Recording drums, mic placement, etc.

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songsj

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I'm recording with a Tascam 788. I'm just getting started with
recording live drums. I only have 3 mics right now and this is what I did. Placed a SM 57 about 3 inches from the snare head [top ]right at the edge of the snare head pointing down and towards the center of the snare drum. placed a SM57 between the ride toms about 4 inches above them pointing down towards the heads and slightly back towards the drummers throne.
placed an AKG in the kick drum. I ran the mics into the 788 and used the onboard compressor with the following settings.

Threshold -16db
Attack .5 MLS
Density set at 50
Output at 12 db - not sure if this was + or -

My result was this, The overall sound was not too bad however I was surprised how loud the snare drum was through the mic on the toms and how loud the toms were through the mic on the snare. The kick drum was okay. Looking at the recorder playback
levels show all of the channels recording almost equally no matter which drum is hit. In fact at times the snare drum almost sounded louder on the tom mic than on the snare mic. I'm pretty sure I did not assign all inputs to all tracks. [ I've multi tracked alot, just not with drums.

What do you guys think?

Did I compress to much to the point of leveling all the signals off
to the point where I was recording as much bleeding and leakage
as anything else? Did I have some phase cancellation? This is not a drum room so I expect a certian amount of leakage but this sounded more like I hung two mics above the drummers head
and put a mic on the kick. I know I need more mics to do this right
but all I was doing was experimenting to see what kind of sound
I could get from the snare and the toms before I add more. If can't isolate things better than this there's not much point.
 
From what you've described, it sounds like you're going to get mostly bottom of the kit with no overall picture.
It's difficult to mic a kit well with only three mics, but it can be done. I think you need some sort of over-head or room mic so that you can capture all of your cymbal, hats and tom fill work as well as that complete picture of your drum kit. The SM57 is best for close mic'ing and doesn't excel as an over-head mic, but if it's all you have, why not try placing the 57 that you have on your rack toms a bit further away and high so you can capture the whole kit more with it.
The snare and kick mics must stay where they are. Also consider getting a good condenser that can be used as an overhead. One of the Oktava MK 319's or 219's will work well there if you want the LDC sound or one of the Oktava MK 012's (pair is even better) for the SDC sound. I mention these mics because they are real good mics and are very inexpensive.
Make sure your room treatment is good especially when you are working with a limited mic set-up. Cymbal sounds bounce off of everything and it's not pretty if your room is reflective.
Good luck.
 
Thanks, rimshot, my main disappointment was that I expected more isolation between the snare and rack tom mics, as I said it seemed as though the snare mic was picking up way too much tom sound and the tom mic was picking up way to much snare sound [ they were recorded on seperate tracks ]. I'm not sure why, maybe too much compression? I can't mic these things much closer or point them much straighter at the drums without hitting them when I play. I'm puzzeled.
 
SongsJ,

Although many people strive (mainly in vain) to record highly isolated tracks, it is nearly impossible to do without a HUGE amount of mics,gates and the like. I personally don't like the sound of a gated kit. I think of the kit as a big guitar. It is an instrument! It is perfectly acceptable to have tons of bleed as long as your kit is balanced. Sometimes you will want to do a special effect on the snare only, to which you can run a seperate mic / gate / track scenario.

The use of multiple mics is a mixed bag. The less you use the more clean the kit sounds (if the kit is played in a balanced way) but obviously you can't rearrainge the mix much later. More mics means more bleed, more phase issues , etc. but more ability to boost certain parts of the kit later.
It is up to you to determine if you really NEED to have more than 3 or 4 mics.

Tom
 
Head over to http://www.mercenary.com/

Fletcher wrote an article about how to mic a kit with only three mics. It is very helpful.

Personally I would use two 57's as overheads with one about 2 sticks length directly over the snare (right in front and just above the drummers head) and the other the same exact length from the snare, but over the drummers shoulder pointed out towards either the floor tom or the ride. Just concentrate on those two mics until you have as close to perfect as you can. If you have too much snare, point that mic a bit farther out.

Once that sound is balanced and blended nicely you will likely still need more kick and then you can start experimenting with kick placement... All the way inside will be mostly just kick, a little outside the drum and you can pick up more of the snare and toms.

I disagree, you CAN get a great drum sound with only three mics.

If you have any other questions, I would be happy to discuss further.

Jim
 
Hey songsj, I'm using the same multitracker that you are. I was wondering if you fixed the problem yet and whether or not you still use the same compressor settings? I really have no idea what any of that stuff does...maybe you could give me a few tips and let me know what has worked for you? thanks.
 
Near as I can figure here's what happened. I used one of the effects channels [ I think no. 1 ] as individual track compressors.
The manual tells you how and you'll know when your on the right screen because when you push the channel select buttons a new
compressor screen will come up with the channel no. on it. I recorded the drum tracks compressed and then without realizing it I had enabled the effects 2 channel as a dynamics compressor.
So I was double compressing. Not always a bad thing but in my case I squashed the drum tracks so much that there was little
seperation between the snare and tom mics when I listened to them individually. When I turned off the dynamics compressor
and used the reverb+gate effect and gated the drums slightly
everything sounded pretty good [ except the tone of my toms which was no fault of the recording. I will continure to experiment.
 
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