5piece drumset recording

[artCROSS]

I've been recording my drums for a while now, but I can't get the toms to sound good. Maybe it's because I don't have any mics on them I was wondering if you guys could help me out with a new setup w/o having to buy new mics.

Right now i have a couple of mxl603's as OH. I have a sm57 on the snare and an ATM25 on the kick. However, like I said, the toms are definitely lacking. I also own a SP B1 and an MXLv67g. Any suggestions?

 

[Ronan]

Do your toms sound good in the room? If the toms sound good in the room and the drummer is decent you should be able to get a pretty good sound in the OH mics, beyond that use your 2 spare mics on the toms and sneak them into the mix a bit for some definition. Tom mics are the mics I tend to worry about the least, because I usually need so little of them if I can get the toms sounding good with tuning etc.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Honestly amazing results can be had on toms with cheap dynamic mics. *IF* the source sounds good.

Number one critical factor in toms sounding amazing: TUNING!!!!

Proper tuning of toms cannot be emphasized enough. I'll spend about 5-10 minutes PER DRUM off the kit tuning the front and bottom heads in a manner that fits the band/song. Never put them in perfect unison though--if you are going for a unison tuning make the bottom head a little sharp to add some weight to the sound. Personally I prefer to tune the bottom head up a 4th from the top head to get that 'peooow' attack.

I also religiously dampen the bottom heads with duct tape/cotton squares to cut down on ring and resonance. It also helps keep the floor tom from rattling when the drummer hits the kick. IMHO I never dampen the top head unless it is still ringing.

Having mics on the toms is essential for getting a really explosive tom sound so you can mess with the dynamics on them. If you have access to a Drawmer PowerGate you can *really* get some attack on the toms; otherwise compress them with a good 45-75ms of attack so the front end transient just explodes. A 4:1 or 6:1 ratio around -18 or -20 db is good for toms. A boost around 5khz post-eq can really heighten the stick on the toms.

Another thing I do is silence/delete the toms except when they are playing. A gate can accomplish this but it's quicker for me when digitally editing the .wav to just silence stuff. That way, when the toms play they just explode out at you... without any low level drum ringing from the snare or kick. (Try muting the toms sometime and see if the toms were ringing with the beat--half the time it seems they do a little bit, especially once you compress them.)

Don't put too much low end on the toms. In fact, you shouldn't have to boost anything lower than 400hz anyway. In general floor toms are pretty low. I run a high pass filter on my toms around 80hz and get rid of that low end muck so things sound nice and tight without any flub.

However, that's about all you can do as an engineer to get exploding tom sounds... most of it is up to the drummer. If they bash out their cymbals and love tap their toms you're not going to get insane exploding toms... unless you trigger some or overlap the toms with some samples--which is more palatable to me than dealing with sucky toms.

 

[LRosario]

A trick I use when recording toms is to hollow out the bottom end and place the mics there.

Toms, by design, are not as prominent as a bass drum or snare drum. However, when they compete with louder instruments (bass drum, snare, cymbals), they are masked. This is part of the Frequency Masking Affect. All that means is that higher sounds will cover up lower sounds.


So people always seem to have trouble getting toms to sound even with everything else.

Like I mentioned before, miking your toms differently than the other drums, as well as raising the level higher, will help to compensate for this.


Every drum has it's natural point of intonation. So you should be able to tune a drum to the point were it gives a solid sound without decaying too fast or without sounding too dead. The snare and bass drum,however, don't really need to follow this.

Usually its not more than 3 turns of each tension rod.

 

[futurestar]

I
Having mics on the toms is essential for getting a really explosive tom sound so you can mess with the dynamics on them. If you have access to a Drawmer PowerGate you can *really* get some attack on the toms; otherwise compress them with a good 45-75ms of attack so the front end transient just explodes. A 4:1 or 6:1 ratio around -18 or -20 db is good for toms. A boost around 5khz post-eq can really heighten the stick on the toms.

Out of curiousity, what would you recommend as a starting point for compression settings on kick and snare? This would be for rock and/or hard rock drum tracks.

 

[GABritton]

Note about compression....

Note about compression....

Be careful.....

Compression is intended to work so your ears don't "hear" it working. If you can hear your compressor cutting in/out you've used too much. I don't like to compress over 2.5-3:1 on any/everything. It keeps the tracks live and crispy without having all tone sucked out dry.

Now sometimes you will need a little more than that (just a little...), but proper mic placement can cut down on using compression later on down the line too. Proper mic placement is the absolute key to good tracks. Spend 3 times more setting the drums up than you do playing. Ever wonder why it takes 8 hours to do 2 songs in a real studio? It's because they spend a few hours just getting the drum mics setup properly....

When I first started recording, the guy I was learning from was all about compressing everything....he made it sound good, but I've drawn away from that a little....preferring a thicker sound...


Good luck with tracking drums....let us know how it goes...

 

[manning1]

art another trick used by big recording producers doing drums is they replace
the kick drum with a kick trigger. (you can make them out of 50 cent piezos,
wired to a qtr inch jack) AND they put triggers on the toms and snare.
then they just use ohds for the cymbals (2 mics only) and feed the trigger
impulses to a "sample brain" where they store all manner of kick, snare, tom tom and other samples that can be triggered. or you can buy (i think clearmountain has a cd) a cd of pristine drum sounds you can load into
the "barain sampler". ive had many friends do this. and its a really nice way of recording drums as all the samples are already nicely tuned.
just an idea. hope this helps. you can get some amazing drum tracks this way. you can also overdub cymbals that are sampled as well.
then just mix in the ohd room mics for taste.
normally also this way some folks record several tracks of drums to give the illusion of two drummers. it can sound superb if done right.
all the best.