Help Recording Drums

[showstone]

A question regarding recording drums...first should tell you that I am EXTREMELY new to recording.

I am wondering about getting a huge drum sound....think "Levee Breaks" but more "in your face" and not so distant sounding.

current setup:
mackie 1604 - motu 1224 - daw(cool edit pro)

I am miking snare and all toms with 57's, audix d6 on the kick, superlux pencil condenser on the hi hat, and (2) akg perception 100's for overheads.

If I were to use (2) more akg 100's at a distance say 10-12 feet away and 6 feet off the ground...do i need to reverse the phase of the distant miced drums?

Any other suggestions would be helpful.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

I am wondering about getting a huge drum sound....think "Levee Breaks" but more "in your face" and not so distant sounding.

Huge drum sounds come from drummers that play the drums in a manner that sounds huge, on a kit that sounds huge, that was tuned to sound huge, in a room that sounds huge, with a mic setup array making it sound huge, thru preamps that sound huge, that are mixed to sound huge.

However, based on what you're saying I'd recommend just going with a kick mic, a snare mic, the two overheads, and definately room mics. I'd recommend facing the room mics *away* from the kit to capture less direct sound and more of the ambience.

That "room" sound is key for getting the type of sound you are describing. If you're really interested in the "Levee" drum sound you will avoid any fidelity and excessively bright high end like the plague. Listen to the recording carefully--it sounds so "big" and "warm" because there isn't much high end on the drums.

Go light on the compression except on the room mics. Feel free to give them a bit of an 1176LN smack down.

 

[showstone]

Thanks.

I guess what i am thinking is using the close mics so I can contour the sound of each individual drum, like short tailed reverb on the toms(or even a gated reverb) some compression on the snare, maybe a light flanger on the hi hat and cymbals for some sizzle. With the main rhythms tracked dead center.

The room mics I was thinking a full reverb => church(CEP) with much of the dry(original signal) taken out. Panning these to the left and right(10 and 2) to give a large spacious sound when mixed with the close mics.

Is my thinking/theory flawed?

My drummer is coming next weekend to track and just want to get some preplanning done to expedite the process.

Let me know what you think.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Hrm, fancy elements like multiple reverb types, gated reverb on the toms and so on is the opposite of the raw, natural "Levee" type drum sound.

If you are in doubt to what you are going to need for the final product you should record the drums using WAY more mics/placement than what you need. Come mix time you can toss what is superfluous. (It's *ALWAYS* better to have more than what you need--I routinely ditch anywhere from 1-6 channels when I record drums. Heck, one time I only put up half the mics because the drummer was bitchin' that you can't get good tom sounds without miking the suckers... so I put mics on everything... but the final product only used room mics, overheads and kick!)

Anyways... it can't hurt to put mics on the toms, undermic the snare and so on (provided you have channels and mics) if you realize you may not keep everything. It's best to cover your bases to be sure.

Honestly, the type of sound you seem to be aiming for seems very ambient. Screw throwing on a bunch of cheap 'verb.... just put up stereo room mics, overheads and direct mics and you should be golden. Just compress the piss out of the room mics and you'll have all the ambience you need. If you want more ambience put 15-25 milliseconds of delay (not echo--DELAY) on the room mics. Your drum sounds will explode!

Of course, if you are doing some tight ass, Blink 182-esque drums or fast metal stuff this probably isn't a good direction to go. You'll want a more direct sound in that case.

 

[showstone]

OK, thanks alot for your help.