Drum triggers clashing with overhead mics...

[jmfkmii]

My band and I are giving recording ourselves a shot. We bought an Mac Book Pro, Presonus FP10, and we are recording direct (firewire) into the Mac book.

We are having problems with the drum triggers and overheads bleeding into eachother.

The drummer has all drums triggered snare, 2 toms, floor tom, and kick.

Then we are micing the cymbals with two pencil condenser mics that seem to work pretty well, we just don't know if we are placing them wrong, too low over the cymbals, or positioning the incorrectly. We are getting a lot of snare pop in the overheads.

What's the best way to have them setup? Should we record each one individually? We are lost here. Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[Russtopher]

If you're triggering absolutely everything except cymbals, try moving your OH mics closer to the center of the kit, and point them outwards to the sides of the kit. This way they'll pick up the cymbals, but less of the kit (and snare especially).

From there, it's mostly EQing out the low end judiciously on the OH tracks, and possibly some cuts in the mids to pull out as much of the snare as you can.

 

[pandamonk]

From there, it's mostly EQing out the low end judiciously on the OH tracks, and possibly some cuts in the mids to pull out as much of the snare as you can.

You do risk losing a lot of the cymbals like this too though.

Aw, why do you trigger everything? Just tune them nice with good heads! If you really need to, use a drum replacer.

 

[Farview]

Are you using a real snare with a trigger on it or are you using a trigger pad?

If it's a real snare, try to tune it somewhat like the sample you will be using. Then it won't make much difference in the overheads.

If it's a trigger pad, you probably just have the overheads too loud in the mix. Even with a real kit that is being triggered, you might just have the overhead tracks up too loud.

Most of the time, you are triggering the kit to get that isolated sound, quieter cymbals is part of that esthetic. The cool thing is that you have a lot more control over the cymbals because you don't have to contend with bleed from the other mics.