individual drum mic isolation

  • Thread starter Thread starter gianelli280
  • Start date Start date
gianelli280

gianelli280

New member
i was recently looking at a few "professional" drum recording setups and noticed the snare was isolated with egg-crate foam. It's dumb of me to ask "is this good or bad?" so i'll just say, "holy crap my china is louder in my tom mic than it is in the overheads!" I'd cut the highs but i want to keep the full sound, from stick slap to resonant head. I know people say it's okay to have some amounts of bleeding between microphones but this is ridiculous.

In all honesty i beat the hell out of my china, but i can't be the ONLY one guilty of that :D

thanks!
 
Egg crates are useless for anything other than storing eggs. Period.
 
any remedy for this? it's bleeding over an sm57 which sounds like crap vs. my overheads.
 
If you are going to beat the hell out of your china, you need to beat the hell out of your toms too.

The biggest reason bleed turns into a problem is when the drummer is not playing with approriate dynamics. If you pound the crap out of one thing and gently tap on another, the mic on the thing you tap is going to be turned up way more than the other one. That causes the balance to go off. If you want the toms louder than the china, you need to play them that way.


The second biggest reason is how you set up your kit. If you have your china 2 inches off the top of your tom, that is a problem. Move the china away from the tom.

There are some ready made foam things that are meant to isolate the hi hat from the snare. There is normally a backing of some sort and it is accoustic foam, not packing foam. And it doesn't work all that well.
 
The china is about 6 inches away and behind the mic, I'll play around with placement. I do play my toms pretty hard though, and they come through louder than the china does, but I still get lots of bleeding through that mic and you can tell when you mute that track.

So you're thinking this foam that i've got won't do much at all?
 
gianelli280 said:
The china is about 6 inches away and behind the mic, I'll play around with placement. I do play my toms pretty hard though, and they come through louder than the china does, but I still get lots of bleeding through that mic and you can tell when you mute that track.

So you're thinking this foam that i've got won't do much at all?
Click to expand...
No it probably won't. It won't hurt anything to try...

6 inches is really close. Is this a big 18 inch china or a little china splash?

If it's a big one, there is a reason why you mainly see them way up in the air over the floor toms.

What might be happening is the sound of the china is reflecting off of the tom head and bouncing into the mic.
 
yeah come to think of it the china is probably a little further away, but it's an 18'' sabian aax and it's loud as hell no matter who plays it. i'll try the foam thing just cause i've got it laying around, i'll move if that doesn't work.

thanks for the help!
 
I have the same china. I have it about 2 feet above the floor tom facing up at a 45 degree angle.

Another thing to think about with cymbal bleed: The sound radiates off the cymbal up and down, not off the edge. If you have to place cymbals near mics, sometimes it helps to line the capsule of the mic up with the edge of the cymbal.
 
awesome, i'll give that a try. i'm pretty sure i have the lip of that china pointed right at the capsule now that i think of it.
 
China's are kind of a different animal because of the shape. they radiate differently than crashes, hats and rides.

Move the cymbal over above the floor tom and put it up in the air. Like I said, there is a reason why almost every drummer out there has the china in that general area.
 
Two things when recording drums:

Place a single mic 10 feet out in front of the drum kit and play. Listen back to that single mic. Is the kit balanced? Is every part of the kit the right volume? Is everything tuned? Don't even move on to micing up the drum kit if the answer to any of that is "no". Use these single mic recordings during your practice time to see what works and what doesn't when you're ironing out your performance.

When you are micing the kit, do not only listen to the mic you are placing. If you are putting a mic on the snare drum, you better have every other mic that is already in place turned up while you do the quarter note hits/mic nudges to lock the snare mic in place. Likewise, when you're placing a mic, don't only tap the drum assigned to the mic. Hit everything else around that drum to see what the bleed is doing.
 
sounds like solid advice, i'll give that a shot. Should i use condenser or dynamic for that test?
 
It really doesn't matter. You aren't going for sound quality as much as you are just trying to get an idea for how you are playing the drums.
 
Farview said:
It really doesn't matter. You aren't going for sound quality as much as you are just trying to get an idea for how you are playing the drums.
Click to expand...
What he said.


No matter the mic you use, the important stuff will be obvious such as "whoa, those cymbals drown out the snare!" or "whoa, that section grooves!"

Personally I take it a step farther and try to get my entire band sounding correct in a single mic...not so much for recording but to make shows that much easier. If we sound balanced and correct without a soundman in sight, it gives us a much better chance no matter what chowda' head we get working our stage monitors at "Dive Bar X".
 
Chibi Nappa said:
Two things when recording drums:

Place a single mic 10 feet out in front of the drum kit and play. Listen back to that single mic. Is the kit balanced? Is every part of the kit the right volume? Is everything tuned? Don't even move on to micing up the drum kit if the answer to any of that is "no". Use these single mic recordings during your practice time to see what works and what doesn't when you're ironing out your performance.
Click to expand...

Yes! Playing technique and how it sounds as a whole should ALWAYS be addressed first. From there, consider what has been said about the proximity and direction of the mic. Friends don't let friends use egg crates.
 
Farview is on the right track.

I don't see this as a bleed issue as much as a dynamics issue.

Really, really good studio drummers are very good at varying their attack per drum/cymbal to ensure a balanced recorded sound. Drummers without much studio experience tend to hit their cymbals way too hard in comparison with the drums themselves. I've worked with guys on this, some of whom justify it by saying "Hey man, that's my style." Others really work it to great results.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top