Recording Drums

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I kind of agree with this. You can get a bleedin' good sound with one mic when placed 'accurately' but there are so many other factors, not least the way the drummer is actually playing.

That's the rub. I find, generally speaking, that the better the drummer and the better the control they have over the kit, the less mics the engineer needs because the less control he needs to exert.

IOW, The better the drums sound to your ears before miking, the less mics you'll probably need to get a decent sound.

Of course this is also genre- and production-dependent. If you're going for a custom stereo image for your drums or going for a Mountain Dew Headbanger audience, then throwing 147 mics on one li'l ol' drum kit is probably in order.

G.

 

[ALS]

I kind of agree with this. You can get a bleedin' good sound with one mic when placed 'accurately' but there are so many other factors, not least the way the drummer is actually playing. And if they're a snare thwacker but a bass drum tip toer and hi-hat ballet dancer {no offence intended - I just mean light and sensitive } then once that performance is down, you have no more control over it. Well, minimal control. At least by miking each drum, you have scope. You have choice. You retain a far greater measure of control. I think you can get good sounds with 1-100 mics on the drums. "It all depends", to use a well worn cop out.

lol ahh yes the hi-hat dancer. If I've worked with the drummer before and know that they really like the HH i won't mic the HH, even though i rarely mic the HH anyway since it bleeds through on everything.

yes if your mic placement is a train reck the recording is going to be a train reck. mic placement is key as stated above.

 

[Greg_L]

Record a sample.

Listen critically to the take, including any post-processing you intend.

Adjust mics or performance

record a sample.

Listen critically to the take, including any post-processing you intend.

Adjust mics or performance.

record a sample.

Listen critically to the take, including any post-processing you intend.....

Repeat this process until you are satisfied with the sound. There is no silver bullet. Rooms are different. Drums are different. Players are different. I guarantee that if you sat behind Gerg's drums, you wouldn't get Gerg's sound.

Hell, you probably couldn't even reach the hi hat.

Low hi-hats are for the gays!

 

[bouldersoundguy]

That's the rub. I find, generally speaking, that the better the drummer and the better the control they have over the kit, the less mics the engineer needs because the less control he needs to exert.

Agreed. If it sounds good then you just capture it as is. If it sounds not so good then you need to break it up into the constituent parts and reconstruct it. Divide and conquer.

A good sounding, well played kit will save many hours of mixing headaches.

 

[Dogbreath]

And to throw another miking technique into the midst...
http://www.blaxploitation.com/drums/

The Glyn Johns method...

 

[grimtraveller]

Nothing is a necessity except for one mic. You could record drums with one mic hanging on a string from the ceiling.

Sometimes, I'll just mic snare and kick and have one overhead which is directly over the snare, a couple of feet above the drummer. And I hang it from the ceiling ! I even have a few special hooks in to suspend it from ! Mind you, I use the lead {or is it the cable ?} rather than string. The three work surprizingly well. But I change from session to session.

 

[dastrick]

Sometimes, I'll just mic snare and kick and have one overhead which is directly over the snare, a couple of feet above the drummer. And I hang it from the ceiling ! I even have a few special hooks in to suspend it from ! Mind you, I use the lead {or is it the cable ?} rather than string. The three work surprizingly well. But I change from session to session.

I like to hang the drummer from the ceiling by his toes. You get a much more balanced sound.

 

[grimtraveller]

I like to hang the drummer from the ceiling by his toes. You get a much more balanced sound.

I've felt like doing that sometimes, but not by the toes. And not for a balanced sound, either.

 

[moresound]

I like to give a listen to the drummer for a while after they set up before placing any microphones. So as to get a feel of how I'm going to approach the task.
Each session and each drummer will play and be played differently.
After which I will visualize in my minds eye (ear) how the recording will sound before it happens and that will be the goal that I will shoot for.

 

[clivus]

thats exactly why I do use plenty of mics. I like to have as much control over the mix as possible. yes you can use just 3 mics, but if do you won't be able to have as much control over the mix as someone who has used 8 or more mics on the drums.

IMHO if the kit is good sounding and the player sensitive to the music you can get great drum tracks with minimum mics, that don't need a lot fixing in the mix.

 

[Greg_L]

Some of you are being a little too idealistic and romanticizing the process of recording drums. If you have the mics and inputs, use them. Use as many mics as possible. That doesn't mean you have to use every track in the final product. Any DAW or board has a mute track button.

 

[clivus]

Some of you are being a little too idealistic and romanticizing the process of recording drums. If you have the mics and inputs, use them. Use as many mics as possible. That doesn't mean you have to use every track in the final product. Any DAW or board has a mute track button.

Maybe so. I get amused when I hear big slammin drum tracks applied to music that just needs some tasteful accompaniment. Your point about muting unneeded material is well made. My point is that you can do it with less if you pay attention to what you are trying to accomplish, and not let gear and input limitations get totally in the way of recording good music.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Some of you are being a little too idealistic and romanticizing the process of recording drums. If you have the mics and inputs, use them. Use as many mics as possible. That doesn't mean you have to use every track in the final product. Any DAW or board has a mute track button.

The problem with that is the mic selection and miking techniques are often different between tracking a single drum kit with one, two, or three mics and tracking every surface of the kit with a different mic. One doesn't just slap 300 mics on an instrument and then mute 298 of them and expect to get the same sound as just using two mics specifically selected and placed to get a two-mic mix.

G.

 

[Greg_L]

The problem with that is the mic selection and miking techniques are often different between tracking a single drum kit with one, two, or three mics and tracking every surface of the kit with a different mic. One doesn't just slap 300 mics on an instrument and then mute 298 of them and expect to get the same sound as just using two mics specifically selected and placed to get a two-mic mix.

G.

That's why you prioritize the mics and use good techniques. I'm not saying to just stick mics everywhere. You set up with your minimal setup using the mics you want to use, and then you supplement those with the close mics in good spots. It's not rocket surgery. The close mics aren't gonna fuck with the overheads and/or room mics. If you end up not needing or wanting the close mic'd rack toms, simply mute them.

 

[grimtraveller]

I am new to home recording.

The problem i'm having is recording drums! Every take i seem to be recording with different techniques, i can't get the right sound.

I'm neither a drummer nor a pro but I have a firm conviction that it's to one's benefit to be aware of different techniques and try them out. There are a number of things that can work. It does take time and not a little frustration at times, but persevere, Tomossmith, eventually you'll hit on stuff that you actively like.

Recording acoustic drums in our little hobby is probably the most frustrating and difficult, yet rewarding part of the process. You can't half-ass it. You must have a good foundation - tuning & playing. A bad snare or tom will sound bad no matter what mic you stick on it. Drums require the same, if not more, attention than stringed instruments.

No other musical element that I record gets half the attention and headache that the drums do ! They can make or break a song just by knocking out the wrong rhythm or being too heavy when lightness is required and vice versa.

There is no silver bullet. Rooms are different. Drums are different. Players are different.

I like to give a listen to the drummer for a while after they set up before placing any microphones. So as to get a feel of how I'm going to approach the task.
Each session and each drummer will play and be played differently.

Okay, after the drums are set up, I have the drummer actually play a song while I stand in front of the set and listen. I watch where the drummer hits stuff (so I can keep the mics out of his way), and I'm noticing whether he's light or heavy on any of the drums or cymbals.

Now, I get down and stick the kick mic in the drum (as described earlier).

Snare mic is set up in the space between the crash and the high hat, about 1" above the rim, 1" in, and pointed at the center of the snare, but also kinda away from the hats.

For rack toms, mic positioned like the snare mic (about 1" above the rim, 1" in), but pointed about halfway between the center and the rim of the drums.

Floor tom [mic] will be same positioning as the rack toms.

Overheads can be positioned anywhere from 18" to 30" above the cymbals.

If there's a lot of high hat stuff, I'll add a mic (as described earlier), but usually the overhead mics work fine for picking up the hats.

Though I've always known that drummers are different (duh ! aren't I a clever boy....), recently this has come into sharper focus as I've been playing with four very different drummers that record really differently. I couldn't work it out at first why the same set up yielded such different results. It's the player to a large extent. Now I tend to go with their foibles more, some only want one rack tom, some like 5 toms, some are snare thwackers, some utilize the kit as a single source and set up cross rhythms, some demolish the cymbals like they were Iraq, some rarely hit the toms, others kick the bass drum to death and forever knock stands down.....that's why I've come to appreciate different ways of miking and that's why I'd encourage you to keep searching. You will find. I'm going through the same thing, looking for various guitar sounds and come heck or highwater, I will get there. By the way, you're in the right place.

One doesn't just slap 300 mics on an instrument and then mute 298 of them and expect to get the same sound as just using two mics specifically selected and placed to get a two-mic mix.

G.

Any engineer that slaps 300 mics on a kit and then only uses two of them is just asking for a burglar to break into their studio and make off with some valuable booty !!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Any engineer that slaps 300 mics on a kit and then only uses two of them is just asking for a burglar to break into their studio and make off with some valuable booty !!

That's true whether they use the mics or not.

It would also be true of the studio that uses 8 mics to mic a guitar or 90 mics on a piano. After all, you gotta have one mic per noise source, and two stereo farfields, right?

The argument that the drums need finer control because they are far more important is half true and three-quarters baloney, IMHO. As far the half-true part, that should be applying to the musician far more than to the studio. It never ceases to amaze me how everybody thinks the drums are the irreplaceable backbone of music (really it's only the snare and the kick, and even then it's only in some kinds of music), yet every monkey with opposable thumbs and a pair of twigs thinks they can play them. There are a lot of very good drummers out there, but the ratio of bad drummers to good ones is about three times as much as it is for any other instrument.

If the drummer sucks, replace the drummer, don't re-place the mics. And if you have to edit the begeezus out of the drum tracks to make it sound like the drummer can actually play, then the engineer should get the credit and the pay for the drummer's position, not the monkey with the twigs.

G.

 

[Greg_L]

It never ceases to amaze me how everybody thinks the drums are the irreplaceable backbone of music .

Not all music, just good music.

 

[dintymoore]

For me good bass players have always been the hardest thing to find. If a drummer has good feel he can play with most any band and sound like he's been with them for ages. But the bass player needs to know the tune. The guitarist can play "after" a lot of times. But the bass player needs to know when the song goes to the IV chord, because he'll do a lick up to it. Bass is the hidden "bitch to play" instrument. In a 5 piece band, it often feels like the bass player is making at least 1/2 of the sound.

Plus, there's very few real bass players, guys that don't want to play guitar, but were born to play bass. Lots of people want to be drummers and guitarists, but there's few natural born bass players. I've known just a few and it's been a real pleasure working with them.

 

[Greg_L]

For me good bass players have always been the hardest thing to find. If a drummer has good feel he can play with most any band and sound like he's been with them for ages. But the bass player needs to know the tune. The guitarist can play "after" a lot of times. But the bass player needs to know when the song goes to the IV chord, because he'll do a lick up to it. Bass is the hidden "bitch to play" instrument. In a 5 piece band, it often feels like the bass player is making at least 1/2 of the sound.

Plus, there's very few real bass players, guys that don't want to play guitar, but were born to play bass. Lots of people want to be drummers and guitarists, but there's few natural born bass players. I've known just a few and it's been a real pleasure working with them.

I 100% agree. It's damn near impossible to find a good, true bass player. All the real ones are already happily in a band.

 

[clivus]

I 100% agree. It's damn near impossible to find a good, true bass player. All the real ones are already happily in a band.

I have been a bassist for 38 years, and am most comfortable in that role (I play guitar and pedal steel in a band also). What I have seen over the years is a shortage of bass players who bother to learn any music theory--it helps tremendously in creating tasteful and correct parts when playing from charts. Also understanding the need to frequently lock to the rhythm of the kick drum greatly improves to groove of most songs.