Recording and mixing awesome drums

[sureno]

Originally Posted by TrevCircleStudios

You got some kind of fetish going there? That's just weird dude.

one of many HA HA

[modz1]

Superb Trev, Superb!

[TrevCircleStudios]

Originally Posted by modz1

Superb Trev, Superb!

The fetish joke or the pics?

[TrevCircleStudios]

Okay I'm gonna move on to a section on mixing awesome drums now. You'll see I've added a handful of the questions I intend to answer to the OP already. If anyone's got any questions they particularly want answered pm them to me and I'll do my best to cover them.

[TrevCircleStudios]

Parallel compression notes finally added.

[Bloke From Barnet]

What a brilliant thread, thanks for posting this up! I love the parallel compression thing, can't wait to try that out!

I have a somewhat more humble setup for drums, I have only recorded live drums for the first time in years last week, but it was just a demo for a few mates and the drummer hit his drums like he was scared they might hit back so I still have nothing to reference yet.

I use SM57s on snare and all toms (Beta 57 on floor tom). D112 inside the kick and an SM58 outside. Sm58 on the bottom of the snare. AKG C100s for overheads and 2 SE2200a's further back in the room. Mix thru a Mackie analogue and have a couple of Drawmer MX30s for compression. I also got a TLA Ivory tube compressor, but the MX30's sound better for drums, with my setup anyway.
It won't blow anyone away, but its its what my piggy bank will alow.

With the parallel compression, do you use one compressor for the whole lot or do you split the toms/snare/kick into separate busses?
What would you do if you added reverb, put it on the compressed or the clean signals?

[FrankGIK]

Originally Posted by Bloke From Barnet

With the parallel compression, do you use one compressor for the whole lot or do you split the toms/snare/kick into separate busses?
What would you do if you added reverb, put it on the compressed or the clean signals?

Typically you compress the whole kit, but you can certainly split out particular elements if you find that they're causing the compressor to hit too hard.

Frank

[TrevCircleStudios]

Originally Posted by FrankGIK

Typically you compress the whole kit, but you can certainly split out particular elements if you find that they're causing the compressor to hit too hard.

Frank

As Frank says. Typically I won't put the overheads on the crushed buss but everything else goes through it. Sometimes bass too.

[Bloke From Barnet]

This is a really cool discovery for me, thanks guys.

There is a band I sometimes jam with, their drummer is real pleasure to watch and hear, actually all 3 of them are. We're going to do some recording over the summer, I will post the results here. We'll try this technique out with them. Really itching to try this out!

[TrevCircleStudios]

D112 inside the kick and an SM58 outside.

Presumably you mean the 58 is outside on the beater side?

Experiment with the D112 outside on the opposite side. Maybe even make a little tunnel and move it away a bit. The deeper bass notes take a little space to develop. Moving the mic back will allow you to capture that. Good luck!

[Bloke From Barnet]

I usually put the D112 just inside the hole and the sm58 about 6-8 inches away. I hadn't thought of putting a mic on the beater side. I'll do some experimenting. Thanks again.

[TrevCircleStudios]

Originally Posted by Bloke From Barnet

I usually put the D112 just inside the hole and the sm58 about 6-8 inches away. I hadn't thought of putting a mic on the beater side. I'll do some experimenting. Thanks again.

ah... I'd assumed you were using the 58 for the 'click'.

[Bloke From Barnet]

Nah, the D112 usually picks up a decent click (for my liking at least) from inside the drum.

Its usually 'all click & thud' I get from the D112, then I use the SM58 a little further away from it to pick up its natural sound. I could maybe do better with something better than an SM58, but I guess that could go on & on in every direction. It actually does ok tho.

I'm sitting here formatting the drives on my newly built machine, got a project to start tomorrow and I don't even have windows yet! Hopefully, if all goes well, I can do some experimenting with drums next week.

[FrankGIK]

Originally Posted by Bloke From Barnet

Nah, the D112 usually picks up a decent click (for my liking at least) from inside the drum.

I agree...the D112 is pretty clicky. I like the Audix D6 if I need a little less click and more thunder.

Frank

[stephentedsmith]

I wanted to create a topic where we can share drum recording techniques. I'll give an overview of some of the stuff I do at my studio but would love to hear what other techniques people are using.

Snare Drum Recording Techniques
We usually end up miking the snare drum's face with a Shure SM57 sometimes together with a Beyer M201 or a Neumann KM84. There’s often a debate over whether mics should also be placed underneath the snare. Occasionally we have used this to get more of the snare spring sound. However it will almost invariably need gating and can also introduce phase issues. If we do place mics underneath we will usually go for another SM57 or possibly a C451EB.


Overhead Microphone Recording Techniques
Overheads are also very important and at ALT Recording Studios the approach we take with overheads is that they bring the drum sound together giving a more natural less disparate feel than just close miking alone can. We always meticulously check the phase relationships between each drum and the overheads as this can ruin the bottom end of the recording.

We always move the mics around loads. When were recording a drum kit in our bank vault live room we often spend much more time in the live room trying out mic positions than we do in our control room.


Kick Drum Recording Techniques
For recording Kick drums we always go for the classic AKG's D12 large-diaphragm dynamic mic as it always seems to deliver the results we’re looking for. It’s basically a microphone that emphasises the sound you want form a kick drum.

Our secret weapon for creating an extra big Kick sound is an Electrovoice RE10. This vintage mic has a frequency response that’s pretty flat for a dynamic mic and it also doesn’t produce too much proximity effect. Another trick we use at ALT Recording Studios is Brighton is miking closer to the beater head. We find were able to get greater beater presence. When doing this changes to the mic positions greatly effect the level and quality of the beater sound. We often end up essentially with 2 different recording 1 of the beater and 1 capturing the tonality of the kick.

The full article I've written is posted on our website
www.altrecordingstudios.com

http://www.altrecordingstudios.co.uk...ing-drums.html