Recording Drums with 2 Channels

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dkerwood

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Hey, all.

So my band (straight ahead rock) is recording a demo CD. I'm using Adobe Audition, with a stock soundcard. This means that I'm limited to 2 simultaneous channels, meaning that my nice set of drum mics are pretty well defeated, unless I want to premix them before sending them to the computer (which I'd rather not).

So far, we've tried running bass drum and snare drum into the comp, we've tried an overhead and bass, and an overhead and snare. Overhead and bass seems to work best, and we've backed the overhead up enough to get more snare than cymbal.

The only problem I've having is that this setup is sounding very "acoustic", if that makes any sense. I've been able to get very good results with vocals and instruments (excluding that enigmatic "perfect" bass tone), but I can't seem to get the drums to sound like they do in pro rock recordings.

Any tips?
 
You'll get a better mix if you use all your mics and bring it down to two channels. Better yet if you get a real soundcard. If you HAVE to go to two mics - 1 on kick, one on OH - LDC preferably. The reason you're not getting the right sound is likely due to the low quality of your gear or inexperience. It'll get better the more you learn and spend time trying new things... Mic placement, eq, room acoustics, mics, drums, comp/no comp...so many different factors make up a drum track!

Some of Bonham's drums were recorded using 1 mic! Don't ever doubt that one or two mics can get the sound done.

Jacob
 
Ok, so if I do mix it down to 2 channels, what would you suggest I put in each channel?

I'm just looking for some tips, and not really for condescension, thanks.
 
If you're looking for a more upfront and less roomy sound, you might want to try experimenting with submixing your mics. Chances are your room isn't particularly dead, so a snare at 1' or 2' is going to sound different to a snare at 1". You will have to run quite a few test takes to get the balances right though - I recorded a kit to stereo pair recently only to find out I'd left the kick WAY too low and ended up having to trash the tone of the snare and toms to boost the kick to an audible level.

You can always re-enforce individual drums later with some overdubs, sequencing or even Drumagog if you have access to it, as long as you have time. I didn't, and my elementary error was costly!!!
 
You should use all your mics and pre mix them as a stereo drum mix. It will take some experimenting, but you can do it.
 
Surely there's a way to do this and retain some control...

I can't imagine that having 2 stereo tracks for drums can be very useful for mixing after the fact. All the compression and other toys I have to play with go in AFTER the fact, in the form of plugins. If I have "Drums Left" and "Drums Right", then I have no way to correctly apply the effects.

Right?
 
actually, some of my favorite drum takes I have recorded have been with a stereo pair, 8 ft in front of the set, 3-5 feet from the ground. A compressor plugin comes in handy here, and you can mess a bit with the over-all tone of the set if you have an EQ at your disposal. Give it a shot. Unfortunatley, unless you have an interface with alot of channels, you are pretty much restricted to submixing the drums.
 
dkerwood said:
Surely there's a way to do this and retain some control...

I can't imagine that having 2 stereo tracks for drums can be very useful for mixing after the fact. All the compression and other toys I have to play with go in AFTER the fact, in the form of plugins. If I have "Drums Left" and "Drums Right", then I have no way to correctly apply the effects.

Right?
Click to expand...
If you had 4 inputs, yes. With 2, you just have stereo.

If you want the sound of pop recordings, you have to do what they do. If they could do it with only 2 mics, they would. When you define what you want the results to be, you lock yourself in to the process that gets those results.
 
"Surely there's a way to do this and retain some control...

I can't imagine that having 2 stereo tracks for drums can be very useful for mixing after the fact. All the compression and other toys I have to play with go in AFTER the fact, in the form of plugins. If I have "Drums Left" and "Drums Right", then I have no way to correctly apply the effects.

Right?"

All you get to use is what you got. Four mics will do the job better than two. If all you've got is the ability to record 2 channels. I'd say try all the options...we can tell you what we would do, and you can try it, but that's all we can do. If you buy more ins with a better soundcard you'll get the versatility you want. Until then, you're stuck with what ya got!

Jacob
 
If you have a matched pair of mics (preferably condensors) try a coincident or near-coincident pair somewhere out in front of the kit that gives a good balance of the overall drum sound. Of course, having a drummer who's dynamically consistent will be a big plus. I would set up your two mics in a stereo pair of your choosing on a stereo bar, and just slowly move the pair around in front of the kit while listening with headphones as the drummer plays until you find the place that sounds best to you.
 
Try a stereo pair first then if your drummer is decent you can overdub the kick and snare.
 
When we did our demo in March, I had never engineered anything with drums before, but thankfully I'd been visiting these forums.

However, I had hardly enough gear at that point to do what I wanted, but I did have 8 channels to go in with, for which I only ended up using 7 anyways.

All the demos were recorded live. I was unable to monitor anything as it was going in, including the levels of the drum overheads. I was lucky those came out as well as they did.

Things I learned: Snare and kick mics are crucial!
The DI out of the lead guitarist's amp is no substitute for a SM57.
Singing through the PA gives a small amount of unwanted bleed in the overheads.
Vocal tracks sound like shit live.
Recording vocal overdubs in a small wet room will give you vocals that sound like they were recorded in a small wet room.


Enough of that. If I were in your situation, I would use at least 4 mics in a mixer. Overheads, snare and kick. Do a few takes and get levels you like. Use the board's EQ only when necessary. Mix this in stereo, and put the stereo outputs (Not headphones!) into the computer inputs and record away.
 
Sounds like they were all good lessons, Alexbt! THAT is what Homerecording.com should be about though, getting the best from what we have! :)
 
Ok, so let's talk about submixing into a stereo track. Let's assume I pull out all the stops here:

2 overhead condensors
3 tom mics
2 snare mics (top/bottom)
2 kick sources (kick mic and a 10" speaker as a mic)

As far as I can guess, there's only two ways to go about this - L and R or Group 1 and Group 2.

If we're going L and R, I'd assume the best way would be to pan things the way that they are arranged on the set... maybe exaggerating just a bit. So you'd pan your overheads maybe 30-50% to the sides, put the bass down the middle, slide the snare slightly to the R (although I'd probably pan the 2 snare sources evenly to keep the snare sound coming right down the center), and spread the toms across the two channels. Let me know if any of this seems wrong.

The other way would be to submix the drums into 2 groups, which is sort of what I've been doing already. The question becomes, what drums go where? Perhaps you could lump "low sources" and "high sources" together? Maybe put snare and kick in one group and everything else in the other?

I love my drummer to death, and his own idea was to overdub everything 2 tracks at a time, but I know he's nowhere near that consistent. I had a nightmare trying to cut and paste 2 takes together last night.

Tips?
 
You're pretty close, but it's not as simple as panning the way you think you should. What I usually do is sit in the room while the drummer's playing and close my eyes and listen to where everything hits my ears...then I mic the drums and make them fit where they hit my ears...it's a realistic sound I think.

http://www.saecollege.de/reference_material/

Here's somre great mic placement and panning info for ya.

Jacob
 
Drums on two tracks is painful. I've had to use one, even. Ug.

You basically have your options: Stereo, or groups in mono. For groups, I'd do kick and snare, cymbols and toms. The sources should be different enough that tweaking one won't screw the other too badly.

Somebody once suggested copying the tracks, treating the new tracks as individual "close-mics," and then mixing them back into the original tracks. The clip sounded pretty good, considering.
 
Here is a short clip of a drum mix using two mics. One above the snare about two sticks high aimed at the snare. And a kick mic on the hole of the front head.
Warning no processing is done yet or anything like that and the tune is not done.

 
dkerwood said:
Any tips?
Click to expand...
Use a stereo pair of condensors in front of the kit, and run close dynamic mics on the snare and kick (of which this submix will be blended in with the stereo condensors of your main mics). It will give you some control over the ambience of room and a nice balance.

Regards.
 
I have read in Mix magazine that a common practice to record drums is to place two very good tube mikes above and behind the drummer's ears and a mike in the kick. Supposedly you get what the drummer hears (assuming that the drummer is a good one) and mix the kick in with it. I haven't ever tried this though so take the advice with a grain of salt. Dave
 
Sorry about the duplicate post. My keyboard must be in stereo :D Dave
 
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