micing a dk on a budget

[Hegs]

hi

would a pair of dot matched studio project sp1s above the kit, and a sm57 at the kick give a semi-pro sound (demo cd quality), or would it still be pretty poor? Is there an alternative to micing EVERY drum for a good sound?


Thnx

 

[Ronan]

This are not my first choice mics (except the 57 on the snare), but you should be in pretty cool shape. Unless the drummer sucks you should be albe to get a solid drum sound with 4 mics (John Bonham did it with three on many albums) You may want to consider one mono overhead and putting the other in front of the kit our further out in the room.

 

[wannabecomedeat]

If you have enough line ins, you could buy some radioshack piezo buzzer (2730073 ou 2730069, or even 2720059, roughly 3$) on the drum heads and use these as triggers, but you'll need drumagog 4, which takes the trigger signal and change it for real drum sound. You could also use a trigger to midi converter, and record the drum in midi, but then again you'll need a prog to change midi sounds like battery or drumkit from hell... quite a bit of money...

if you do so, you can use your 3 mics on the cymbals, something like 2 overheads and the sm57 on the hi-hat

 

[treymonfauntre]

what are SP1s? SP B1s? C1s? either way, a pair of LDC as overheads should capture pretty much the whole kit except the bass drum's body. if you have an extra woofer i'd look into building a subkick because that will get the low frequencies better than a 57. also i'd look into that 2 mics 2 drumsticks apart technique that was shared on here a while ago.. if you're only using 2 overheads and plan on hard panning them then you're going to want the snare right there in the center of the stereo image

 

[Harvey Gerst]

Since your budget isn't exactly defined, lemme suggest a couple of $40 Behringer ECM8000's out in front of the kit, about 6 to 8 feet apart. Play around with the height (and distance from the set) till it sounds good. You can add an SM57 on snare if you need more control over the snare.

 

[mrface2112]

first things first--get the drums sounding good in the room. then follow harvey's advice. put a pair of mics in front of the kit in a spread pair. reinforce with kick and snare mics.

but if the drums sound bad in the room, no mics or tricks will help.


cheers,
wade