recording drums in small room

[Joz]

Actually its a very small room 9x14, the ceiling is 8 ft. high. Carpeted floor, sound deadening boards on the walls. I was wondering how to record open sounding drum tracks with basic mic placements. I was thinking 4 or 5 mics. I close- micked drums there before, but it had no openness

The drummer plays a 5 piece drum kit
thanks

[tom_mac]

Curious..... have you tried taking the boards down ??

If the room sounds good, put a stereo "tree"
in there. ( just move it around )

I'll try to get the sound I'm looking for from a stereo set up a few feet away.

Then...supplement with the close ones ..BAM!!! [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

Remember ....The impact from standing close
or playing the set , does not exist to a mic..
Stand back a bit and listen to your set.
Capture the tone of the kit in it's environment.
play around..( Better yet, get an assistant to move stuff around while you listen to the monitors)

Try a search for mixing tips for the drums
on the duc.

[pete scozzari]

were you using overheads along with close mics? try a ballance between the two.

[beech]

I'll second that. The overheads become very important. Also you could put up one room mic, I've used a PZM in the past but nearly any mic might do. Then send this mic to whatever Room FX you have. Lexiverb is good with the Gated or Room settings. Depends what kind of drum sound you're looking for after that. Plenty of compression on the room mic is good for rock!

Good Luck

Daire

[Jules]

There are several workarounds to achieve a 'big' sound in a small room.

But be warned that the technique of pointing 'room' mic's into corners and compressing them will just result in pure CRAP in a small room.. What you need to do is fake some 'distance' - that is the only way you will hear 'size' .

I have a tiny drum room, what I do is hang a mic (SM57) above the OUTSIDE of the door to the room.

I also put a mic in one of the storage boxes for my mic's and close the lid.

I compress the hell out of those mics and tune the release times o suit the tempo of the tracks

And then perhaps run them via Amp Farm..

I recorded a band at one of the UK most respected & expensive rock & roll studios and at my little place - the tracks done at my place had a FAR superior drum sound!

I am looking for a pair of the old radio shack PZMs to stick to the walls (or Floor)

One of the best drum sounds I have ever heard was done with a triangular / stereo PZM mic. (compressed heavily) in a small room.. I am still looking for one!

Screw trying to make a nice ambient sound in a small room (dream on - it ain't gonna happen!), your only hope is to a have fat / dead close mic sound, then use 'ambience initiatives' as I mention above.. You could easily cause nasty, short reflection, CRAP-OLA to bounce off hard surfaces right back into your close mic's.

If your room is DULL by all means brighten it up, with hard surfaces but 'brighter' is not to be confused with 'larger sounding'.

IMHO

[bjorn for a reason]

heres an obvious thought....do your close mic thing, then open the door to the "small room" and use the hallway or whatever space connects to it. move an omni around till it "speaks" then try varying degrees of compression (or just crush it!) [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

[Hank5]

Originally posted by Joz:
Actually its a very small room 9x14, the ceiling is 8 ft. high. Carpeted floor, sound deadening boards on the walls. I was wondering how to record open sounding drum tracks with basic mic placements. I was thinking 4 or 5 mics. I close- micked drums there before, but it had no openness

The drummer plays a 5 piece drum kit
thanks

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Funny I had a similar circumstance recently and the advice I was given was accept the sound of the room or TOTALLY divorce yourself from it. With that in mind I decided to record in a totally dead environment. I add reverb to the cue mix for the liveliness I'm looking for during tracking. I record with a 57 on the snare, d112 on kick and 2 c430 overheads. So far so good, for me that is. However, if you have a decent sounding kit and the room sounds O.K. you should, with a little experimentation and good mics get a pretty good sound.

[XHipHop]

Jules,
Could you please tell me the dimensions of the room you record drums in? I tried finding it on your website and i couldn't.

I have a big room with an 8 foot ceiling that i'm considering possibly splitting up to a smaller live room and a seperate vocal booth.

I guess i'd like to hear about some small room success stories before i make the move.

Thanks!
Bob

[Jules]

I dont know the dimensions for sure - it is maybe 8 ft, more like 7ft high and a kit & mic stands make it a very tight squeeze. The drummer has to 'breathe in' when sliding in to get behind his kit!

There is only about 3 ft between the end of the kick drum and the CR "window wall". (And I cover the Kick and build a soft padded tunnel - so it never bounces back off the wall back into the kick mic(s).. this also reduced boom from the Kick getting back into all the mic's - leaving the Snare - favored...)

I put in a ceiling mount for a mic stand, so my (stereo) OH mic (Royer SF12) hangs from that on a boom & goose neck stand combo.

[XHipHop]

Thanks a lot, Jules.

How have your results been and what have been some of the problems you've needed to overcome? (and how have you overcome them?)

I've seen your studio in EQ so it must be working out ok [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

Bob