Recording live drums

[dagosto]

What is your favorite setup? How many mics do you use? What kind of room do you have? What are your tricks?

I record in a small basement area so here is my method.

Overheads - SM81's low mostly picking up the cymbals
Snare - SM57 or Octava MK103
Toms - Octava MK103's or MD421's
Kick - ND868 invert the phase usually to match up with overheads
I don't mic the hats or the room

I found this is the best setup for me.

[johnS]

When I did some recording with my old band, we did it on our practice space in a converted warehouse/factory. The ceilings were nice and high so the room sounded pretty good. Here's how we miked the kit:

OH: two Microtech Gefell M300s in with the capsules close together and pointed at opposite sides of the kit.

snare top: beyerdynamic M201

snare bot: SM57

Toms: Sennheiser 604s

Kick: beyerdynamic opus 65 about six inches away from the sound hole. I also had a heavy cylidrical cardboard mold (used for pouring concrete foundations). It was a little bigger than a kick drum. I lined it up with the kick, placed the mike in there and threw a heavy blanket over the top. Good isolation and a nice, big thud!

I found I didn't have to mike the hat, either. Plenty loud through the OH mikes. We tried a room mike and it didn't do much.

Used an RNP preamp on the OH mikes and just went through my old Soundcarft mixer for the others.

Got a good overall sound from the OH mikes, then processed the close mikes with compression after tracking. Doubled the kick track, put pretty heavy limiting on the duoubled track, and scooched it up under the original. Pretty heavy compression on the snare and toms, and some reverb on the snare. Pretty decent sound, imho. I think the preamps were the limiting factor.

One problem I was having was too much resonance from the drum heads. Any ideas on how to find a good sound from close mikes on drums? Seems to matter very much which part of the drum head you point the mike at.

[Bellringer]

Depending on the drummer you are recording, sometime his point of view is the best. Try using a mic a few feet over the drummers head or 2 mics to simulate what the drummer is hearing. It's still good to mic the kick and snare to add a little extra if necessary. This works well with a consistant drummer who has a good ear.

[fargone]

over-the-top drum micing.

ok...
bass drum - re20 on the beater, packing blankets and low mic stands creating a tunnel at the front of the drum with a FET47 at the end.

snare - nothing beats a 57 top and bottom. though throwing in a Beta57 for either top or bottom gives you interesting results.

hat - sm81 (though not always necessary)

toms - Coles 4038 or 421s

overheads - U87s over the drummers head

room (if the room sounds good) - Schoeps 221s.

bare (and low cost) micing -
kick - beta52 though that beyer m201 sounds good too
snare - sm57
knee-high spaced pair of oktava mk012s

</drool>

[fargone]

Originally Posted by johnS

One problem I was having was too much resonance from the drum heads. Any ideas on how to find a good sound from close mikes on drums? Seems to matter very much which part of the drum head you point the mike at.

tune the drums. tune the drums. tune the drums. If that doesn't work, tune the drums. You can't polish crap (unless you shelac it first) If you are otherwise screwed because of time or experience in tuning, moonjels are great. I've also used gaffers tape in pinches.

Mic placement is key after you have a good sounding set. Pointing mics toward the middle of the tom without getting in the drummer's way is how I usually get them to sound tastey. You also got to watch your placement in relationship to the polar pattern of the mic. If you point to shallow, you may be coloring the mics sound in a displeasing way.

Another technique you'll see live guys using all the time is gating. If done properly, it can still sound natural. If done poorly, you're sending those toms to the chopping block.

[dagosto]

definately tune the drums. I always do this myself because I know what I need to hear out of a drum and most drummers I record don't. Brand new heads or heads that are too old will also cause problems.

Gating can be great. A litte trick I learned was to copy the snare and kick tracks, eq the hell out of them, gate, and mix them in underneath the uneffected tracks. Really helps them punch through.

[johnS]

Yeah, I think tuning may have been part (or most) of the issue. Not that they were tuned poorly. The drummer got a sweet Ayotte kit and he knows how to tune. At least he owned a tuning key and would use it. I think he just liked a tight, ringing snare sound with a long decay. I don't know how he did it but he succeeded. A matter of taste, clearly, but those snare hits were lasting a loooooong time, and took up tons of room in the mix. I just wanted it to snap and go away. I know I could gate but where's the fun in that?

[fargone]

I always liked splitting the entire kit to a group (or dupe the drum tracks), crush the hell out of it, and then mix it back into the natural drums. That will give you that extra presence and punch.

I've also heard (and I'm dying to try it) that you can get some cool sounds sending a group out to a Big Muff and mixing it in with the dry signal.

There's also key inputing a gate with white noise for a snare drum will give you more of a firecracker sound.

-edit. oh and keying in a 50Hz tone in for your bass drum. [rumble]

[Nubus]

Try no bottom heads on the toms!

[lukedavo]

Take 3 lbs of chocolate chips, 2 lbs of flour, 6 eggs, one cups of bacon greese, and mix with a little love, bake for 15 mins on 350 and everyone in the band will be happy.