Drum mic recording

[clarencej]

Hello all
So I'm looking to do some drums recording and I need some feedback. I have 4 mics: an MXL 990 Condenser Microphone, an MXL 4000 Multi-Pattern FET Studio Condenser Mic, a Shure SM48-LC Vocal Microphone, and an MXL 603S Pencil Instrument Microphone. Which mics should I use for which parts of the drumset? Also, my interface is only a 2 channel interface, so would it work ok to send everything through the mixer first and then from the mixer to the two separate channels?

 

[Erockrazor]

Here's a link to a PDF of Harvey's Mic Thread, the sticky at the top of this forum.
http://www.itrstudio.com/MIC_CHAT.PDF

On page 44 of the PDF, he goes into detail about drum recording. But if you care about learning about recording. Read the whole thing. You will know much more afterward and it all applies very practically. Harvey is the BOMB!

 

[mattdee1]

Hello all
So I'm looking to do some drums recording and I need some feedback. I have 4 mics: an MXL 990 Condenser Microphone, an MXL 4000 Multi-Pattern FET Studio Condenser Mic, a Shure SM48-LC Vocal Microphone, and an MXL 603S Pencil Instrument Microphone. Which mics should I use for which parts of the drumset? Also, my interface is only a 2 channel interface, so would it work ok to send everything through the mixer first and then from the mixer to the two separate channels?

I'm not as experienced as many of the people here, but in the past few months I've done quite a bit of drum recording with very limited gear.

If you only have 2 inputs to work with, a good place to start would be to place a LDC a few feet in front of the kit to capture the whole thing (hopefully your room sounds half decent). You're going to have to do a lot of experimenting with mic positioning. This won't sound terribly professional but you may be surprised what you can capture with one good mic.

If you want to take advantage of the other input, you'd probably want to use it to close mic either the snare or kick. But if you only choose one, the final mix might be out of balance. Maybe you could close mic your snare and your kick, route these to your mixer, and send a sub-mix to the other input on the interface. But this might require some trial and error because you won't be able to adjust the relative levels of the snare/kick after the fact. In the mix, you'll probably end up using mostly the room mic, with a bit of the other channel to help cut through a bit.

 

[sdr1]

hi,
if i were you, i would put all the mics through the mixer.
set up your condensers overhead left, and overhead right.
then 1 mic near the snare, and one on the kick.

hard pan the overheads left and right, and keep the other 2 down the middle.
you can narow this down after if you dont want the drums full width in final mix.

the problem with this is that you wont be able to readjust any levels later.
but with only 2 channels, thats the only way i can see you would get a stereo mix.

Will just take a few takes to get the mix right.

 

[darrin_h2000]

If I was in the situation where I had only 2 inputs...Id use both mics on overheads...but point them to the snare...as close as you can get them.

 

[MrMusicAu]

Recording Live Drums From Stage

As a roadie and lighting technician as well as a performing entertainer, I have had the great pleasure of actually seeing the most greatest microphone setup that a drummer could ever dream of having on stage. Cymbols aren't really microphoned but Hi-Hat is. Kick is microphoned using a proper kick mic, etc... You can get a complete microphone setup kit for drums and they all come in a compact carry case.

Apart from microphoning the drums, it then needs to go to the mixer and then linked to a gate-compressor-limiter unit that has 4 seperate channels so you need to figure out what you want to go to share some of these channels, (eg: rack1(tom1) & rack2(tom2) can share a channel). The gate-compressor-limiter unit takes out all the (what we call) drown effect that you don't want. You want a nice clean sound without the bonging after tone when recording. Remember tho', all microphones are patched into (what we call) a drum loom. This is simular to a miniture multicord specifically designed for drums only. Tho' you can use some of the spare inputs of the drum loom for other stuff but basically it's for drums only. The drum loom is then patched into the main multicord and then to the mixing controller.

Here's how we setup the drumkit from the mixer and linked to the gate-compressor-limiter:
Kick channel 1, Floor Tom channel 2, rack1&2 channel 3, snare channel 4. They all are sound checked to get that nice crisp sound.

After all is setup and sound checks out, then you can allocate what goes to Left channel and what goes to the Right channel of your stero recording device.

I myself, record all the time, but it takes time to setup the right levels. I send the mixed signal to a 128 channel mixing software application and then after all is done I allocate Left & Right channels what I want to hear through the headphones for the final mix-down.