Miking and Recording Drums

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sajemusic

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Hello!
I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions for miking and recording drums. Here's the scoop -

5 piece Tama Kit
5 Akg drums mics (kit)
Recording through an Aardvark Q10

I messed around with them last night and they sounded ok but very hollow and a lot of bleed through. Also, are most kits recorded with compression?
I read in EQ magazine this month that the least mices on a kit the better..as to look at it as an instrument and not go crazy with the mics..

Suggestions? Please?

Thx,
Steve
 
I'm not trying to be a prick, but my suggestion is to do a thorough search first. These topics have been covered over and over, and there is lots of advice on different drum micing methods.

If you do your homework first and have more specific questions, I'm sure you'll get lots of help. :)
 
I personally really like to go crazy with the mics. Typical setup would involve:

Kick inside & outside
Snare top & bottom
HH
1 mic for each tom
stereo OH & stereo room mikes

You can always cut mics later when mixing.

You have to understand that the drumsound in a song has 4 basic parts.
Most important are offcourse kick/snare and hihat. After these I find overhead important. Hihat will mostly bleed into the other mics so you might get off with not miking it.

What does this leave you with?
Kick/snare and (stereo) OH

If the mics are positioned right I would be scared of the bleeding. It can give the kit some real natural ambience. Remeber that in a basic and minimal mic setup this bleeding is essential.

If it sounds hollow, I would try to retune the kit. mics don't sound hollow, wrong placement or wrong tuning does.
 
drums with few mics

The sound of the drums mostly depends on the tuneing and the quality of the set itself. . . are the heads less than a month old? are they good heads too? I go with aquarian performance 2 and superkick 2 on my pearl set. If you have old remo heads then thats your problem. . .

You might want to tune a little higher for recording and make sure there isn't a cardboard sound. . . but you can get rid of a lot of that in eqing

maybe the set itself is hollow sounding? if it's a $500 set then thats probably the case so just put high quality heads on it with NO muffeling (ie those stupid studio rings) which will suck the tone out. . . get the best sound out of it and then cut the bad sounding freq's in eqing.
 
drums with few mics

The sound of the drums mostly depends on the tuneing and the quality of the set itself. . . are the heads less than a month old? are they good heads too? I go with aquarian performance 2 and superkick 2 on my pearl set. If you have old remo heads then thats your problem. . .

You might want to tune a little higher for recording and make sure there isn't a cardboard sound. . . but you can get rid of a lot of that in eqing

maybe the set itself is hollow sounding? if it's a $500 set then thats probably the case so just put high quality heads on it with NO muffeling (ie those stupid studio rings) which will suck the tone out. . . get the best sound out of it and then cut the bad sounding freq's in eqing.
 
Damn, I only had one beer, and allready I start to see things double
 
Thanks guys!! Where is the best place for miking the bass..inside, out side?
 
sajemusic said:
Thanks guys!! Where is the best place for miking the bass..inside, out side?
Click to expand...

The possibilites are numerous, and are dependent on the style of music, the conception of the artist/musician and/or producer, the specific drum, and the room.

Wide variations in recorded kick sounds can be achieved by altering these variables:

•Mic, compressor, and preamp choices
•Single head or double head
•Drum tuning
•Amount of muffling
•Beater hardness
•Mic positioning, including positioning of the overheads and room mic(s)
•(last resort only) EQ

Depending on the sound you want, a kick mic could be inside almost up against the beater, 6 feet away, or anything in between. On a double headed drum it is sometimes necessary to mic from the drummer's side.

One way to work that I like is to set up the mics with your "best guess". Then record 30 seconds or so of the drummer, then play it back and get feedback as to what is right and wrong with the sound. Move the mics, and try again. Repeat until everybody is happy.
 
littledog said:


•Mic, compressor, and preamp choices
•Single head or double head
•Drum tuning
•Amount of muffling
•Beater hardness
•Mic positioning, including positioning of the overheads and room mic(s)
•(last resort only) EQ
Click to expand...

You forgot two:

-drummer
-engineer

:)
 
littledog said:


•(last resort only) EQ
Click to expand...

I don't agree. The only time I don't eq the kick, is when I double track it, and use the outside mic for adding air and low end. The inside mic is always eq, and most of the time the outside too. It's one of the parts of the drums that actually need eq, because it should have a different sound on record than in real life. FFFlllluuuummmbblllleeee treated into major ass kick
 
Here's my last set up and it worked great.

Kin=Audix D2, Kout=Senn. 602, SNtop=Marsh. 2001, SNbot=Marsh. 603, HH=Marsh. 2001, 3 TOMStop=EV 1776, 3 TOMSbot= SM57, OVHDl/r= AKG 451, ROOMl/r= EMC 8000.

Best drum sound I've gotten yet. I spent a lot of time with headphones finding the dead spots on all the mics. That's something I just don't do enough of. From now on I will.
 
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