I'm thinking that drum mic'ing could get really expense really fast using a mic/drum

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junplugged

junplugged

Taking the slow road
you have 5 drums and 3 cymbals. 8 mics, maybe more but for stereo toms, that's 3 mics, (3 tracks) and for stereo cymbals either 2 overheads or mics on cymbals, or both! (8 tracks or more).

Then let's talk preamps and compressors. 8 channels of pre amp is expensive if you don't wanna, or don't have 8 pre's into your DAW or board.

But they don't have to all be phantom powered if you aren't using all condensors. But then you're mixing types of pre amps, maybe an issue maybe3 not.

Compression, gotta use it to preven the leakage and be able to control the spikes and levels, can't really ride 8 faders and you know the dynamics will be there, so yes, compress. Now, that is a rack of 8 channels of compression, or use your board or DAW, unless they suck or you can't assign that many to the inputs.

Ok, so if I really want 8 to 10 channels/tracks of drum mics, it's gonna get kinda expensive. I don't really want a Nady pre or some other cheap comp when I have gone thru the trouble of individually mic'ing the kit.

This leads me back to a simpler plan to mic the drums. B/c the complex way, we're talking thousands of bucks on gear, and a couple of hundred in cables and mic stands and clips and etc.

Also, if you're not in a room separated from the drums, how ya gonna set up the placement? record, go back and listen then record and th en go bakc and listen 50 times? then have fun trying to get the phase in line....

this isn't gonna happen for most home studios. esp any w/ the drums in the same room as the recorder/recordist, etc. or, if I'm the drummer and the recordist/engineer/producer this ain't gonna fly So simplify.

Over heads, kid, snare. or go mono, w/ 1 over head or room mic and kik and snare. Maybe not tight snare, but up above so the mic also pics up the HH.

Am I making any sense here? How do you folks do it?
 
Amen! I always try to talk newbies out of tom mics. But it's tough. I believe deep within our psyches is the need to mic every drum. It looks cool. All the drumming posters of the '80s showed these little mics everywhere. Even now I find myself saying "you've got a leftover M201! And an MD421! Put them on the drums somewhere!"

But you must resist, young Jedi . . .
 
You can get great results with as little as two mics, three or four can be outstanding. You gotta work on using the right mics (I'm not saying expensive) and placing them well. The room has to be at least decent; if the room sucks, you're SOL.
 
wow, the beginning of that text is really close to what I posted.

I'll add that I see a lot of really cheap drum mic kits for as low as $250. But then, what do you do with 5 or 7 mics, and how good could they be for that price, that's $50 or less per mic and sometimes they include some clips. Why bother mic'ing a kit w/ mics that cost less than the cables, stands, and then use what after that, really cheap pres and comps and even then you've spent a lot but you only have a lot of cheap stuff.

It's gotta be - it defenitely feels better if you spent a lot and have some good qualtity stuff - but it must suck to have all that gear and it's all been expensive to aquire, yet it's ALL low end. And then what if you don't like the sound of some part or all of it and you now have a garage full of junk and whatta ya gonna do, replace some of it? all of it? one or 2 pieces? kluge.

Starting w/ a either a cheap or higher qual single mic and signal chain and expanding from there has to be the way to go. If you have one junky chain vs. 8 to 12, at least you didn't spend a lot for it. And you CAN swap out cheap for cheap for experimenting. OTOH, if you have one expensive hi qual chain, you at least have resale value, and most likely can use it for other applications. And you can grow it and include it in the build-up to more higher qual setup. or give up and not be out much.

Looks like a good site, i'll h ave to read more, tx.
 
Just an additionto this. A couple years ago when I get my AW4416, I had some friends come we recorded w/ his Peavey drum mic kit....at the time I thought it was gold...I used it for their recroding and my band's recording....and guess what?? It sounded like crap!!!!

3 years, countless hours of brainpower, and a thousand bucks later, I love my 2 SM-81's, D112, and SM57. With these 4, I can capture just about everything I need for most recordings. I don't use the SM81 symettrically with the kit....one concentrates more on the hi-hat and one more on the ride side. The ride side SM81 is also pointed towards the toms, and they pick up great detail from the toms.

I don't like to comress much on the way in....I leave that for my mixing side. I might *slightly* compress the kick, but that's it...I just make sure my levels are going to be fine.

I've learned to love bleed in the mics. You can really use it to your advantage if you pay attenetion up front to your micing detail.
 
yea, after I used comp on my sm57 on snare after i'd been using no comp and getting nice results w/ bleed, I was like, hey, what the hell happened to the rest of the kit? And that's when I learned what comp is good for on the drums, but then yuou need to multi mike it. so i still comp, but use a more distant placement and pick up more w/ the mic.... experience counts.
 
ok guys, it realy depends what sound your going for, you won't get a modern rock (modern punk, "nu metal", Screamo, ect) with 2 mics, and you probably won't get a great led zepplin sound if you close mic the whole kit

it's all horses for courses realy, as far as the points about it being hard to get the mic placement right in a home studio where your in the same room, yeah, your right, it is a challenge. But you do what you have to do to get the sound you want, or you settle for a second rate sound!

also, I don't think many people would run compression on every channel of a close miced kit seperately, atleast, not in the recording stage...
 
GABritton said:
3 years, countless hours of brainpower, and a thousand bucks later, I love my 2 SM-81's, D112, and SM57. With these 4, I can capture just about everything I need for most recordings.
Click to expand...


I agree, you got to have good mics (and a good room). That's the key. I tried some of the cheaper crap, and way too many sm57's (cause they are cheap) and it just doesn't cut the mustard. You just can't mic a whole drum kit with 5 sm57's and expect great results. There needs to be different flavors of mics so you don't get that ugly buildup. Once I get a real nice pair of OH's, I'll be set. Right now I have

D6 for kick
M201 for snare
MD421's for toms
crappy audix fusions for OH's


Although, I've been digging the mono overhead so I might keep using the Blue Baby Bottle for that.
 
usernamebob said:
also, I don't think many people would run compression on every channel of a close miced kit seperately, atleast, not in the recording stage...
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I don't think you need compression on all the tracks if you use good gear/technique and the drummer doesn't suck eggs. Some kick and snare comp is all I've been using just to tame the peaks.
 
I guess then, now that I think about it, when I used the compression on snare mic an got only the snare mic, I guess it was acting more like a gate, shutting down when the snare isn't loud so that it pretty much was the only thing getting thru. I just figured from that, that it would be the way to go to have complete control over each drum/mic/track
 
I've also found that compression can get out of hand on drums really quickly. It can destroy the natural sound of the cymbals and turn it into mush in a heartbeat. Use it carefully and concentrate on mic placement.
 
true, cymbals have sustain/decay and you could mess that up really easy.
 
Who here actually uses comp on the overheads? I'm partly curious and partly incredulous, because I haven't found it to be necessary and consider it way too easy to eff up the cymbals, so I've never even tried, but that's not to say that trying wouldn't be worth it, because as we hear so much on this board, experimenting is the key to world peace and getting laid every night. Right now though I'm recording a HORRIBLE drummer whose snare hits vary so much they sound like completely different snares, even during the same bar of music, and he is definitely not going for that effect. Some times the snare just seems to have dropped out completely. Anybody have any tips for taming out his playing, besides pulling a Ringo and getting somebody else to record over his parts after he leaves?
 
I never compress overheads. To my ears it makes them sound nasty and harsh. I will set up a compressor on two sub groups though (panned out stereo) and assign the kick, snare and tom tracks to it as well as the main stereo buss. I push that up under the existing stereo drum mix to fatten it up.
 
Track Rat said:
I never compress overheads. To my ears it makes them sound nasty and harsh. I will set up a compressor on two sub groups though (panned out stereo) and assign the kick, snare and tom tracks to it as well as the main stereo buss. I push that up under the existing stereo drum mix to fatten it up.
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There are a lot of pro studios that will either put compression on JUST the overheads or on a single mic 8 feet over the drummers head. It's a standard technique, sort of like putting effects only on the ambient mics.

As for the original question for the thread, things are changing. Look at the first page of this site:

http://www.earthworksaudio.com/

While I'm sure their mics aren't cheap, it saves on channels and you could probably find comparable mics for less and do the same setup. I'm trying a few combos myself. Download the PDF. It goes into greater detail.
 
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Since I started recording 24 bit, I haven't found a need for compression on anything to control peaks.
 
scrubs said:
This site explains different miking techniques for drums using as few as one to as many as you want. It has decent pictures. I use 4 mics for drums (2 overheads, 1 kick, 1 snare). That's really all you need for basic rock/pop stuff.

http://artistpro.com/index.php?module=PnCourses&func=getPage&course_id=22&page_id=108
Click to expand...


Hey, that's a great l'il site!! Everyone should read through that entire thing!!! Check out the solo MP3 on the last page - a must!

Hot tip from scrubs!!
 
Sometimes I like a little compression on the OH's. Like if the crash cymbals are just a little too loud in them, compression will make it so I can hear the ride and some toms a little better. If it sounds perfect without it, I don't use compression. A crappy compressor or plug will make it sound bad, but I like the UA Fairchild for this.
Of course, you would be crazy compressing on the way in. Or at least "different."
 
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