lo-fi drum techniques

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pilotrecords

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Hello,

I'm a newbie and couldn't find info on the above. I'm into lofi and its recording techniques and I'm currently recording an album.

Can someone give me some tips on recording drums and different methods.

I've got two inputs on a br600 with lots of virtual tracks.

Any ideas?
 
You could put one mic at the bass drum and one as a kind of overhead. In both instances, you'll need to experiment with your mic placements. Or you could use something like this, a mic mixer, which gives you three or four inputs and one output. If you've got two inputs on your multitracker, then, say if the mic mixer has 4 inputs, then you could use one of your BR600 inputs just for the kick, then feed 4 other mics into the mic mixer {say, one on snare, a couple as overheads, one room or one closer to the toms or whatever} and feed the output of that into your BR600. You do sacrifice control over individual drums, but if you're into lo~fi that should be less an issue than if sonic perfection was the goal. You need to listen while you work out the balance of each mic and where you place them and how much volume gets sent to the different mics.
You'll find some pretty sterling stuff here.

Hope that helps in some way.
 
Pick up a single omni condenser and work to find a spot in the room where the drums sound good. Listening to the recording, have the drummer work out dynamics so that the drumset elements are represented how you like them.
 
cheers guys, i've done the one mic thing and sounds good but not quite what i need. could be useful for future songs dependant on style though.

gonna look at a mixer, very good idea. means buying another condensor though.
 
lo-fi? Not much lo fi about a digital recorder, have you tried setting up several boom boxes with built in mics around the room?

okay seriously though:

I have a 2 input recorder also, and a small mixer. I use 2 dynamic mics (one between snare and hat, one in kick) I pan these in my mixer hard left, and pan my overhead condenser and distant room mic hard right. The panning is not for stereo separation, it is just so I can have the L and R outputs of my mixer going into the two inputs on the recorder, so I have a track recorded of close miced kick/snare and a track recorded of 'room' and 'overhead'. It's kind of a ghetto way to get a bit of isolated close mic on the two drums I consider the most prominent.

Have to be careful setting the snare level underneath the kick level as they record to the same track, but it also shows up more in the overhead than the kick. This is a good tthing, because the snare sounding weak compared to the kick in the one close-mic track and sounding mushed in with the OH and room in the other, adds up to a decent level overall. It has taken me several play-the-drums-tweak-the-knob-listen-rewind-again aigain again to get it where I like the balance, but it is better than having a cymbal heavy trash track from just a single room mic, as I can add/drop those key kick-snare EQ tweaks to give it a bit more oomf without affecting the rest of the room sound. Also, a reverb send in small dose on the K/S is nice, but having it on the OH/room is ugly.

I have to work to get the balance between kick mic and snare/hat mic right as they are both recording onto the same track, but this way with the 2 inputs, I have 1 track that is close kick and snare and hat to add punch, and 1 track that is just 'everything' overhead sound and the 'room mic' (which are conveniently lacking in kick compared to cymbals and toms and snare).

Before I had my mixer and just used 2 inputs, I put one mic above the set and one out in front around the height of the top of the kick drum, pointed down at center of the kick from about 3' away. Pointing it down seemed to reduce the amount of crashyness bleeding in.

...now once you have your drums recorded, play it back out of a boom box and mic the boom box back into your recorder. now it sounds lo-fi!
 
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