Kick ballooniness

[thebigcheese]

I noticed this at school with several mics as well, so I don't think it's just my mic or kick, but when I've got the mic inside the kick, it sounds really balloony. I put it in there to help isolate it from the rest of the kit, but even after some EQing it still sounds off. How do I get rid of that sound? My two guesses right now are:

1) put a blanket inside the kick (since I'm assuming the ballooniness is just from reverberation inside the drum)

2) use a different mic

Using a different mic isn't really an option right now, as I don't really have any others to use, but at school when we tried out the Audix D6, that sounded awesome right off the bat. Eventually I'd like to get one of those, but in the meantime, what can I do? Right now, my mic is about an inch from the spot where the beater hits the kick.

 

[JuliánFernández]

A couple of this to consider... How it´s the sound of the kick on that room? If the drum sounds balloon-like you need to fix that before mic´ing it...

Most of that sound come from bad tuning (you need to untight the screws) and the absence of any kind of dampening inside the kick...

So, experiment with that before... Put a pillow (make it touch both heads, at first) on it a give it a try...

Btw, 1 inch from the beater is just too close... Move it a little a farder and keep pointing it to the beater for a more clicky sound...

(Another thing you can try is move the kick drum around the room to see if there´s any "sweet spot" where the drum sound the best... It will make you life easier later!)

HTH!

 

[thebigcheese]

It's not the tuning. It sounds awesome in the room, it's just hard to capture the sound right. I'll try the ol' blanket trick and see how that comes out. And moving the mic farther back. Thanks!

 

[RAMI]

Yeah, one inch from the beater sounds too close to me. One inch inside the shell is more like it. Maybe start right at the rim and move in until you find the sweet spot.