Single Tracking Drums

G

Grape

New member
Hey guys,

So far in my experience of recording, I'm still not at the point where I can afford things like fireboxes or mixers that let you record mics into separate tracks.

I've always single tracked for drums and it is pulling me back so much. We need to spend more time getting the right rough sound before I post-EQ and such.

Has anyone ever gotten a nice track by simply single tracking a drum set?

<33 Grape

p.s. Checkout www.myspace.com/grapestudio
You'll see how the first song (which has a separate kick drum track) sounds so much better than the second song (single tracked drums)
 
You can pick up a small mixer for like $25. Theres a method for tracking drums with a 3 mic setup that can achieve awesome results, provided you can record to a stereo track (if i remember)
 
Well I do have a mixer and 3 mics.
I'm going to order 3 more when I get the money, I just can't balance out the mids of the kick that I DONT want with the mids of the snare that I DO want.
The mixer only has the EQ settings of Low 80Hz, Mid 2.5Hz, High 12 kHz
I want to get rid of the 250-1000 Hz for the kick but keep it for the snare so I'll still have some beef to it.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Grape
 
This is a tricky one. What sound card are you recording with for starters? If you only have one stereo input you going to have this problem. You can pick up 2 or 4 channel sound cards relatively cheaply now days (well under US$100). Then you could track your kick drum on a seperate track and process it like you want on the PC.
 
If your using a mixer already and having to record a mix of the entire kit to one track here's a suggestion that helped me in the past.Most of the problems are due to unavoidable bleedthrough so my old drummer suggested to use dixie cups.He read this somewhere.

Put a hole in the bottom of the cup,insert the mic & position the cups to where the mic is sitting inside the cup by about 1/2 inch from the big end and stuff tissues inside the cups to fill the empty space behind the mic.All you're doing is isolating the mic some from the other drums and minimizing some bleedthrough.

This won't achieve miracles and you'll still get some bleedthrough but it will help some on the snare and toms.Don't do it on he kick though of course.Experiment with it and see if it helps clean up you're drum track.Hope it helps
 
Oh wow, thanks for the replies guys.

I'm using a crappy $15 soundcard for my P.C., it doesn't even function with ASIO.

I'm starting to use my laptop more though, which does function with ASIO, but is Vista (-.-), so I think maybe buying a USB interface should work?
 
I just discovered something that's been in front of me for the past 2 years.
Call me a noob, but I finally realized I can select the mono settings for my line-in and pan left/right to get two recordings at once.
Thus, I get a mono cymbal/tom/snare channel and a separate kick channel. =]
Now onto getting a stereo cymbal channel.
 
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