Conflicting idea, comments wanted

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dani Pace
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Dani Pace

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I've had a conflicting opinion (reguarding drums) over in the recording techniques forum, thought I'd as you guys. I figure if I want to know something about drums I should ask drummers.
My idea is; Each drum and cymbal is a seperate instrument, all working together to create the percussion section. Placing mics for a set of drums to get a good balance is as tricky as trying to mic an entire precussion section of an orchestra with 2 or 3 mics.
Their idea is; Drums are a single instrument.
I just thought I'd ask you guys how you think of your set(s). Are you one musician playing multiple instruments, or one musician playing one really big instrument?
Knowing how drummers view this might even help me to record drums better.
 
The sum is greater than the parts

The whole drum set resonates when you play it. For this reason, I personally tend to treat the drum set as one instrument. With just two overheads and a mic in the bass drum, we've been getting great recordings.
 
RezN8 said:
The whole drum set resonates when you play it. For this reason, I personally tend to treat the drum set as one instrument. With just two overheads and a mic in the bass drum, we've been getting great recordings.
Click to expand...


I aslo close mic everything as well as having a 2xoverhead & kick setup for the bulk of the sound. I use the individual mics to bolster the sound I have from the OH's & kick as I like to run effects from snare & toms etc etc. All in all I use about 12 tracks to record drums with, I don't always use them all though
 
Drums...

I agree, the whole thing starts to ring as a whole instrument and should blend as one on track. With that said I use as a maximum three snare mics top, side and bottom, a pair of overs, one or two per tom top and bottom, and one kick in, one out and room mics. Most of the time the mix will only call for five or six of them to be used in the end, but just in case they are there. If I'm recording jazz or funk stuff though, I go simple. Only one to four mics, with my current fav being two royers in a blum array and a good kick.
 
I treat em as one instrument as well. My overall sound coming from the OH's.... kick, snare, toms and room mics coming up enough in the mix to give it the edge or the oomph and sometimes not used at all. But yeah, one instrument.
 
Honestly I have never even thought about this... I guess I would have to say I think of it as one instrument covering a broad range of frequencies.... For my setup I usually mic kick, snare, bottom snare, left overheard, right overheard, hi-hat, ride, top high tom, bottom high tom, top mid tom, bottom mid tom, top low tom, bottom low tom, then a mic in front of kit (usually band passed to for snare kick), and occasionally a mic occasionally in a room away from the kit (a kitchen in my case with wood floors and granite counters) to capture natural reverb. Although I have many of the mics at very low levels that are hardly audible.... they are still nice because you could band pass them or do other little tricks to help fill in the gaps in the more important tracks.
 
Definately one big instrument.

I spent years trying to figure out how to isolate each drum and get the mics really close to each one. Found out I was doing everything wrong.

One pro has given me the best advice about recording drums and now I follow his word almost to the letter. First, get your rooms acoustics in order. Get good mics.

Mic the kick and throw up a pair of condensers for overheads. It should sound good by itself with no help. If it doesn't...TUNE IT!! You shouldn't need EQ. Next, add the snare mic and check the sound again. Should sound better. Then add the toms mics. Listen to what you pick up as you successively add mics. It sounds bigger and better, and again you shouldn't need EQ.

I am actually at the point where I only adjust preamps and faders for my sound. I don't touch the EQ knobs at ALL. And I don't try to isolate except for positioning the snare mic to keep out the hi-hat.

Think of it this way: An electric guitar picks up each individual string on each individual fret, but the entire thing is a guitar! With an acoutic guitar, do you try to mic each individual string, or capture the beauty of the whole instrument as all the parts of the body react with each other?
 
As a drummer, I consider the drum kit to an an instrument. Each cymbal, each tom, etc. must support the overall tone of the instrument.

As an engineer, I consider the drum kit as one instrument that may need more attention at certain frequencies. Accordingly, I prefer to close mic with a pair of overheads and use the overheads as the primary recorded sound. I then bring up certain mics as needed.

Kick drum almost always needs a seperate mic (to add more focus on the low frequencies). Often the snare needs a mic to help focus that mid/high frequency. Sometimes the toms may need a little more mid/low presence in the mix, so a close mic can be helpful. Naturally, close mic'ing can help with stereo placement.

However, as already discussed, the kit resonates on a whole and is played as a single instrument - so it should be recorded as a single instrument.
 
I look at the kit as 1 instrument, that occupies almost every frequency band.

Kick - low end
Toms low-mids
snare - mid, mid-high
cymbals - highs

that being said, I only pan my kit (at the most extreme) to about 75 L & R

(not a fan of the W I D E spread tom rolls) but thats MPO.

In order...I..

get my stereo image with the O/H's, making sure that the kick and snare are in the center of the image

bring in my room mic, checking for phase issues

At this point I pretty much have a great sounding kit...

I do mic the snare (top) and the kick to add more punch...but thats pretty much it.

Hope this helps,

-LIMiT
 
Thanks for the comments. I guess i need to alter my thinking to think of drum sets rather than percussion arrays, ot even as a set of drums. While i generally treat drums as one big instrument, I tend to think of them as seperate instruments which all work together, depending on the other parts to make the whole. Thanks again, understanding the views of others is one of the ways to greater harmony.
 
I hate to be the guy that says 'it depends', but IMO it does depend on the sound you're going for.

If you want the kit to sound natural and cohesive, you kind of have to think of it more towards the 'one instrument' philosophy. If you want it to sound like a lot of metal records, where the kick and snare are often artificial and unrelated to the sound of the real kit, then it's really more like single instruments. On some metal records the kick could be called the lead instrument.

This is all pretty philosophical though. No absolutes here.
 
PhiloBeddoe said:
I hate to be the guy that says 'it depends', but IMO it does depend on the sound you're going for.

If you want the kit to sound natural and cohesive, you kind of have to think of it more towards the 'one instrument' philosophy. If you want it to sound like a lot of metal records, where the kick and snare are often artificial and unrelated to the sound of the real kit, then it's really more like single instruments. On some metal records the kick could be called the lead instrument.

This is all pretty philosophical though. No absolutes here.
Click to expand...

I'm with Philo. A roomy Zeppelin or jazz sound can be achieved with a couple of stereo room mics, with maybe a snare and/or kick mic as supplement. A Fear Factory sound requires close mics (or even triggers), especially on the kick and snare. For my hard rock/metal stuff the individual mics are most prominent, with the OHs in there for cymbals and a little cohesive blend. For my folk rock & fusion stuff I tone down the close mics and rely more on OHs and/or room mic for a more natural, acoustic sound. So, really this post is of no use; just me indulging myself, because I'm only repeating Philo...I probably deserve some neg rep for this... :p
 
As a drummer, it's definately one instrument. Always. But as an engineer, it is much more complex than that.

Are you familiar with the tall, deep and wide concept of looking at a mix as having three dimensions? I'll go over the way I view the drum kit as it pertains to the three dimensions:

Tall:
The drum kit occupies every frequency range from the highest sounds you will record to the lowest. In order to make room for all of the instruments you are recording, individual parts of the kit have to be adjusted. The most obvious and yet most difficult fight for space happens between the kick and bass...

Wide:
Panning also is an issue in which the kit may not be treated as one instrument. Drums can be panned to extremes and in many cases should be. However the same can be true for piano which should be mic'ed with two mic's and panned in most situations and any doubled part for that matter. Reverbs can be placed in different areas of the panorama etc. I could write a book...

Deep:
This is one case in which I almost exclusively treat the entire kit as one instrument. I like to place the whole kit at a certain depth. If I'm mic'ing every piece of the kit, I may not put 'verb on every piece, but when verb is used, I use the same verb on each. I've tried experimenting with putting different ambiance on each individual part of the kit or on a single part etc. and I've never liked the results. As a side note, I never put verb on the kick; it never sounds right to me. Verb can sound good on a kick; that's part of the good drum sound on Led Zeppelin records. But I've only gotten good reverbs when they are real reverbs recorded in a good sounding room with room mic's (the way Zep's drums were recorded). There are delays, flanging etc... another book...

There's much more that I can get into. There are many, more experienced members, that can school you, me and everyone else on this forum so take my advice with a grain of salt. But that's my two cents.

If however you're only asking the question of how do I, as a drummer, regard the kit... it's one instrument, for sure.
 
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