Recording drums may be the single most simple thing to do if you keep a few things in mind whike tracking them to any digital format.
First and foremost, level is everything in digital, and you need to get the most to get sounds that are appealing. An analog technique for recording drums is to really slam the tape really hard. The point in doing this is to allow the tape to do compression for you. If not overdone, you will wind up with very in your face sounds. In digital, this is just not possible to do. You have a maximum level that you can record at, and that is it! Anything above that is going to digitally distort, and any engineer using digital can well relate to that ditty of a noise. YUK! Soooooo, what to do? Nothing says that you can't create some very nice analog type compression before the tape.
Try this out, you will find that it works very well.
For about $280, you can purchase
an ART Dual MP. A nice little tube mic pre-amp with a very big time sound. You obviously will need more than two channels for micing drums. Actually, you will need at least 5 channels to do this effectively. So for about $1200, you can have slammin' drums on your ADAT.
I use a pair of AT 4033's for overheads going through a TL Audio tube mic-pre then run that to a Behringer Composer and I set the Composer for Peak Limiting. I set it so that you get about a 2-3 db limiting when the snare hits. Then you adjust the output to maximize record levels on the ADAT (leave about 3 db headroom, it just seems to sound smoother when you do).
I run a Tascam PE-125 Electret Condenser on the hi-hat through whatever pre-amp I have available. I don't think the hi-hat is as important as most people make it out to be. If you pull the mic about 2-3 feet away from the hats, you will get a very natural sound from them. At mix, you will hardly need anything from this mic as the overheads will supply just about enough in the first place.
I use a EV RE-27 on the kick. Now I love this mic, but I doubt that you are going to find one, so, use whatever, a D-112, Pro-25, etc.....Run it into one of the ART's. Same with the snare and toms. I prefer simple old
SM-57's for toms and snare over anything. The mic itself is going to help beef up the sound, and they provide plenty of top end response. A trick at this point is to make sure that you don't get the mic too close to the head. The reason is is that ADAT's tend to pick up low end quite well. Micing a snare or tom from about 6-8 inches with a 57 will get you some very alive tone. If you seek more attack, aim it towards where the stick hits. If you seek more resonance, aim it towards the rim. The difference is subtle, but at mix time will make a huge difference. I go both ways depending upon how the drummer hits, and how good the drum actually sounds. I hint about tuning. Tune the toms to resonate A LOT! Excess resonance can always be taken away while mixing with noise gates, or a simple low shelf roll off. But you can't add resonance that is is not there. This will drive most drummers nuts! (except the good ones, they know that resonance is everything on a tom). On kick drums, keep it tight and short. I remove the second head and put pillows right up to the head and weight it in there with something really heavy, like a power amp, or a cinder block. Once again, digital records low end really well. Having a kick drum that is sustained will just screw you up at mix. You could try to use a gate to shorten it, but this does not work as well as just getting it right in the first place. You should try setting the mic just inside the kick drum about 2 inches and about 2 inches from the shell. Aim the mic towards the stiker for more attack, and away from it just a few degrees for more fullness. Once again, the difference is subtle, but will make a big difference at mix time. On over heads, a X-Y pattern centered the kick provides outstanding seperation, and I believe provides a more realistic sound to the overheads. People are going to argue about this X-Y pattern against the standard seperation technique, but X-Y on the overheads is more realistic because it is how your own hears would hear it. Seperation micing is like having your ears 6-8 feet apart. It has more phasing problems, and it picks up to totally different sounding parts of the room. Anyway, I regress, just move the overheads until they start sound like what you hear in the room.
Here is a secret that I have only shared with one other engineer in my life. It is why he hired me to record his band. (go to
www.echostarstudio.com/downloads.html to hear the results)
When setting the levels on the pre-amps for the kick, snare, and toms, keep turning up the input on the ART untill just about every hit on the respective drum makes the Peak light come on. Make sure of course that the output knob is down really low. Then adjust the output knob until you consistently get about a -6 through -4 level on your ADAT meters. If you are hearing distortion, it is low end distortion and you probably have the mic a bit too close to the drum. But, chances are, it won't sound distorted at all.
Play around with the input volume and mic placement until you get even meters on most hits, and a great tone on the drum. It really doesn't take long. Try seeing just how far you can turn up the input before you do hear distortion. Then back it off just a bit. Adjust the output to get as much level to tape that you can without distoring the A/D converters on the ADAT. Now here is what is important to remember about anything you record. IF YOU DON'T HEAR DISTORTION, WHO CARES WHAT THE LIGHTS AND METERS ARE TELLING YOU!!! That red light on the ADAT meters just means that you have hit the maximum recording level. There is no way to tell if you went over, or just maxed it out. So use your ears. If you hit red a bit on the meters, it is probably just a very fast, high frequency transient. If you don't hear distortion, it is really not distorting in the real world, so don't worry about it. But do keep an ear out for distortion when doing this. If the drummer is starting to warm up and hit harder, you will need to play with the levels a bit more to compensate for that. EVERY ENGINEER THAT IS TRYING TO ACHIEVE GREAT SOUNDS ON TAPE PAYS ATTENTION TO THIS STUFF. So don't believe that there is a "set and forget" solution here.
What you are doing with the tube mic pre's is simulating what analog tape would do with a hot input level, COMPRESSION!!! It just so happens though that the ART does this quite well. With the input overdriving the tube, the tube is providing some of the best compression you can ask for. If the drummer hits a little harder, the tube will just compress it a bit more. But without all the yucky distortion that a normal compresser would offer.
Feel free to e-mail me with questions when you try this if something is amiss
Good luck.
Ed Rei
Echo Star Studio
www.echostarstudio.com
