micing snare + cymbals : leakage

P

phatstadt

New member
I'm having a hard time micing the snare. My setup is the following:

Shure SM 57 for snare
Shure SM81 x2 for overheads
The rest of the drum is electronic, so no need to mic.

The problem I have is that the overheads pick up the snare loud and clear, when I'd rather have an isolated snare track from the SM57.
I've briefly tried gating the overheads, but haven't found the right setup yet.

I guess I might be too anal, after been "spoiled" by the electronic output which is 100% clean.
So I'm wondering how much leakage is usually tolerated in professional recordings? If I have a very loud snare on the cymbal tracks, then it'll be hard to process the snare at mixdown with delay/reverb/etc and control the mix/dry combination while adjusting the cymbals independently?
Any views from a professional drum recording expert?

PH
 
I dont claim to be a pro. (I am not) but I have a lot of experience (constantly improving) recording live drums.
The overheads are gonna lose a lot of snare (and kick in my case) when you cut the lows.
My notes at home have more info, but probably, brutal cuts at everything below 800hz. Then with the correct cymbal boosts, you will bring up the higher frequencies and the snare will be evel less evident.
You wanna get anal?
Take EVERY track into wavelab and silence between the snare hits on the snare track.
Do a 'gain change' on the unwanted snare hits in your overheads. Maybe silencing them altogether will probably show up in cutting out the cymbals, so just bring that big loud snare down a db or 2.
Good luck.
 
What my thought is is why you would want to lose the nice ambiance you gain on the snare from the over head mics.

Simply, the overheads will over air and thickness to the snare that cannot be captured any other way.

I think where you might be having some problems is with the time delay between the snare mic and the overheads, cconcering the snare. If you are recording digital, try track delaying the snare track about 25 milliseconds to make the snare mic and overheads in time with each other. This will mostly remove any phase cancellation that is happening. But be carefull, you may actually want a little delay between the mics and some of that phase cancellation to get the best sound from the snare.

Anyway, good luck.

Ed Rei
Echo Star Studio www.echostarstudio.com
 
I don't claim to be an expert, but I have read a few articles where they say that the purpose of the overheads is to get the whole drum kit, and then the individual mics just to balance the levels. Try it, you might get a good sound. But then again.... :)

Good luck!

William Underwood
 
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