kick and snare questions...

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Why wouldnt you want to put lots of mics up for heavy rock music. I want everything to be in your face and you need close mics on everything for that so you have more control over the levels of each drum.

Sorry for the ribbing, eck, all just in good fun here. No hard feeling I hope.

First of all I'm not saying that your method doesn't work and even work fine. I'm sure it does work great for you, and I have heard lots of very nice productions with more mics than there are drums and cymbals.

But let me just ask you two questions. If your drummer is sitting in a studio - or even on a small stage on the club circuit - if you're standing a few feet in front of the drum kit and the drummer starts playing, are you going to tell me that to your measley two little ears a few feet away that it will not sound really good, really loud, and really in your face? And that in order to replicate that quality of sound in a recording one needs to use 14 microphones?

G.

 

[Farview]

So, you're saying that John Bonham didn't have a good, in your face rock sound???? It was pretty much ALL ABOUT room mics.
Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards there, Eck.

John Bonham would have sounded like that no matter how you mic'ed him up. Listen carefully, none of the albums have the same drum sound, in fact, the sound changes dramaticaly from song to song on some of the albums. All of the tracks are instantly recognizable as him because of him, not some mic technique.

And no, if John Bonham were playing on the next Cradle oif Filth CD, the room mics wouldn't work.

 

[cello_pudding]

And this is how to mic the guitar:

Low E string: Senn 421
A string: another Senn 421
D string: SM57
G string: Rode NT2
B string: Senn 441
Hi E string: Another Senn 441
12th fret: AT3035
Bridge: Senn e602
Sound Hole: AT831b
Overheads: Mojave MA-200 (x2)
Left soulder: Earthworks TC-20
Under the chair: MXL 990
Between the legs: Either that's an RE20 or he's just really happy to be playing guitar after 9 hours of insane mic setup.

(with apologies to ecktronic )

It just slays me how much time and money is spent on over-miking drum kits that no one will ever get back .

G.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA






Senn 441 on a B string? you're never going to get the lows you need out of it.

 

[RAMI]

John Bonham would have sounded like that no matter how you mic'ed him up. Listen carefully, none of the albums have the same drum sound, in fact, the sound changes dramaticaly from song to song on some of the albums. All of the tracks are instantly recognizable as him because of him, not some mic technique.

Exactly. In a way, you're making my point for me. His sound was as in your face as you need, and it wasn't because of having a mic on each drum.

And no, if John Bonham were playing on the next Cradle oif Filth CD, the room mics wouldn't work.

And, it wouldn't work if he played with KC and the Sunshine Band, either. The point was that you don't have to have a mic on every single drum to get a good rock drum sound. And, in fact, the phase issues are way more than most wanna-be engineers could deal with.

 

[Farview]

The point was that you don't have to have a mic on every single drum to get a good rock drum sound.

This depends on the 'good rock sound' you are trying to achieve. One of the reasons Bonhams drums seemed in your face is because the rest of the production had a lot of 'air'. There was space for all that room wash to exist. That's not something that happens a whole lot now.

 

[ez_willis]

So, you're saying that John Bonham didn't have a good, in your face rock sound???? It was pretty much ALL ABOUT room mics.
Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards there, Eck.

Bonham wasn't recording in a 12' x 12' room in my garage.

IMO, if the room sucks, you kind of need to close mic everything.

 

[RAMI]

Bonham wasn't recording in a 12' x 12' room in my garage.

IMO, if the room sucks, you kind of need to close mic everything.

Right. But I'm saying what I'm saying with the assumption that we're talking at least decent rooms. I'm pretty sure Ecktronic would close mic everything even in a top-notch studio. Again, to each his own, so I'm not putting it down. I just don't agree with the logic.

 

[ecktronic]

So, you're saying that John Bonham didn't have a good, in your face rock sound???? It was pretty much ALL ABOUT room mics.
Personally, I think you've got it completely backwards there, Eck.

I aint heard John Bonham, but I beleive you when you say he got a big in your face drum sound using OHs. I was just saying that I prefer to use close mics to make the drums in your face. Thats how the Chili Peppers got their great in your face drum sound.

Eck

 

[ecktronic]

Sorry for the ribbing, eck, all just in good fun here. No hard feeling I hope.

First of all I'm not saying that your method doesn't work and even work fine. I'm sure it does work great for you, and I have heard lots of very nice productions with more mics than there are drums and cymbals.

But let me just ask you two questions. If your drummer is sitting in a studio - or even on a small stage on the club circuit - if you're standing a few feet in front of the drum kit and the drummer starts playing, are you going to tell me that to your measley two little ears a few feet away that it will not sound really good, really loud, and really in your face? And that in order to replicate that quality of sound in a recording one needs to use 14 microphones?

G.

Of course no hard feelings Glen. Your the man on this forum. So much great info to share which Im very thankfull for.

It will sound good, but it wont sound the way I want it to sound coming out of a HI-FI. It gives me so much control. I can ride the fader for the ride cymbal for example to get the right balance. Also I can pan the toms whatever way I want to, I can choose how loud I want the cymbals in relation to the rest of the drums using the OHs. Many benefits of close micing every drum.
2 mics on the snare gives twice the quality of snare sound and more control over tone. 2 mics on the kik gives more tone control and also gives you the slappy in your face sound I love, and also the deep resonance of the kik drum from the far mic.

Eck

 

[Farview]

I aint heard John Bonham,
Eck

You haven't heard Led Zepplin? Ever? Where have you been?

 

[RAMI]

I aint heard John Bonham

Did I spell it wrong?

OR

Are you joking?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

It will sound good, but it wont sound the way I want it to sound coming out of a HI-FI. It gives me so much control. I can ride the fader for the ride cymbal for example to get the right balance. Also I can pan the toms whatever way I want to, I can choose how loud I want the cymbals in relation to the rest of the drums using the OHs. Many benefits of close micing every drum.
2 mics on the snare gives twice the quality of snare sound and more control over tone.

It's a question of differing jurisdiction and style, I guess.

For me, "the drums"- or a single drum kit - is a single instrument played by a single musician playing a single rhythm line in the arrangement (it is one "piece" of a "4-piece" or "5-piece" rock combo, not 14 pieces of an 18-piece combo).

As such, it's the musician's (drummer's) jurisdiction to decide what the balance of the individual parts is. Individually miking the toms or the cymbals is no different in my mind than individually miking the strings on a guitar or the keys on a keyboard.

This doesn't mean that one uses only one mic, of course; though I have heard and made some very good recordings that had drums mono miked, it's not something I would normally want to do or to recommend. Because of the sheer size and nature of the drum kit, getting a stereo image of it is how I usually like to go (sometimes with OHs, but more often with a front-positioned coincident pair). Then usually - especially in the rock family - a seperate kick mic is needed to fill out the bottom end that never gets to the stereo pair or OHs.

Anything beyond that is purely optional in my book. Yeah, sometimes I might - *might* - want to dunk the snare into a big chain of SFX processing to get some funk sound, but if I want to simply accentuate volume of the snare, I'd much rather get that from the drummer than from the mixing console.

G.