Recording Drums in Practice Room

[jonlint]

Hi there,

I am a newbie to DAW and have reaper plus a Tascam US-1800 which allows up to 14 tracks to be recorded at once. I want to record some drum tracks in our practice room. I have a full set of drum mics can record all in separate tracks through the Tascam. Obviously it is not a studio so not insulated. Does anyone have tips on how to setup for a reasonable recording? I have two used mattresses and was thinking of propping them up to make a "wall" around the drums to reduce reflections. Also saw a tip in a Shure publication of taping a piece of cardboard around the snare mic to reduce hi hat bleed.

Any advise is most appreciated!

Jonathan

 

[JMac52]

I am also a noob and have recorded drums exactly 3 times. Based on that vast experience, I'm not sure I would bother with mattresses, etc - unless your room is somehow really awful.

I used the Recorderman technique (easy to look up) for overheads (condensers) plus close dynamics on snare top and kick inside for a total of 4 channels, also to a US-1800. The overheads will pick up some room, but not that much, and I thought it actually worked to the benefit. I found myself adding some room to the snare in the mix.

I have seen in videos cardboard placed around the snare, but I really doubt that's going to eliminate all of the spill from the high hat. You're going to use a gate on the snare and definitely the kick (to ged rid of snare spill) anyway.

One other thing, with Recorderman, and I'm not sure to the extent A-B or X-Y would have this issue, but the close mic snare is going to be tad out of phase with the overheads. Really easy to fix in the DAW.

Hope that helps.

J

 

[Popnfrsh24]

i have no idea if this helps but my friends put rugs up on the wall to absorb some of the echo

 

[Tiko]

I'd maybe put one mattress on the left side so the hi-hats don't bounce off the nearest wall and back to the snare mic (that's gonna be your biggest problem) and do a kick drum tunnel with the other. And then get any sofas and bed or whatever to help the room sound a bit.

 

[Tom Hicks]

for starting out recording drums, the fewer the mics, the better, in terms of reducing phase and comb-filtering issues.

recorderman has been mentioned, that uses 2 mics. the gyn johns technique is related, and can be with 3 or 4 mics. other 2 mic drum recording techniques include XY and spaced pair.

the more time and effort you take in treating your room, the better the recorded sounds will be. also, careful drum tuning plays a HUGE role in the sound you get.

you can use the free Room EQ Wizard along with a measurement mic to get a better picture of how sounds acts in your room.
REW - Room EQ Wizard Room Acoustics Software

an alternate approach is to put pink noise thru some speakers and record that, with a frequency analyzer instantiated on the track. like the free Voxengo Span for example.
Real-time audio spectrum analyzer plugin (AU, VST, VST3) - Voxengo SPAN - Voxengo