jazz drum recording

S

southpark

New member
im new to home recording and need some help with recording drums that sound airy but still have lots of dynamic like this: YouTube - ‪Black Dub - "I Believe In You" Live Off The Floor‬‏ ive been playing around with mic placements for a while now and believe its impossible to capture good drums with two mics since when i try, it always sounds like the mic is 50 feet away from the mic. im looking in to getting some new gear to help with this. need advice on some good mics and some placements to try. also if treating the recording area will help. im also on a budget so cheap mics(no more than $100) are all i can afford.
Cheers
Dan
 
You want to buy all your mics for under $100? That's going to be tough. Since you're doing jazz you can get away with less mics, but $100 is still a pretty tight budget. While the video you posted used minimal mics and still had a great sound, I'm sure they used some pretty expensive overheads. What mics do you already have?

I can see in the video they used at least two overheads and a snare mic, but probably a kick mic too. They get a lot of that "airy" sound by piling reverb on the overheads, which is a pretty easy trick to do (you just don't want to over-do it).

I've heard people get surprisingly good results from this $200 kit.

That kit is $100 more than you wanted to spend, but I wouldn't settle for anything less than that (even if you don't end up using all the mics). Another option would be to use whatever overheads you have right now in addition to the tom/snare mics from that kit (you could probably put one of those tom mics in your kick and use it as a trigger track as well).

It might help if you could post a sample of a recording you did with your current setup so we can give you some tips on how to improve it. Also, what interface are you using?
 
What is your current mic selection and what OH placement techniques have you tried? What exactly do you not like about the "sound" you are recording? The “50ft away sound” (a bit ambiguous), sounds like you have the OH too far above the kit (hard to do in most basement studios) or you may be experiencing phase issues (due to improper mic placement).

As for not being able to get good sounding drums using only 2 mics - I have to completely disagree with you on that. There are countless threads that talk about overhead placement - use the search feature and start with recorderman for example

Also, do not underestimate the value of acoustic treatment as it can (will) have dramatic effect on the overall sound of the kit in the room. If the kit sounds like crap in the room (caused by anyone or all of the following, bad room, bad tuning, bad drummer) you could have the best input chain in the world and all you’ll end up with is just better recorded crap sounding drums.

But if you want to try cheap mics, try these, only 35 bucks; that's about as cheap as you get. Don't know how they sound but...they were disccused on gearslutz. they got a not bad review

Shotgun-Shell-Omni-Condenser-Microphone
 
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actually i ment that i dont want to spend over $100 for each mic, not all together. im real interested in these nady rsm-5 for over heads. need opinions for a good cheap dynamic for snare(hope i can get one for like $50-60). was going to use my at2035 that i own now on kick because its pretty good at that and a mic i built from radio shack components on the hi hat. but still where are good mic placements for jazz.
im currently using a presonus usb audio box but im about to trade it in and get a presonus firestudio mobile.
i will try to make a recording with the setup i have now today or tomarrow because i have recently got a new computer and reloaded my os on my old one(aka all my recordings have been deleted)
 
southpark said:
actually i ment that i dont want to spend over $100 for each mic, not all together. im real interested in these nady rsm-5 for over heads. need opinions for a good cheap dynamic for snare(hope i can get one for like $50-60). was going to use my at2035 that i own now on kick because its pretty good at that and a mic i built from radio shack components on the hi hat. but still where are good mic placements for jazz.
im currently using a presonus usb audio box but im about to trade it in and get a presonus firestudio mobile.
i will try to make a recording with the setup i have now today or tomarrow because i have recently got a new computer and reloaded my os on my old one(aka all my recordings have been deleted)
Click to expand...

Okay, so that changes things a bit. I'd recommend an SM57 for your snare (it's what was used in that video you linked us to) which costs $100 new. You can find some pretty good used deals on SM57s since they are so popular, but I'd only buy from trusted dealers or from local music stores because SM57s can be faked pretty easily.

Your overhead mic options are pretty limitless, but just make sure you listen to samples of the mics before you buy.

About your interface: are you going to use a mixer to plug all your mics into and then take an L and R out to plug into your interface? I wouldn't recommend that. I'd instead go for a Tascam US-1800 rather than the FireStudio Mobile so you can have a separate track for each mic in your DAW. Since you have a specific drum sound in mind that you want to achieve, having separate tracks for each mic will give you a lot more flexibility when mixing.
 
actually u can put each mic in individually in the fire studio you just have to convert the mic to line levels(preamp)
thanks for the response.
Dan
 
no actually im using low to hi z converters. i might try and build a simple gain circuit to put in front though if im gonna be usein ribbon mics
 
Just out of curiosity, what type of drum heads are you using and how are they tuned? What's the room like? (big, med, small, wood floors, carpet....etc)
 
I'd use the 2035 as a mono overhead, then look at the GLS ES 57's/58 or if you can swing it go for a SM57 or Audix i5 for a little bit nicer.
 
IK Obi said:
I'd use the 2035 as a mono overhead, then look at the GLS ES 57's/58 or if you can swing it go for a SM57 or Audix i5 for a little bit nicer.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've used a 2035 as an overhead before and I think it can sound nice with some EQing. I'm not sure if the OP has a desire for stereo OHs or not, though.
 
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