What's the best way to record using this equipment?

K

KingDiamond

New member
I play in a metal band and I have recorded some demo's before using Cubase SX2, an E-MU 0404 sound card, and a cheap mixer. I never recorded drums before, I would just use Toontrack EZ Drummer. Now I have better equipment and I want to do better recordings. I want to record the drummer and I am planning on using four mic's to do that.

The equipment:

Presonus Firepod
Behringer UB1222FX-Pro mixer (don't think it's necessary, we just use it for PA)
1x Audix i5 microphone
1x Audio-Technica ATM25 kick drum microphone
1x Shure SM58 microphone
1x Shure SM57 microphone
2x Behringer C2 condenser mics, matched stereo pair

The band has a drummer, bass player, guitar player, and a vocalist. I'm planning on miking the guitar half stack with one or two mikes. The bass cabinet has a direct line out.

Now what's the usual way to do this? Do we record the entire band live? I'm guessing if it's recorded live then there will be a lot of bleed-through on the mics. Or should we record each instrument seperately? If we do that, then which instrument is usually recorded first?
 
Different bands do this different ways, but the general consensus (unless you're going for that 'live' sound) is to mike each instrument individually. The recording generally starts with the drums (the other instruments can play along/sing and be piped into the drummers headphones, if you've got some extra mics laying around - just to let him know where he is), then move on to the bass, then guitar, then vocals last. This is subject to change, but serves most applications quite well. You'll probably need (depending on the size of your drum kit) all of the mics that you listed, providing you aren't planning on investing in any more, just to capture the drums, which makes recording the band live not an option. You said that you were planning on using four mics to record the drums - which ones, and where were you going to place them? What program are you using to record? Let us know how it goes!
 
I'm going to use the Audix i5 on the snare drum, Audio-Technica ATM25 on the kick drum, the Behringer C-2's in an X pattern for the overheads. The overheads should pick up the sound of the cymbals and toms pretty good. I'm using Cubase SX2 to record.
 
I don't know how good those C2's will be at picking up a good tom sound. But if that's all you've got go for it :)
 
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