type stuff to bluesy 70’s-rock-inspired stuff, with the odd shameless major-key pop tune thrown in to sweeten the pot.

Thanks
MattDee
 
mattdee1 said:
We’ve basically agreed to allocate the inputs as follows:

- top of snare
- bottom of snare
- kick drum
- overhead
Click to expand...

If you can get the necessary mics (either another LDC or a pair of SDC's), you'll be way better off going

*top of snare
*kick
*L overhead
*R overhead

A single overhead won't give you a stereo spread, and since your kick and snare conventionally go right down the middle, this will give you a mono drum picture. Sure, there's no reason you can't record drums in mono if you really WANT to, but most people don't.

Google Recorderman or Glyn Johns for suggestions on getting a great drum sound out of four mics - these surely aren't the only way to go but they're great starting points. Also start thinking about the room you're tracking in...
 
assuming you dont want a stereo drum sound, just go for it and see waht happens - but you probably dont really need to double mic the snare. if you want just throw that second 57 up there and use it as a second overhead, and try and find a balance between it and that LDC you have. maybe pan em a bit for a stereo sound if you want.
 
This is exactly the type of feedback I was looking for, thanks guys.

We'll definitely go looking for another condenser mic and try the dual overhead method.

Question: could one of those x-y mics be used to get a stereo overhead, or are separate mics generally preferred? I don't have an x-y of course, but if that is a good technique I might consider investigating it some day.

Also, any tips on how to "fine tune" the positioning of the 57 when using it on a snare? Or is this a trial and error thing?


MattDee
 
As everyone stated, generally you would hope for a kick, snare, two overheads situation. The only problem is you don't have a pair suitable for the overheads. Maybe you could rent another Apex or two suitable small diaphram condensers.

If this is out of the question (going with what ya got) then I would probably do kick, snare, mono overhead, and a 57 to play with. Maybe near the toms (between the two main ones) or a room mic.

Let us know how it comes out!

Tony Laughlin
Audio Engineer/Promoter
www.grooveboxmusic.com
 
I would use 1 snare top
2 kick
3 left of kit 3 to 4 ft high aiming in at throne.
4 right of kit 3 to 4 ft high aiming in at the throne.
GT
 
If you could get hold of a device with analog in and s/dif out, for example an old DAT machine, you could get 2 more inputs and have 6 channels.

Cheers

Alan.
 
I'd suggest Stereo overheads as well, mono drums sound pretty boring unless it's an artistic decision you made to have mono drums.
 
If you go with one mic on the snare, (and I agree that you should) and you're not getting the sound you want, try micing the side (shell) of the snare. This doesn't get mentioned much, but sometimes it can be just the ticket.
 
glenn taylor said:
I would use 1 snare top
2 kick
3 left of kit 3 to 4 ft high aiming in at throne.
4 right of kit 3 to 4 ft high aiming in at the throne.
GT
Click to expand...

I would think that you would get some real thin cymbal sounds this way... unless instead of right or left of kit, you mean right/front and left/front.
 
this is all preference, but when I was recording drums with my band our setup varied depending on the song.

We always mic the snare and bass drum (you should have a hole cut out of the front head), with the snare mic moved around a bit depending on the snare sound we want and then move the overheads around the room. Sometimes 1 behind the drummer, 1 in front of the set. Sometimes 1 pointed at the set from the front in the center at about chest level, and the other about 2-3 feet back about 6ft high off center left or right about a half foot.

Sometimes just standard left and right sides of the kit about 8 feet off the ground. I think it really comes down to what drum sound you want for a particular song.

Our drummer only uses a snare, kick, 1 16in floor tom, a crash and ride, and then a tamborine and maybe a shaker. Not a lot to mic, but we ended up with the sounds we wanted per song, and with some eq-ing on each one per song, we were happy with all the results. We also play a lot of different styles, from hip-hop to funk to indie rock to punk to like beatles style pop.
 
Wow, old thread. :)

Since I started this thread, I'll chime in with what has happened in the meantime.

As a reminder, the available mics are:

- 2 x SM57
- 1 x Apex LDC
- 1 x some dynamic kick drum mic that I still don't know the name of

The space is a carpeted longish rectangular basement (probably approx. 12 ft x 35 ft or so) with old wood-paneled walls and drop tile ceiling. We took every blanket and cushion in the house and scattered them about in an attempt to deaden the room a bit.

Normally while jamming, the drums are tucked away in a corner of the room. For these recording sessions, we moved them out into the room (not nearly centered in the rectangle, just 10-12 feet out into the room), the thought being that the corner position would have too much crappy reflection off the wood panels. Question: is this the right approach (under the circumstances)?

Anyway, we did lots and lots of experimenting with the stereo overheads as suggested here but couldn't get a usable result. This probably has a lot to do with trying to make a mismatched stereo pair out of an LDC with a 57, our less-than-ideal acoustic space, lack of adequate experience, whatever.

The most annoying problem we encountered was the LDC would always pick up waaaay too much of the cymbals, and it sounded awful. I know our drummer doesn't have the best sounding cymbals on earth, but they don't sound annoying when you listen live.

The only way we could get around that problem was to move the LDC way out into the room, at which point it captured a fairly nice full kit sound without the harsh/annoying sustain on the cymbals.

For the kick, we pointed the mic in the sound hole and aimed it in the direction of the beater, but slightly off axis. Sounds pretty good.

The snare was another big problem. We tried all kinds of mic positions to capture the top, bottom, and side (with a 57) and it always sounded like dump. Mic'ing more towards the top would always sound dull and flat, more towards the bottom would always be too raspy and harsh. I found that using two mics on the snare (top and bottom), reversing the phase on the bottom one, and blending to taste provided the best result.

Lastly, since the room mic was so far out, I had to experiment with manually shifting it in Cubase by a few milliseconds to get better phase coherence with the close mics.

The overall sound is still not where I'd like it to be but we were able to obtain some usable results this way. I'd post some examples but all of the data is on the PC at the jam space and I don't have the latest versions here.

Matt
 
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