Recording Live Gigs & Rehearsals

L

LarBear

New member
I use a Zoom R-16 with 8 tracks of simultaneous recording. I have four tracks available for drums. I use an SM 57 for the snare, Audix D6 kick, and two Audix F15's as overheads or Audix D2 and D4 on the toms. The close miking on the toms sound great but the mics are so good there is very little bleed from the cymbals. If I use the F15's (cardioid condensers) as overheads I get plenty of cymbals but would like more toms.

For my next gig I'm considering going with the "recorder man" (Glyn Johns) technique. This will get the ride and floor tom up close, but the other mic is still going to be positioned fairly close to a crash.

I considered placing that overhead mic closer to the rack tom and hope the crash bleeds through, or should I not mess with the recorder man technique? I know for sure the snare could end up off-center the entire night

As a last resort, I could plug a stereo condenser into my BOSS BR recorder and record the overheads separately, placing the D2 and D4 on the toms, and synching the overheads up later.

Any and all suggestions welcome.
 
Hey there.

I've used the GJ recording technique for many recordings and I dig the sound it gets. It may not give you the 'up close' toms that you may
want, but if you only have 4 mics the GJ is fine. You need to be careful when you place your mics, as I'm sure you are aware, as they need to be a certain distance
from the drums and the other mics. But I love this style.

I'm a massive fan of the 60's sound, so if that's the style of band your mixing/recording then just use the textbook GJ technique.

I do have a trick i like using, if you have a fig 8 mic, use this under the snare - one side facing up to the bottom of the snare *at an angel,
with the other side of the fig 8 towards the beater of the kick pedal. This adds a great amount of tone and sound to your recording.

Let me know how it goes and how you end up recording it.

Cheers

Mitch
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Owner / Head Engineer
Jonestown Audio
 
Recording drums with a few mics is all about the drummer's technique. When listening to the kit in the room the loudest things should be the kick and snare. If the cymbals are too loud he should hit them softer. Placing the overheads closer to the drummer so they are not on top of the cymbals can help if you still are getting too much cymbals after he adjust his technique.
 
Good advice so far.

I think you should try to use your Boss recorder to capture the toms in addition to the 4 channels available for drums on the Zoom. Channels 5&6 on the Zoom have phantom power and I'd use these with your stereo condensor set up for overheads.
 
Thanks Everyone.

dug dog said:
Good advice so far.

I think you should try to use your Boss recorder to capture the toms in addition to the 4 channels available for drums on the Zoom. Channels 5&6 on the Zoom have phantom power and I'd use these with your stereo condensor set up for overheads.
Click to expand...

The next gig is this weekend. Going to try the GJ method. Time permitting, I'm going to mic the toms and run those signals into the Boss BR. A good whack on the tom should provide a slate to line everything up in Cubase.
 
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