DRUM ENGINEER STRUT HELLLP!
RAJ
tenacious local 7,779 Posts
OK... I'm all set up here at the mansion with this huge empty room and no wife and kids for another day. Set up the Ludwig Superclassic and mic'd this puppy up feeding it in to a Mackie into Garage Band on my MAC. Shit is sounding almost John Bonham-like! One problem , though that is irking me to NO end.I am getting this hi-hat bleed into the snare drum mike that is causing an uncomfortable distortion. It happens at all volumes so I am not peaking out.Listen to this clip below and see what you can tell me. I am off to get a cheesesteak and want to record an hour of distortion free drums before I have to pack up my shit and watch the Super Bowl. I got a SM-57 pointing at the snare and my guess is shit is picking up a hi hat bleed that is why weaksauce. RAJ BREAKZ AUDIO tHANKS!
Comments
I have repeatedly read articles on this, there is no majic for isolating snares (although micing from the bottom of it will shave a bit). It it gonna be in your own technique as a drummer. The thing with bonham, why he sounds so amazing on tape is that he was fucking incredible at reeling himsef back (playing the hats really light and the snares hard). Good luck man, this is a greta drumsound for your first recording in that room.
but you have the lux, use 3 mikes and just fug with em till you get hte right sound. especially if you are recording a stereo track (are you multitracking?).
less mikes the better, especially with drums imo
I'd like to see some pics of this house especially the large rooms, sounds nice, its a Queen Anne isn't?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone
If you have something besides the 57, try that instead (e.g., Steadman N90, EV RE-20, AKG C900, Oktava 012, AKG 414, AT 4050, AT ATM025, Beyer 201, Shure sm98 .)
Then set up a stereo pair of ambient mics across the room. If you have two of the same mics, try an M-S or X-Y configuration:
http://www.nickspicks.com/faq-stereoplacement.htm
Otherwise, experiement with placement of a singular room mic.
A cheap Radio Shack PZM mic on the floor would work as well.
Sounds good. A little bright, I think. Use more of the ambient mic and less of the snare mic to avoid that Lou Reed Metal Machine vibe. Check your phase when the ambient mics are in use. Sounds like you have a lot of reflection. Experiment with the ambient mic in different places (keep track of where) and try to strategically kill some of the crash.
For the record: John Bonham was meticulous about the sound of his drums, and he was quoted as saying he wouldn't let any mic be closer than 10 feet to the drums.
Experiment, but do it with a purpose.
eeewwww....bad 80s recording technique. It will get ya that "Mike and the Mechanics" sound....you dont hear the bottom of the snare when you are standing in front of a drumset listening to someone play, so why try and capture the sound down there, under the snare? Recording acoustic instruments, just use common sense, think of the micorphones as ears...nowhere in nature can you put your ear on the bottom of the snare while you listen to a drum kit.
http://www.soulstrut.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=crates&Number=801043&page=0&fpart=all
Awwwwwwww shit!!!! Raj gettin' funky with it. You gon' fuck around and end up in my ASR-10 with chopped loops on top. I might have to do that. You got some skills there, Raj. You have to invite me out so I can rock those Ludwigs and Ziljans for you. I always had a problem with that snare vibration bleed over. I have no solutions. Sorry!
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Recording sounds OK too. Just experiment with mic placement both around the room and over the kit. You'll find it after a while.
Good timing, dude...
Great stuff.. keep it going...
One thing you can do is run the snare track through a noise gate of some sort so you get mostly just the snare drum, and only when you're hitting it. Of course, this makes it almost impossible to play ghost notes on the snare.
Another thing is just play with mic placement. The SM-57 is a cardioid pickup pattern, as already noted, so your best move is to point the mic towards the snare with the ass-end of the mic towards the hi-hat so the hats are off-axis. Also play with the distance between the mic and the snare. Recording is anything but an exact science so the a lot of times the best thing you can do is just experiment with things until it sounds right.
The suggestions of trying an approach using overhead mics is good too. Unless you're going for a very stylized sound then using overheads for the basic drum sound is fairly standard. Throw up a couple of condenser mics as overheads for the overall stereo drum sound, and then you can use close miking on the snare, kick, toms, etc, to fill in the sound. Overheads will get the hi-hats and cymbals for you, no real need to mic those individually.
The John Bonham sound was really mostly just about ambient miking anyhow. Bonham was such a loud, powerful drummer that they didn't really need to have close miking to get that sound. If you've ever heard the bootleg of outtakes of just Bonham's drums from the "In Through The Out Door" sessions you can clearly hear there's all kinds of bleed, drum ringing and ambient sound in his drums. Hell, you can even hear Bonham grunting and making noise. It didn't matter since it was his trademark sound. These days most all drums tend to get close-miked and there's not a lot of drummers with distinctive sounds, but Bonham's sound you can pick out from a mile away as it's a mixture of his drumming style and the recording approach.