Miking drums with 8 channel DAW

  • Thread starter Thread starter Scott smith
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Scott smith

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I am ready to tackle the process of recording the drums. Could you please give me an idea of how you would go about this having 8 ins.(long story short- we have preamps for 8 mics, 4 of which are on a mixer tascam TM-D1000) We also have another mixer 16 chn. for headphone monitoring if needed)There are alot of options! An option I see would be to record a scratch of all members playing song, burn to disk and have drummer listen through a walkman to "save" all 8 for drums (2 overheads, 3 toms etc) . OR- try to record drums with 7 chnls.and sneakin a guitar in on 8. Have you figured out I am green around the gills????? I would very much like some advice from some folks.

The main thing I would like to know is how do I optimize the recording of the drums. 2 Guitar and bass rock band.
 
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If you have the mics, why don't you run the drums through the 16chl and run that stereo....You could then run snare, kick, bass, and guitar through the tascam. Then I would just track the songs live. But otherwise, I would run.....well....not positive. What kind of system are you recording to? I can give a better answer then.

Mike
 
My system

Tascam TM-D1000 , (4 pre's on mixer) , Joe Meek VC6 (single channel compressor) 2 Art tube single channel pre's. I will get some more pre to handle the 5 piece set.Problem is can't really isolate another instrument. ???? thinking about miking all drums except the high hat (7) then running a bass or guitar track in 8 (DI) and tying in a headphone amp ?? There has got to be a better way
 
What are you recording to? A computer? 4 track? etc.?

Mike
 
Computer

Computer ......What I have is 8 inputs into computer. All of which need pre's
 
Ok, gotcha. Well, what I would do with those limited pres would be run the drums as you mentioned (into 7), and I would run bass through the 8th (if at all). I would then overdub guitar (or bass if I didn't throw it on the 8th input). I think this is the easiest way. You'll then have some separation between different instruments. If you wanted to track everything live, it's a good idea to get another mixer. It'd be hard to get the separation of the instruments that way, unless you had separate rooms in which to track.

Hope this helps,
Mike
 
Thanks so much

Sounds like I am on the right track (as far as a game plan) Thanks mike for your time. getting exciting. It has been a year since I started this venture, not much longer an I will be pulling my hair out again!
 
Why not track everything live with 7 channels for drums, then use 8th as a scratch track which has a rough mix of the 2 guitars and the bass. Then you could just overdub the guitars and bass again. Although, I think you could probably get a pretty good drum sound with 5 mics (bass, snare, overheads and a room mic) and record everything at once. Depending on your room, you can get decent enough separation with room dividers, etc. And who said that a little bleed is so bad anyway? I'd much rather have a tight live track with feeling and maybe a little guitar picked up in the drum mics than a sterile, lifeless overdubbed mix with complete separation. Just a thought.
 
You could try using 7 for drums with the toms submixed to two tracks and recording the scratch of everything else on the 8th
 
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