probably easy to solve...hopefully.

R

roflcopter

New member
i recently recorded a drum track with one microphone. a microphone that produces very tinny, thin-sounding tracks...yes, it's cheap. but this is usually remedied with a healthy low-mid boost.

the treble-heavy nature of this mic is giving me a problem. when mixed with other instrument tracks, it seems like the hihats cut through everything and that's all you hear.

backing off the higher frequencies (5-6khz) mellows it out a little bit but then the snare and toms start sounding dull.

is there a solution to this, other than buying a new mic and re-tracking?
 
Garbage in = Garbage out.

If it can't sound good then try to make it sound interesting. Slam it into a limiter and maybe add some crazy fx.
 
You need more than one mic, period. It's absolutely impossible to get even a mediocre drum recording with one mic.
 
Or anybody pre-1960s.

It's perfectly possible to get a great (yes, great) sound with one mic, on a whole band if needs be. However, you need a great drummer, a fairly good room, and a nice signal chain.
As for the OP, I would have to second the idea of programming better drums, or re-tracking with better equipment.
 
NL5 said:
Tell that to Jon Bonham. :D
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How's he gonna manage that one? I hate to break it to you, but.....he's kinda dead.

All kidding aside, there's nothing wrong with mono drums. A lot of the greatest recordings of all time had them. The Beatles come to mind...
 
NL5 said:
Tell that to Jon Bonham. :D
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Are you telling me there's LZ recordings out there with ONE drum mic? :eek: I have a hard enuf time micing drums with a whole set! ONE mic?? That goes against everything I beleive, where might I hear a sample of that?
 
suprstar said:
Are you telling me there's LZ recordings out there with ONE drum mic? :eek: I have a hard enuf time micing drums with a whole set! ONE mic?? That goes against everything I beleive, where might I hear a sample of that?
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Think of microphones as ears. Are you telling me there's nowhere you can place your head with one ear covered that will get a great drum sound? If not, your drummer sucks, your room sucks, or your ear sucks :)
 
suprstar said:
Are you telling me there's LZ recordings out there with ONE drum mic? :eek: I have a hard enuf time micing drums with a whole set! ONE mic?? That goes against everything I beleive, where might I hear a sample of that?
Click to expand...

I believe "When the Levee Breaks" is one Beyer Stereo mic. There are others as well. Have you ever stood in a room with a drumkit? Does it sound OK? Well, one mic is all you need to capture that.
 
suprstar said:
Are you telling me there's LZ recordings out there with ONE drum mic? :eek: I have a hard enuf time micing drums with a whole set! ONE mic?? That goes against everything I beleive, where might I hear a sample of that?
Click to expand...
The funny thing is putting a seperate mic on evey surface in a drum kit more ofthen than not goes against everything I believe in, and makes about as much sense as putting a seperate mic on each string in a guitar. The "drums" are a single instrument to everybody in the potential audience except the modern amateur recording engineer, it seems ;)

This doesn't mean necessarily mono recordings, but anthing more than 3 or occasionally 4 mics submixed into a stereo spread is just there to make up for a bad drummer.

Steve.h and NL5 nailed it; if the drums sound good the front of stage or to an audience member, then they can be captured in the studio in stereo or in mono and sound just fine. it's just a matter of having the right room and the right mic placement. Which, coinicdentally, is no different than how we deal with any other instrument.

Take it back to some of the great jazz drummers like Buddy Rich or Gene Krupa. There are mono recordings done in the 1950s that sound better than half the stuff slapped together in the 60s and or 70s.

G.
 
steve.h said:
Think of microphones as ears. Are you telling me there's nowhere you can place your head with one ear covered that will get a great drum sound? If not, your drummer sucks, your room sucks, or your ear sucks :)
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Theoretically, this is true.

On the same plane of thought ... wouldn't it sound a lot better if you could have five ears ... with two of them placed above the drummer, another placed just over the snare (right over the sweeet spot where it sounds best), and another ear just inside the kick where the beater hits (where no ear has previously dared to venture) ... and finally, another one about 20 feet in front of the kit ...

... and to have the perspective of all of those ears simultaneously balanced so as to get a full picture of the kit?

The whole idea of multitrack recording is to present a product that is somehow "better" than reality ... and to present things from a perspective that otherwise isn't possible or practical in the natural world. Otherwise, every recording would just be a live recording in a room with one mic. There'd be no need for studios or engineers.
.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
The funny thing is putting a seperate mic on evey surface in a drum kit more ofthen than not goes against everything I believe in, and makes about as much sense as putting a seperate mic on each string in a guitar. The "drums" are a single instrument to everybody in the potential audience except the modern amateur recording engineer, it seems ;)

This doesn't mean necessarily mono recordings, but anthing more than 3 or occasionally 4 mics submixed into a stereo spread is just there to make up for a bad drummer.
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Ok well thanks for the info, thats what im here for, live and learn.. I thought ppl use different mics because one mic is suited to a bass drum, one's better for snare, one's good for cyms, etc. Not to mention being able to mix... Are there any studios that still record 1-mic drum tracks? If you were going to do that, what mic would you use?
 
Daisy said:
Theoretically, this is true.

On the same plane of thought ... wouldn't it sound a lot better if you could have five ears ... with two of them placed above the drummer, another placed just over the snare (right over the sweeet spot where it sounds best), and another ear just inside the kick where the beater hits (where no ear has previously dared to venture) ... and finally, another one about 20 feet in front of the kit ...

... and to have the perspective of all of those ears simultaneously balanced so as to get a full picture of the kit?

The whole idea of multitrack recording is to present a product that is somehow "better" than reality ... and to present things from a perspective that otherwise isn't possible or practical in the natural world. Otherwise, every recording would just be a live recording in a room with one mic. There'd be no need for studios or engineers.
.
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Oh yeah, absolutely! My point wasn't that it was the best way to record something, just that it was possible to get a non-awful sound out of one mic.
 
suprstar said:
Are there any studios that still record 1-mic drum tracks? If you were going to do that, what mic would you use?
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Probably not, unless they were going for a special vintage effect. And I'd pick the most expensive mic they got ;).

A lot depends upon the type of music too. This board is extremely top heavy with metal enthusiasts (why metallurgists are seemingly more interested in recording themselves at home than all the other genres put together is a phenomenon I have yet to figure out), and that is a genre that depends more on making the drums sound artificial than most other genres. So multi-miking is a better idea there, because it allows for finer control over the corruption of the sound.

But if one is working with music where the drums sound right the way God built them to sound (which is the wide majority of genres) and the drummer actually knows how to play them, then I personally (and I know I am in a minority here) think anything more than four mics maximum to be an exercise in self-flagellation. I personally prefer two overheads and a kick submixed into a stereo spread. I'll add a snare mic to them mix if the song/arrangement/mix *if* they call for a stronger snare than the drummer can deliver, but I'd rather work with the drummer on getting it right.

G.
 
Meanwhile, in the real world, we have to deal with what people expect

What most want to hear from a drumset is NOT in any way shape or form more than just slightly visually related to what a real drumset sounds like

For most styles you'd get fired for making a Bonham sound today

The proximity effect of close cardioids IS the sound of drums people want. You'd need a 20 foot high kick drum with a wrecking ball to kick it in order to make the relationship between the kick and the rest of the set that people think drums sound like.
 
There's not a single mic in the world that is able to capture sound the way your ear does (not to mention anything else in the chain)... Not to say you can't come fairly close (difficult mind you)... The reason ppl mic every drum is not to give it some "artificial" sound, but to try and recreate what your ears hear in a particular environment... That's why ppl get stuck paying 200-300 an hour for great engineers who know what, or are suppose to know what a particular instrument should actually sound like as if you were standing right there...

It's the same concept of why you're able to use more guitar distortion when you play live but less when you record... because the mic doesn't have a low enough physical resistance to capture what your ear can, that's not even getting into signal resistance or omni-directionality...
 
Yeah, record cymbal hits and drop them in. Copy the drum track, EQ the copy to get the toms sounding right (at the expense of the cymbals), and then drop in the cymbals--they'll be in their own track space, so EQ them and use volume automation to sit them in there. Use the original drum take in the background, EQ'ed to favor either the low or high end, depending on what the new, cymbalised total sounds like. You only need to record a few cymbal strikes--make sure the sound is allowed to decay, and then copy the best sounding ones. Line them up with the original strikes, or hits, or whatever.
I actually did this with a weak sounding snare, in great drum performance that was recorded in stereo. I didn't want to re-record, so I did something along the lines of the above, and goddamn if it didn't work.
My God, drums have been recorded in so many different ways with so many different mics, and amounts of mics, that its safe to say nothing's written in stone. On Rush's latest record, I seem to recall that at least 10 mics were used, in addition to overdubs that were later layered in. Me? We use 5 mics, with two as overheads-- all mixed in stereo, before they go in. I just got a new interface, with two extra lines in, so next week (or whenever the drummer shows up again), every mic gets its own channel in, with the overheads going to a digital four track. Kind of Mickey f***in' Mouse, but whatever works.
 
NL5 said:
I believe "When the Levee Breaks" is one Beyer Stereo mic. There are others as well. Have you ever stood in a room with a drumkit? Does it sound OK? Well, one mic is all you need to capture that.
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Sure but it was recorded at the end of a hallway, smashed with a limiter and ran through an echoplex. It's by no means a "good" drum sound but it is cool as hell.

Most of the LZ drum tracks used at least 3 or 4 mics.
 
Roflcopter,

This is not perfect, but assuming that you want to salvage this track rather than re-record, try this.

If you are software based: Make 3 additional copies of the track. Eq and gate one track to focus on the kick. EQ and gate another to focus on the snare. Eq and gate another for cymbals, etc, etc. I've done this kind of thing before, and it does work up to a point. Good luck.

Try something like this and take a few suggestions from Tim's post above, and maybe you can salvage it.
 
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