Drum overhead Quandry!

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gnash

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Will anyone share their cymbal miking tips? The Kick, snare, and toms sound rad individually, but when I add my two MXL overheads, or any mics on cymbals to the mix, I get undesirable pickup of the Kick, snare, etc. When I solo these cymbal mics, I just want to hear the cymbals. I'm using 57's on the hats, ride. Any specialty cymbal mics I should check out? Also, any mic preamp recommondations for drums? :(
 
You are ALWAYS going to get everything in the overheads. If you want to reduce kick and toms , simply eq the overheads to shelve off everything below their frequency. (maybe around 1500-3000 hz?)
 
not only that, but you're SUPPOSED to get everything in the overheads and that's where you get a majority of your sound. after that you really only need to mic the kick and snare if you place the mic's effectively.
 
The Overheads are the core of the sound. Get them where they sound good; good mix of toms, snare, cymbals, then slowly bring up the kick and snare and toms (if miked) into the mix to give each piece more punch and attack. That's why good OH mics are important. Good luck, it takes a lot of trial and error to get it KINDA right!
 
Isn't that only one school of thought on drum mic'ing? Certainly its not unheard of to close mic everything and use the overheads for the cymbal sound only, by cutting everything out below a certain frequency, like tmix says?
 
If you have enough mics and a big enough mixer (and a lot of patience) you can certainly cloce mic everything, including cymbals. With propper mic placement and a decent drummer the same overall effect can be accomplished with three or four mics. Really good drummers can be recorded with two mics easily. The number of mics you will need will depend on a drummer's technique and skill and control. No matter how many mics you use, a bad drummer will sound bad, take my word for this, I learned the hard way about bad drum technique.
 
close micing cymbals sounds too brittle in my opinion. My advice is: ALWAYS start mixing your drums with your overheads. If you can't get the set to sound the way you want, re-record it and experiment with mic placement.
 
In the 80's, it was a little more fashionable to close mic everything, including cymbals. It sounded bad because as the cymbal flops around, you get this strange phasey sort of sound. If you don't want the majority of your sound coming from the overheads, do a low cut at 400-500hz and sweep around with a parametric to find what is left of the snare sound and suck that out. This may make your cymbals sound a little brittle, if so, thake another band of the parametric with a narrow Q and sweep around and find the nasty highs in the cymbals and suck that out. When you do this, you can't have the cymbals really loud in the mix, they need to be tucked back. Kind of like almost every Century Media release. (Iced Earth, Shadows Fall, God Frobid, etc...)
 
well an excellent source for overheads are a matched pair of AKG C 414s. I don't think at this point I could find anything better for my tastes.


These mics are extremely fast in transient response, however thats a 2000 dollar price tag for a matched pair.

When miking cymbals, there's just nothing you can do about bleed through, you can't have perfect isolation unless you overdub cymbal hits.

The best way to approach the matter is by simply getting good levels on the entire kit. It's alright to sit for the while and have the drummer play over and over until you find that perfect balance of mics.

Of course, a big part of that has to do with the room your in, the mics you choose and what kind of EQing you apply.
 
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