Recording drums with only one mic - from theory to action

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agivens

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I may have the opportunity to record a band in the near future, but have limited equipment. Among my limitations is the fact that I only have 1 instrument mic for the drums. I'm posting to get some feedback on how I plan to initially attack this thing.

I have a Roland VS2480, so I can record all of the instruments at the same time; electric guitar, keyboard, bass guitar, and drums. I was planning to plug all of the instruments up through amps and then directly into the board with a light mix, and no more reverb/delay than necessary. I would play with the mic to find a sweet spot hanging over the drums to capture their sounds; the mic's gain would be set low.

Does this sound feasible? Could there be any feedback issues?

Are there any potential issues that someone more experienced might be able shed some light on?

Thanks in advance
 
I've had reasonable success with a single SDC facing the drum kit, aimed towards the top of the kick, and about a metre away.
 
gecko zzed said:
I've had reasonable success with a single SDC facing the drum kit, aimed towards the top of the kick, and about a metre away.
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That's a fairly decent sounding spot IMO. A little beefier than over the kit.
Consider setting some soft baffles in a V around the mic (open towards the kit
A full range mic would be nice -not sure if 'inst mic here means lows rolled off in the far field like a 57', that might make for a bit light in tone?
 
I just did a session recording a drum kit over an existing acoustic guitar and vocal track. We used four mics, B52 on kick, Shure 546 (or 545) on snare and a mid-side setup about three feet out front consisting of an iFet (set to V) as the mid and a U87 as the side.

Since we didn't have M-S decoding set up and I wanted to mess with the time alignment of the mics I just used the iFet for playback. It sounded great all by itself. But that was with a good drummer on a nice sounding kit.
 
Two days ago I was listening to the drum tracks that I had done on a session in my workplace warehouse a couple of years ago. In addition to the snare, kick and two overheads, I'd set up a dynamic mic in the back of one of our vans, about 9 or 10 feet from the kit, pointing at the top of the bass drum. I'd set that mic more to see if I would get a tunnel effect in a van but I remember being struck in 2010 how clear and beefy the drums were. And listening to them again the other day, I can't get over how good they sounded. They were better than either of the overheads {which may or may not say something about my crumminess as a recorder of drums !}.
The weird thing is that I would never go back to single mic drums ! But it most certainly can be done, subject to what you're happy with and are going for.
 
Two things I've tried that have worked out pretty well:

1) One dynamic mic beside the kick, about a foot away and not too far from the snare/hat.
2) One LDC out front and slightly above the kit, looking across the cymbals toward the drummer's face.

These, of course, depend on the style of music you'll be recording and as usual, the room you'll be recording in.
 
Got a great one mic drum sound from a Rode NTK, just above cymbal height, about two meters back from the front of the kit, aimed at the centre of the snare. Also tried to get a "led zep" style kit sound with a kit in the hall at the bottom of a huge stair way in an old victorian house and then moved an sE titan around the space in fig.8 until we had a good balance between the whole kit and the natural space and then compressed it on the way in. Gave a huuuuge kit sound but did take a while to find the sweet spot (can't remember exactly where in the space but i know it was in a corner above head height)

This SoundonSound article caught my eye a while back in which they talk a bit about using one mic for cool vintage drum sounds. i've not tried it yet, but now it's fresh in my mind i may have to give it a go :)
 
Ive never tried this (cuz im not a drummer nor do I own a kit) but it looks and sounds promising
 
Dubickisbro said:
Ive never tried this (cuz im not a drummer nor do I own a kit) but it looks and sounds promising
Click to expand...


Tbh, i agree with boulder on this particular vid, but i did have a look around the internets for some other examples and i think some of the other examples of the Tchad Blake method out there sound much more promising
 
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