I need advice

S

SSgtP

New member
Good day,

I am a guitarist, just beginning to enter the world of home recording. I need advice on what type of drums I should get. I'm split between an acoustic kit, and an electric kit. On one hand, I could get a decent acoustic kit at reasonable cost, but I would need to make a drastic investment in mic's to get a decent recorded sound (am I on track here). On the other hand, an electric kit would give me a (hopefully) good recorded sound, but IMO you really sacrifice feel/playability. Honestly, I am leaning a bit towards the electronic kit. Any words of wisdom out there?

Thanks
P
 
I've recorded both extensivly and I have to tell you, I REALLY don't like electric drums. Especially the cymbals and hats. Just my humble opinion.
 
Electric drums + Real cymbals combo would work nicely. You would get the sound of real cymbals and the electric drums don't sound TOO bad, but they don't beat a good acoustic set.

Keijo
 
Track Rat,
Yeah, I was playing on a friends Roland kit. The cymbals were no where near the real thing. I must admit though that they sound really good on all the recording that he has done. I mean, they do sound a bit artificial, but not bad at all.

P
 
in my opinion, i think electric kits sound pretty bad. i find that the snares just dont have that "thing" to them that the acoustic kits have. yeah, problems with cymbals and hi-hats too.

if you're looking to rent the studio out, not many drummers like electric kits so it may be wise to plan out what you're using it for. personally, i think they dont sound that great, and most of the time i can tell that it's an electric kit just by hearing the snare and hi-hat
 
I always fall for a nice acoustic kit but in tight recording spaces or rooms which the drum set overpower/bleed mics and such...I don't know-Isolation is nice when recording, and I found playing an electronic kit just as much FUN when given the opportunity. I had to adjust my own technique to compensate for false triggering but that is because the dynamics are not the same. The recordings sound solid in retrospect and the space we used to record, it was by far a better drum mix than any of the acoustic tracks we've recorded.
A side note-The drummer who owned this virtual set played out with me once, and I was not impressed... It was too hard to concentrate on the other instuments in the mix and it did not come close to having a real feel presence in the room... It would take a lot of work for me to apply this in live situations so I would lean toward acoustic sets live.

Plus-You get all those* funky *sounds with v drums... it depends on how creative/weird you want to be... electronic sounds seem limitless sometimes.
 
dont worry TOO much about getting each microphone to be gated perfectly and shit. it's the bleed that can merge the hole kit together to sound great, instead of a drum machine. if that's the kind of thing you're worried about, it's not so bad. once you've micd your first acoustic kit, you'll be fine!
 
I just swapped acoustic drums for a V-set cause of room size and recordability. The investment in mics was a consideration as well. I wanted to have a multitude of sounds available without having to change heads and tunings constantly also.

I concur with Track Rat, the cybal sounds suck and I'm going back to real brass. The drum sounds are totally cool though. I'm still experimenting with EQ and drum parameters, but the samples I've recorded are more tailorable than my acoustics were.

I'm toying with blending monitors into the mix right now to get a "dirtier" sound, and I like what I hear so far.



Good luck.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top