Drum Recording - Need Help

  • Thread starter Thread starter Whyte Ice
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Whyte Ice

The Next Vanilla Ice
Lately I've been recording my drums and they've been sounding like crap, I really don't think I've had a time where they've sounded decent on playback but now that I have alot of time on my hands, I've got to get this problem solved. When I am playing, the drums sound really good to me but they never sound anything close when I record/playback.

My drum set consists of a snare, kick, floor, 2 rack toms, hi-hats, crash, and ride cymbal. The mics I have are Behringer ECM8000's (overheads), SM57 (snare), and AT25 (kick).

I have the first ECM8000 positioned over the hats, crash, snare, and left rack tom. The second ECM8000 is positioned over the ride, floor tom, right rack tom. Each about 3 feet from the drums, positioned downward. I have the SM57 positioned a few inches away from the center of the snare drum. The kick drum is aligned with the beater, just a few inches into the kick drum with the front head off (I don't have a front head anymore, so its my only choice).

Click here to hear a sample of my drums (you need to change the file extension from .mp to .mp3. I'm a guitarist not a drummer so don't mind the playing.

Please reply.
 
well first you must get rid of the distortion on the kick. what mixer are you going through??. Kicks and snares put out a lot of sound. A quality condensor will put out 1 volt!! on a kick so you must be careful not to overload the mic pre. Most mic pres have a pad to cut down the level into the amp for just such an occasion. If you are going to take the front off the kick maybe a touch of dampening would help also.

The snare sounds ok but is on the edge of distortion also. One simple way of getting distortion is to have your mixer fader turned down and your mic pre pot turned up. Always set your mixer faders at zero , (both the input and output faders) and then adjust the level by increasing the trim pot. If you are still getting toooo much level with the trim pot turned down you need to switch in the pad.

For your overheads it sounds like they are distorting as well (thru that bashing bit at the end:):) )

I'd say fix the distortion and see what happens from there ;)

cheers
John
 
I see what your saying about the distortion but for some odd reason the distortion is only on the MP3 and not the WAV file I recorded.

I have a Behringer 16-Channel mixer and what I do is turn the gain on each channel all the way up each time and then play my drums while watching the meter making sure nothing gets over the -0.5dB peak and thats how I determine my settings on the faders.

In the kick drum, I have a standard size pillow inside.

The problem being is that the snare and kick drums really sound like crap and the first thing that went through my mind is how I'm positioning these mics but I've never done much with drums before so I'm just throwing punches into the air. And having an MP3 isn't helping me much either, I wish I could put a sample up but its too big of a file (even shorted to a few seconds) to transfer to a floppy disk (since I have two systems, one for recording, one for net).
 
Beyond the heavy distortion on the mp3 I would ask what is the quality of the drums? Are they properly tuned? That snare really has a rattle sound to it. Is that what your looking for? Are the heads new or beat to hell? How about the drums bearing edges? If you don't know perhaps you could get a drummer friend who is knowledgeable about the drums themselves to check them out. Crap going in sounds like crap going out no matter how you mike them. As a guitarist you know that if the intonation is bad on the axe no matter what you do it won't sound right on tape. I would also add with the right person woring on the drums you can make even a mid line quality set sound really good. Just because you spent $3000 on a DW collectors set dosen't mean it gonna sound good. I know this answer is more in line with a drum thread but I've been in my share of studios where the people just think they can set up the drums once and they will sound good forever. They take a lot of time and care.
 
Oops I am on the drum thread. Thought I was a rcording one. By the way...what planet is this. I guess it was a long night last night. LOL... and I gave up drugs years ago
 
The drums sound really good to me when I'm playing, its the sound that I want. The problem being, is the sound that I'm getting on the recording isn't sounding like whats really there, or even close.
 
i have found that when my set sound great in person, it sounds like hell on a recording. i found that when i got a good sound out of playback, the set did not sound very good to my ear in person. you must understand that you cannot tell how your drums sound from behind them while playing. get a DRUMMER (not a friend that happens to be hanging out) to play the set with you standing infront of it. if it's not a drummer they won;t be PLAYING the set, they'll be dropping sticks on drums and making noise. and when a drummer gets on it, it will sound completely different.
i get stuck constantly cuz i cannot sit at the mixer or the recording console and mix my drums before they're recorded. and i don;t know any other drummers. i'll have my bassist or someone sit there and hit each drum and i'll master everything out so i think it sounds good, and then i'll get on the set and all the mics peak and everything sounds like shit. i wish i had a clone, that way i could have me playing the way i do, and me mastering everything the way i want it. and i can never count on someone else to mix everything right. no one else knows how i want my set to sound except me, and the fact that i cannot be the drummer and the recording engineer kills me. i'd like to find a recording engeneer that knows everything about drum recording, and can read my mind as far as what i want to hear, cuz my vocabulary is too short for me to explain whats in my head to someone at the recorder.
 
Whyte Ice said:
...I have a Behringer 16-Channel mixer and what I do is turn the gain on each channel all the way up each time and then play my drums while watching the meter making sure nothing gets over the -0.5dB peak and thats how I determine my settings on the faders...
Click to expand...

seems to me that you're setting levels in the absolute wrong way...if you're pushing the gain on each mic the whole way and then adjusting the volume of the channel with the volume faders - that's probably where all of your distortion is coming from. turning down the volume (w/fader) of a distorted preamp signal is only going to decrease the volume of the signal, not the distortion...

just yesterday - I ran a stereo pair of ecm8000s through a 12 channel behringer mixer - and the gain knob was only set at about 9-10 o'clock (probably around +30db)....and I was able to get a very good signal...that's only about 30% of the gain capacity of the preamp!!! no wonder you're getting distortion...same thing with other mics....I've never had to push the gain past the level that I used for the ecm8000s

try keeping the fader at 0, solo the track for which you're getting a leve, change the board meter to show the 'solo' level, then adjust your level for that mic with the 'gain' knob....this should get you much, much, much better results
 
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