Drum miking suggestings for home-rec drummers and wannabe engineers

G

Greg_L

Banned
1) Engineers - Mic the fucking snare so you're not getting hi-hats and crash cymbals louder then the snare itself. Do your fucking job, you flunkees. Ugh.
2) Drummers - Hit the fucking snare hard enough so it comes through louder than the hats and cymbals. Take a fucking lesson, you hacks.

I'm working on some tracks recorded by someone else in an actual pro studio that actually charges people money. Rip off. This is why I hope home recording kills every studio. These tracks are a comedy of errors. The drums sound pretty bad overall, but they're manageable. The hats and cymbals are dogshit. Cheap student level garbage. Even my wife, who doesn't know a crash cymbal from a kick pedal, heard these tracks and commented, "those cymbals sound awful". The players meter is steady but the technique ranges from wildly inconsistent to totally ass-backwards. As noted above, the kit was mic'd poorly so that the snare mic is picking up ass loads of everything. The drumming is bad enough that the wimpy snare hits themselves are getting murdered by the bashing of hi hats in the snare track. I can't even gate it. It's like a rush of noise coming through the snare track. The overheads are out of phase and I'm getting a bunch of overhead snare in the right channel. Nightmare. People are stupid and this is why I try to never mess with other people's tracks. Ugh. That is all.
 
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Greg_L said:
1) Engineers - Mic the fucking snare so you're not getting hi-hats and crash cymbals louder then the snare itself. Do your fucking job, you flunkees. Ugh.
2) Drummers - Hit the fucking snare hard enough so it comes through louder than the hats and cymbals. Take a fucking lesson, you hacks.

I'm working on some tracks recorded by someone else in an actual pro studio that actually charges people money. Rip off. This is why I hope home recording kills every studio. These tracks are a comedy of errors. The drums sound pretty bad overall, but they're manageable. The hats and cymbals are dogshit. Cheap student level garbage. Even my wife, who doesn't know a crash cymbal from a kick pedal, heard these tracks and commented, "those cymbals sound awful". The players meter is steady but the technique ranges from wildly inconsistent to totally ass-backwards. As noted above, the kit was mic'd poorly so that the snare mic is picking up ass loads of everything. The drumming is bad enough that the wimpy snare hits themselves are getting murdered by the bashing of hi hats in the snare track. I can't even gate it. It's like a rush of noise coming through the snare track. The overheads are out of phase and I'm getting a bunch of overhead snare in the right channel. Nightmare. People are stupid and this is why I try to never mess with other people's tracks. Ugh. That is all.
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Welcome to my sad world man. Not my drumming/recording but those who send me crap. This is where SSD Trigger is a good way to help that situation. If this is important, send me the hideous snare and I can send you a similar sounding one without the HH frack.

You may be able to pull an ass out of the hat. Or the hat out of the... whatever..
 
jimmys69 said:
Welcome to my sad world man. Not my drumming/recording but those who send me crap. This is where SSD Trigger is a good way to help that situation. If this is important, send me the hideous snare and I can send you a similar sounding one without the HH frack.

You may be able to pull an ass out of the hat. Or the hat out of the... whatever..
Click to expand...

Ya know, I just might take you up on that. It's a mess.

This is a little punk rock band I'm messing around with. I knew the drummer was rough around the edges and he uses bad gear, so I didn't wanna record him. I didn't want that headache, so I suggested they go to a local pro studio to record the drum tracks and to their credit, they did. When I got the tracks all by themselves, I though they weren't too bad. A little sketchy but usable. Hard to tell when it's just drums by themselves and a bunch of unnecessary experimental mic placement tracks. Now that we got instruments in there with the drums, oh man. I don't know what they paid, but whatever it was is too much for these tracks.

But....this band takes pride in being loud and snotty, and their EP is pretty bad, so I suppose anything I can do would please them overall. I just don't wanna work that hard at it.

P.S. - What did you edit in my post? :D

I just hit the wrong button. lol!

PM me. Send me the drum tracks. :)
 
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Happens to me all the time. Thank goodness for Drumagog and all the samples I've made over the years.
 
I am troubleshooting issues with my internet PC and for the first time using my recording shiz to reply here.
 
First rule of drumming; beat the f@#k out of the drums they always sound better. It will impress the shit out of your friends and more importantly, chicks love it.
 
"First rule of drumming; beat the f@#k out of the drums they always sound better. It will impress the shit out of your friends and more importantly, chicks love it."

No they don't. No it doesn't and no they don't.

Maybe Greg L should tell his little punk rockers they suck instead of telling us. My 2 cents.
 
cafehonda said:
"First rule of drumming; beat the f@#k out of the drums they always sound better. It will impress the shit out of your friends and more importantly, chicks love it."

No they don't. No it doesn't and no they don't.

Maybe Greg L should tell his little punk rockers they suck instead of telling us. My 2 cents.
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lol @ another greg hater crawling out from under his rock just to make a greg comment.

---------- Update ----------

Simman said:
First rule of drumming; beat the f@#k out of the drums they always sound better. It will impress the shit out of your friends and more importantly, chicks love it.
Click to expand...

Drums do sound better when you hit them with some authority. Hats and cymbals do not.

The rest of your post, maybe.
 
My drummer buddy is a bit of a "light touch" kind of player....which is great in the studio for the cymbals and toms...but not always for the snare.
Now mind you, his playing is very musical, and he uses the whole kit very tastefully, but man, sometimes I have to tell him to just please.....HIT THE FUCKING SNARE HARDER! :D

For some stuff you can finesse the snare hits....but Rock/Pop/anything that needs a solid drum beat...you have to rap that snare to get the right character out of it. There's no other way. A solid hit is not just about making it louder, it's also how it affects the attack and release.
 
It's even more important to whack the snare when the shithead dropout flunkee engineer mics the snare in a spot that captures assloads of bleed. Problem is no one knows until it's too late.

After further investigation it turns out the snare track I'm dealing with is a duplicate of one of the overhead tracks. How the fuck that happened, I have no idea. I got the actual snare tracks and it's a little better. I can work with it now. Still sounds assy, but less assy.
 
Greg_L said:
Drums do sound better when you hit them with some authority. Hats and cymbals do not.
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This. I tell my drum students "lay into your drums, lay off your cymbals." Makes things sound like sex.

You can lay into your drums TOO hard (if you play like a gorilla and use stiff all-arm technique) which can choke up the tone, but as long as you're loose, relaxed, laying it in there and cracking proper rimshots, let the drums sing :D

EDIT: So I have an antique brass snare that looks and sounds really good. One time I played a gig and I used the other band's drums, but brought my cymbals and snare. Used that brass snare. All the other band guitarists and bassist could tell me is "oh my god I love your snare tone" which is like the ultimate compliment, since most guitarists can't tell a snare from a floor tom.

ANYWAY, side tangeant there, my brass snare is LOUD, it sounds really good but its LOUD. A few months ago I played this rock/punk show, filling in for an indie rock/punk band. All the other bands were loud as fuck bands, the engineer miked the snare up, sounded okay. Setup my drums for our set, engineer was like "want to mic everything up" and I was all "lol just the bass no need for the snare." I recorded the show on a Zoom recorder. My unmiked snare was much louder than everyone else's miked snares, and these were intense punk rockers I was dealing with.

Another funny story is last week at my band's CD release show, it was another deal where I used the first band's set but brought my snare. It was a bigger venue so it was miked up. Engineer had me play the snare. of course I'm trained to play the snare as loud as I would ever play it so that I don't accidentally get too loud during the show. After the first two hits I heard the engineer through the monitors go WOAH and heard the volume go way down. I'm not even sure that mic was on that much that night :D

Yeah, love that snare.
 
I have been getting some very good drum sound lately with 2 overhead mics. After talking to Greg and rami a few months ago I decided to get serious about getting good drum tracks. My drummer and I spent DAYS tuning, dampening, listening, retuning, and more tuning his drums. It's amazing how good you can get a set sounding when you put forth the effort and take the time.
No rattles, Buzzes, squeaks, or ringing on that set now. After getting them sounding good we spent a lot of time experimenting with different mics, pres, and placements.
Here's what worked the best:
Studio projects C1 LDC mic going into a Joe meek pre...placed 2 feet in front of the bass drum but not centered....up even with the top of the bass drum and off center a bit toward the floor tom side.

The other mic:
A Electra voice RE510 going into a studio projects VTB pre..
Placed about 5 feet high about a foot behind the drummer offset to the snare/hat side of the drumset.
I never thought we could be able to get as good a drum sound with only 2 mics but we are getting great results.

I have to give gerg credit for telling me that if you focus more on getting a great drum sound out of the set you can get great results with cheap mics. He is right.
Also, I found this out too...it is amazing the difference in the sound of a mic by moving it only a half a foot. That being said I have learned you can't give up and say "that's pretty good" and settle for it. Don't give up, move the mic...record it...move it agian...record it...over and over.

There is a sweet spot and mic/pre combination that will make you say "that's KILLER!!"
 
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