Recording drumkit live (eliminating bleed)

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C_flat

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Hi,

I've got a pair of MXL-603's, an SM57, and a D112 for the drumkit. What overhead placement should I use to minimize bleedover from the rest of the band? (guitar in 2-amp stereo, trumpet, electric bass)

Are there other relatively inexpensive alternatives for the -603 overheads that might be more apt to reject the other instruments?

Thanks,

Cb :confused:
 
Are you recording live on a stage (at a performance) or live in a studio? Either way, the drummer is probably going to be in the back with some sort of wall or barrier behind him. So no matter what, your going to get the bounce off of the wall into the drum mics from the other instruments. Try and have all of the musicans and amps placed the farthest away as possible from the drummer.
The most basic approach I can tell you to use is, use unidirectional condensor mics for your overheads. Mostly all of your mics in a live recording should be uni-directional to avoid bleed. Place the mics facing toward the kit (they can still be above the kit, but bring them further in front of the kit and face them towards the wall behind the drummer, pointing down at the drums. (Obviously put them over which ever quadrants of the kit you prefer best) but make sure they point away from the band.
If you have a lot of money to spare, you can purchase fiberglass separators (not sure what they are called) to surround the front 180 degrees of the kit. I'm sure you've seen these in may live situations before. If you dont have as much dollar, you can place wall dividers (moveable ones) in front of the kit to HELP get rid of some bleed. Your cheapest and easiest way would be to put the drums in another room with the door shut and just have him listen to the rest of the band through the headphones
 
Any recommendations on low-cost uni-directional condenser mics? Most of them seem to be omni's or cartioids.

Thanks,

Cb
 
The Octava MK-012's have hyper-cardiod caps available. But the bleed may not be all that bad. I've tracked full bands in a large room at reasonable volume with no real effort at isolation (other than spreading everything out)and bleed into the drum overheads wasn't that bad. YMMV.
 
By the way, the mics I was using in the above comment were Earthworks SR-71's and I believe they're a wide cardiod.
 
Nice Set-up you got

I know what you mean about the bleed, I had the same thing happen to me. There were only two things that I could do to prevent bleed and they were to either put my drummer in the other room and run my cables through the wall (the hole is a permanent fixture now) and have him on headphones, or have everyone else plugged in direct and have everyone on headphones. The other room solution had the players wanting to have eye contact with the drummer so I had to put in a couple of monitors and video cameras from one room to the other. That was weird. Either way it was the iso booth or the headphones for everyone.
 
To elimate some bleed through your drum mics, you can gate them by either using an external unit, or even through software. Although I haven't tried it through software, I did gate my kick drum and adjusted the threshold until when you hit the snare you hear nothing coming through the kick drum mic.

Another technique that I've seen, (still haven't tried due to lack of time) is to get some acoustic foam (or any other kind of foam) and cut a slit in the foam and stick it around the microphne stand (close to the mic) so that it prevents some bleed from the other drums.

Timmy J
 
i would try the 603 right down on the toms (provided the drummer doesn't use more than three or four toms) and then another condesor (pref s.d. but l.d. will be cool) above the kit to pick up the shine from the cymbals.

i recently recorded a live show at which i got about 50% of my drum overhead sound from the 57 on the guitar cab :D (small stage). concentrating on completely eliminating bleed can sometimes cause a mix to sound stale and lifeless.
 
tpreager said:
To elimate some bleed through your drum mics, you can gate them by either using an external unit, or even through software.
Click to expand...


I think he is talking about bleed into the overheads. You don't gate overheads.
 
Cheap uni condensors

I bought a CAD mic pack not too long ago. They're all cardioids, which isn't a bad thing, they're all uni and they're all condensors. It comes with a large diaphragm kick mic, 4 tom/snare mics and a pair of electret condensors. Holy crap, they turned out a lot better sounding than I had expected. The whole pack costed me about 400$ including taxes.
Go to the CAD website and look at the electret condensor cardioid overhead mics, given em some thought. Excellent bang for your buck, and graet isolation.
 
C_flat said:
Any recommendations on low-cost uni-directional condenser mics? Most of them seem to be omni's or cartioids.
Click to expand...


Cardioid mics are unidirectional!
 
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