Mic Separation for drums

[Broken_Hal0]

< I m running 8 direct outs from my soundcraft mixer to my adat , in turn running to my scope project card then to my sonar 5 producer.i have always had issues getting good separation in my mics . I always do my cuts and my boosts , but i would like to get rid of most of the residual sound from the background. Is there something I should be doing? And also , what is "Q" , i know i learned it in college but I just cant remember , if someone could refresh me on that it would be great.

 

[Dani Pace]

Cloce mic and record at a lower volume setting. Bleedover and background noise is almost always a pain when recording drums.

 

[Track Rat]

"Q" referes to the width of the frequency band being boost or cut by a parametric EQ. There would be three controls that would work together, a boost/cut control which does just that, boosting or cutting the desired band, a frequency control which will sweep the center frequency of the band you are wanting to equilize forward or backward and a "Q" control which will widen or narrow the area that you are equilizing, expressed as octaves. Say you have a parametric EQ and you want to use it on a guitar track. You might sweep the center frequency to 2.5 kHz, set the "Q" to maybe 1.5 and boost it 3 dB. Then grab the frequency control and sweep it up and down and listen for what you're looking for EQ wise. Then play with the Q control iwdening or narrowingthe amount of EQ "area" being boosted. That's just an example of course, just to give you an idea of what it does.

 

[James HE]

Sound "bleeding" into the drum mics from other drums are a given. You can minimise this with mic placement, but in the end it's still going to be there. The trick is managing to get the sounds bleeding over to work for you and be part of the kits sound. I will often use a gate or an expander on tom mics however, but usually leave the kick and snare mics open. How are you micing the kit? How many mics on what drums, pointing where etc...