Home studio drum recording - eclectic, busy music, feedback wanted

thanks - I've never tried that. If I've had a 2nd BD mic it's always been placed on the batter side. The one inside gives you that extra click then.

Thats right, the closer you place it, generally more click and less bottom end. There is always a magic spot so you need to move it in and out of the drum.

The mic on the inside picks up the beater better than having a mic on the pedal side, when you think about it it's only the drum skin isolating the beater sound, and having it inside the drum lets you position the mic in a much better place.

I use the sub kick to pick up more air pressure to move the speakers and add sub to the kick, by blending the inside mic and the sub kick (speaker) you can add low end body. I have also set up with a D112 inside the kick and a large Diaphragm condenser on the outside instead of the sub kick speaker. This has a different sound but still picks up extra low end of the kick drum.

Alan.
 
By the way, Snare, I always used to use a SM57 on snare, I have a modified one with no transformer which is supposed to sound better, I don't know really but I have one. Te one advantage of taking out the transformer is the mic signal level comes down a bit which means you don't have to pad the snare signal. I also have a standard SM57 that sometimes got the job. However I bought a CAD TSM411 on special one day (as you do LOL) tried it on the snare and YES, its now the go too mic for snare great sound and it seem to have better rejection of sounds around the snare, and you can get it cheap too.

Alan
 
I pretty much quit worrying about kick drum sound via mics. I went through the whole tunnel building and multiple mic setup. Now I just use a D112 and Steven Slate Trigger. Saves so much time and money...
 
I pretty much quit worrying about kick drum sound via mics. I went through the whole tunnel building and multiple mic setup. Now I just use a D112 and Steven Slate Trigger. Saves so much time and money...

Love my Slate Trigger. And yes, sometimes for brevity with quality sake it's whats on the plate. If it's my intention from the get-go to 'replace' I use an Audix D4. It bleeds NOTHING
 
I would close-mic the snare with the Sennheiser. MD421 is "snare". Roll the ring to 'speech' just for fun.

I would spot mic your toms with the 58's and the 57 but not necessarily on top or in tight. You're going to get "impact" from the overheads. But the toms will decay rather quickly over the time in this distance. (make sense?) So a spot mic specifically tailored to the tone of each tom. You won't need a lot....just to enhance the overhead capture and give you something @ mix.

The 414 should be a room mic.

Thanks alot cavedog101 and everyone who's been weighing in. Cavedog - I really appreciate the specifics of your comment, gives me a lot to think about. Where do you usually place the room mic (414)? When you talk about micing the toms but say "not necessarily on top or in tight", do you mean mic them from underneath? If so, this would need to be close, no?
Interesting that you really like the 421 on the snare as so many like the 441. I had pretty good luck with a 57 on top and the 441 on the snares but it did require some EQing, which would be nice to avoid if possible.

[MENTION=50954]witzendoz[/MENTION] - I'm really interested in the subkick thing. This is brand new for me so I"m still trying to wrap my head around how to do it.

My approach up to now RE: triggering is that I'm trying to record the best sound I can and if later I feel it's lacking, that's when I turn to a trigger.
 
- I'm really interested in the subkick thing. This is brand new for me so I"m still trying to wrap my head around how to do it.

Basically a subkick is a speaker that has a XLR cable attached. For example if you took the female end off a mic cable and then soldered the wires to the speaker. Rd to the speaker positive and the Black (sometimes white) along with the shield to the speaker negative. This makes an unbalanced mic out of the speaker. Don't worry about it being unbalanced as the signal from the speaker is much louder than a mic so if there is any noise from the unbalanced cable (which I don't think anyway) it will be very low in the noise floor. If you mic inputs do not have a pad, you may need to pad the signal from the speaker, I have an inline -30dB pad, but a -15 or -20 will probably do it. You can pad the input by using a few resistors if you are soldering savvy, this site is useful Link

By the way I use a 10" speaker that I had laying around, but you can use a 4" 6" or 8" what ever you have.

Alan.
 
Thanks alot cavedog101 and everyone who's been weighing in. Cavedog - I really appreciate the specifics of your comment, gives me a lot to think about. Where do you usually place the room mic (414)? When you talk about micing the toms but say "not necessarily on top or in tight", do you mean mic them from underneath? If so, this would need to be close, no?
Interesting that you really like the 421 on the snare as so many like the 441. I had pretty good luck with a 57 on top and the 441 on the snares but it did require some EQing, which would be nice to avoid if possible.

[MENTION=50954]witzendoz[/MENTION] - I'm really interested in the subkick thing. This is brand new for me so I"m still trying to wrap my head around how to do it.

My approach up to now RE: triggering is that I'm trying to record the best sound I can and if later I feel it's lacking, that's when I turn to a trigger.

I do like the 441 on snare and I do have one but rarely if ever use it for that anymore. I have much better choices these days. But for your kit and description of the style, the 421 is going to give you more 'body' on the snare just micing from the top and also I feel that in an "okay" room that the 441 would be a better choice as a "look-in" mic from the front of the kit....sort of another enhancement of the overheads kit sound in general.
The 414 as a room mic should be placed where you hear the 'focus' of the kit come together in the room. This means someone playing while you walk around and listen. You'll know it when you hear it. Use it in Omni.

You can mic the toms from the bottom. Again, these mics are simply a tonal enhancement for the overhead kit sound. Because the the toms will decay fairly quickly in the overs imagery, these will be just to add some more tom direct sound to the mix. You really won't have to turn them up too much just capture each toms tonality. So these mics will be carefully EQ'd to each tom they are enhancing. Like I said, the impact on the hit will come from the overheads.

I too, use a 57 on most of my snare tops. But my 57's are all made in the 60's and sound a whole lot different than what you find these days. I also like a Beyer 201 on the snare top but will only use it with a very accurate drummer. An Audix i5 is also a good snare mic. But my suggestions were based on what you have and your general description of the room and what the sessions will be like.

As has been suggested....tuning and placement in the room are number one before you ever string a cable.
 
Basically a subkick is a speaker that has a XLR cable attached. For example if you took the female end off a mic cable and then soldered the wires to the speaker. Rd to the speaker positive and the Black (sometimes white) along with the shield to the speaker negative. This makes an unbalanced mic out of the speaker. Don't worry about it being unbalanced as the signal from the speaker is much louder than a mic so if there is any noise from the unbalanced cable (which I don't think anyway) it will be very low in the noise floor. If you mic inputs do not have a pad, you may need to pad the signal from the speaker, I have an inline -30dB pad, but a -15 or -20 will probably do it. You can pad the input by using a few resistors if you are soldering savvy, this site is useful Link

By the way I use a 10" speaker that I had laying around, but you can use a 4" 6" or 8" what ever you have.

Alan.

I have built several sub-kiks. The best suggestion I have for their use is to use a transformer based DI on the output. It serves the same as a pad but also adds that bit of "iron" to the signal. I finally wound up with a 5" Fender guitar speaker from some little practice amp and built it into a 6" Tama timbale so I would have the mounting hardware to adapt to most drum stands and clamps.
 
This is really great info from everyone, thanks.

Cavedog, when micing the toms from underneath, isn't BD bleed an issue?
What I also find really interesting is that my approach in the past to micing toms has been to use what I see as my best, most versatile mics on these, hence my choice to put the 414 on the high toms and the 421 on the floor tom. Your approach seems to be more to put those "better" (I realize that this is completely subjective as some swear by 57s & 58s - BTW, mine are from the 70s) mics in the room. I assume that is a conscious decision - to use the color and tone of those mics to get the room/kit sound as a whole while leaving the Shures on the toms. Or am I reading too much into this ;-p ?
 
This is really great info from everyone, thanks.

Cavedog, when micing the toms from underneath, isn't BD bleed an issue?
What I also find really interesting is that my approach in the past to micing toms has been to use what I see as my best, most versatile mics on these, hence my choice to put the 414 on the high toms and the 421 on the floor tom. Your approach seems to be more to put those "better" (I realize that this is completely subjective as some swear by 57s & 58s - BTW, mine are from the 70s) mics in the room. I assume that is a conscious decision - to use the color and tone of those mics to get the room/kit sound as a whole while leaving the Shures on the toms. Or am I reading too much into this ;-p ?

No. That's it in a nutshell. There are several schools of thought on that and this one in your case is mine. There are others who have suggested using the best mics, the U87's as your overheads and get the "kit" sound from there whilst enhancing the kik and snare specifically. This is my belief too. I feel if you do your diligence on tuning the kit and placing it in your room properly you probably could get what you want with the overheads a spot mic on the snare, one in the kik and a couple of room mics.

So just for fun lets look at a mic as the device it is. We can use the Shures as examples since they are as simple as it gets. And this is in answer to your question about "bleed" which may or may not be your friend. A mic has a pattern. Each one is very specific to itself as well as the brand, the type of mic, and it's design electrically. In each mic's pattern there are areas of response both frequency-wise and sensitivity-wise. There is also an area called a "null"....especially on cardioid patterns. So think for minute where this might be used most effectively to cut down or eliminate bleed. The Shures, both 57 and 58's have a tremendous null area at the rear of their pattern. So if you are micing "up" from the bottom of the tom as well as using a minimal amount of gain (Like I splained earlier....these aren't meant to capture anything other than the tone of the tom not the impact) what is likely going to be eliminated in their capture?

Have fun . Experiment. You may find you will need nothing more than the room mics and the overheads with a single snare top and inside kik for impact.

These things are what I particularly love about doing drums. My studio has been set up to do the hard stuff the best. Drums and vocals.
 
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Basically a subkick is a speaker that has a XLR cable attached. For example if you...

How do you mount this to place in front of the BD? I have a few desktop mic stands but not sure how to get the Subkick to affix to that. Also, did I understand correctly that it's not critical that the speaker is in really good shape?
 
No. That's it in a nutshell. There are several schools of thought on that and this one in your case is mine. There are others who have suggested using the best mics, the U87's as your overheads and get the "kit" sound from there whilst enhancing the kik and snare specifically. This is my belief too. I feel if you do your diligence on tuning the kit and placing it in your room properly you probably could get what you want with the overheads a spot mic on the snare, one in the kik and a couple of room mics.

So just for fun lets look at a mic as the device it is. We can use the Shures as examples since they are as simple as it gets. And this is in answer to your question about "bleed" which may or may not be your friend. A mic has a pattern. Each one is very specific to itself as well as the brand, the type of mic, and it's design electrically. In each mic's pattern there are areas of response both frequency-wise and sensitivity-wise. There is also an area called a "null"....especially on cardioid patterns. So think for minute where this might be used most effectively to cut down or eliminate bleed. The Shures, both 57 and 58's have a tremendous null area at the rear of their pattern. So if you are micing "up" from the bottom of the tom as well as using a minimal amount of gain (Like I splained earlier....these aren't meant to capture anything other than the tone of the tom not the impact) what is likely going to be eliminated in their capture?

Have fun . Experiment. You may find you will need nothing more than the room mics and the overheads with a single snare top and inside kik for impact.

These things are what I particularly love about doing drums. My studio has been set up to do the hard stuff the best. Drums and vocals.

Thanks, this is really good info. You mentioned putting the 421 in speech mode - just for fun/experimentation or have you had specific results with that on a snare?
 
How do you mount this to place in front of the BD? I have a few desktop mic stands but not sure how to get the Subkick to affix to that. Also, did I understand correctly that it's not critical that the speaker is in really good shape?

My speaker holds onto the stand via the magnet with a piece of wood stopping it sliding down the stand lol, sometimes you just have to become inventive, the speaker does not have to be in perfect condition.

Alan
 
Couldn't resist showing my low tech setup.

The speaker holds onto the stand via the magnet, the wood block stops it sliding down. This subkick works amazingly well.

Alan.

IMG_4042.JPGIMG_4043.JPG

Don't know why the photos turned 90 deg LOL. Also this was a temporary setup, that I put together about 4 years ago :rolleyes:
 
This is pretty cool - if I can't come up with something else, I'm sure I can jimmyrig something like this.

Our stick player just found an old guitar amp in his attic, so we're going to try to rig up one of those speakers.

So you use the subkick outside the resonance head, I assume slightly off to one side and place your "good" mic inside the BD, close to the beater, correct?
 
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