Kick mic direction/advice, please?

Close enough to 1. Speed of sound varies with altitude and humidity, but 1000fps is about mach 1.

For beater click, tape a quarter to the impact point.
 
ermghoti said:
Close enough to 1. Speed of sound varies with altitude and humidity, but 1000fps is about mach 1.

For beater click, tape a quarter to the impact point.
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For sound. For light/electricity it's 983571 ;)
 
paint can

Farview said:
You will never get any attack on the kick playing with a felt beater (especially if he isn't a heavy hitter). You should put the 57 1 or 2 inches off the batter head. This might help isolate it enough so you can turn it up in the mix. You will need to take out some 400hz on the 57 to make it sound right. (ymmv) The drummer might have to make an effort to hit the drum hard enough to make it speak the way that it should.
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Gonna throw in my $.02 worth...

I will probably never go back to wood or hard beaters or beater pads after the trick I just learned from Simon Phillips. I have gone back to a felt beater and really, really like the sound.

Try this: (this is my senario) No muffling in the kick except a small shop towel taped to the edge of the shell, touching the head. Now set down a towel on the bottom of the shell and then put down a full gallon can of paint in the middle of the shell. Thats right, a GALLON paint can. Put the reso head back on. I use a subkick mic and a Superlux FK-2. I have a 4" hole cut to the side of the reso head, and I put the FK-2 in the hole about 3" inside. I use absolutely NO eq. I have the subkick blended in about 1/3 the level. I compress the main mic about 1.5:1. The paint can makes it more 'thwacky' and more recording friendly. It sounds like crap in the room, but the mic likes it.

It sounds like this:



(Don't listen to the snare. I hate the snare, but I'm working on it.) These are ROUGH (emphasize ROUGH) tracks to lay down the drums against, but I really like my kick sound. I think the full mix will be good when I'm done.

And it's a felt beater! Granted, it's not as good as a pro studio, but for my little projects its pretty good. It has more punch than any wood beater or kick pad that I've ever tried.
 
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James: I knew about being able to use the inserts on the 1402 but I hadn't thought about using the aux outs. With only 8 tracks, though, we can only spare 2 for drums. At this point we don't have the luxury of tracking drums separately.

Wesley/Farview: I was actually going to post a thread in the Newbie section asking about how to check for phase problems. I understand the theory behind them I think (that the troughs of one sound wave are cancelling out the peaks of another and vice-versa, right?) but I don't know what phase problems sound like or how to correct them. When setting up mics, I just keep moving them around until things sound right (my assumption being if phase problems are occuring, I'll just hear that something sounds wrong. I may not know it's a phase problem, but I'll think, "I'd better move that mic because something sounds bad.") I'm not using a computer so I can't easily check; in fact I have no clue how I'd go about addressing a phase problem even if I could detect it, besides continuing to mess with mic placement. (And I'd rather learn how to correct it on the way in than nudging tracks anyway.)

Usually I set up 4 or 5 mics: 1) snare/hit-hats (57); 2) and 3) kick (57/subkick); 4) room mic (usually a Rode NT-1A between 4' and 5' in front of the kit--I do this instead of the traditional 2 overheads); 5) depends on the song and which part of the kit I want to accentuate. For ride-heavy songs I'll point it at that.

Again, thanks everyone for all the advice. I'm going to print this thread and bring it with me next time we record drums.
 
Phil I am always amazed at your drum sounds, and thats with cheap mics like the superlux.
 
SRR said:
Phil I am always amazed at your drum sounds, and thats with cheap mics like the superlux.
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Mic placement and tuning are a greater factor than the mic, although a bad sounding mic can make a good drum sound poor.
 
pointfive said:
Usually I set up 4 or 5 mics: 1) snare/hit-hats (57); 2) and 3) kick (57/subkick); 4) room mic (usually a Rode NT-1A between 4' and 5' in front of the kit--I do this instead of the traditional 2 overheads); 5) depends on the song and which part of the kit I want to accentuate. For ride-heavy songs I'll point it at that.
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Take the 57 and mic the shell of the snare drum. (if it has a vent hole, point the mic at that) Don't worry about the hi hat, get the mic within an inch of the snare.

I would still lose the subkick and the room mic in favor of overheads. If you have the band playing in the same room, the room mic turns into a big problem. If you EQ the room mic so the drums sound good, everything else coming into the mic will sound weird. You will also run into phase problems with the guitars, bass and what ever else you have going.

You can detect a phase problem by soloing 1 mic (the 57 for example) and them soloing another mic. (the subkick) if they both sound strong by themselves, listen to them together. If they sound weaker and thinner together than they do separatly, you have a phase problem. In your situation, you should check every mic against every other mic. Once you hear it and know what you are listening to, you will start to notice it in a mix when it's happening. (this gets easier with time)

Just a side note: The hat and the ride are not normally the focus of a drum set. The kick and the snare are. With what I heard, the hat and ride will cut through just fine without any special attention. You need to get the kick and snare working together to drive the song and fill in with the cymbals.
 
reshp1 said:
For sound. For light/electricity it's 983571 ;)
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Ah. Yes, that was the joke I completly missed. D'oh! :o

Edit: I beleive light/electricity would be closer to 948,600,000 ft/sec. (186,000 mile/sec). Nyah.

Second Edit: Remember, if you don't include your screen-name in the message, only us Geekninjas can figure out who sent us rep. I'm looking at you, pointfive! :D
 
Farview said:
Take the 57 and mic the shell of the snare drum. (if it has a vent hole, point the mic at that) Don't worry about the hi hat, get the mic within an inch of the snare.
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Mic the shell, not the head? Okay, I'll give this a shot.

Farview said:
If you EQ the room mic so the drums sound good, everything else coming into the mic will sound weird. You will also run into phase problems with the guitars, bass and what ever else you have going.
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We usually track each instrument separately against a click track, so the room mic doesn't pose a problem. It's a limited setup admittedly, but we're working with what we have.

What you explained about checking for phase problems answers a question I've had for a long time. Thanks so much. It'll be tough to do this at first, since our mixer and monitors are basically right next to the kit (thus the sound hugely bleeds through the headphones), but with a few test takes we should be able to accomplish it. At least I know what to listen for now.

Farview said:
Just a side note: The hat and the ride are not normally the focus of a drum set. The kick and the snare are. With what I heard, the hat and ride will cut through just fine without any special attention. You need to get the kick and snare working together to drive the song and fill in with the cymbals.
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Gotcha. In the song I posted, I actually mic'ed the floor tom, but not close. (There wasn't much ride in the song, so...) But I'm taking all this advice very much to heart.
 
pointfive said:
What you explained about checking for phase problems answers a question I've had for a long time. Thanks so much. It'll be tough to do this at first, since our mixer and monitors are basically right next to the kit (thus the sound hugely bleeds through the headphones), but with a few test takes we should be able to accomplish it. At least I know what to listen for now.
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What you could do is record the mics to separate tracks, play a little bit and listen back, checking for phase. Once you have gotten the drums sounding good and you know the setup works, then buss everything to two tracks and record the song. It is a long way of doing it, but it's better than recording a song with bad drums.
 
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