5 questions on recording drums

[ufob]

I recently recorded my first drum tracks with the 001. It went very well and sounds pretty decent. I used a beringer mixer with a 57 on the snare, 112 on kick and 2 603S's as overheads. The style that I am after is pretty straight forward. My only wish was that the kick be punchy with good bass, the snare be organic/natural but not pingy. The hi-hat not sound like trash can lids and the overheads crisp and airy.
All in all, I was pretty happy. I defintely will need to experiment with mic placement though as I know that I am not that lucky and I am sure that it could sound better.

1. What is an alternative/solution to getting the hi-hat out of my snare mix. Given the fact that typically the two are very close..I am having difficulty eq'ing & mixing the two seperatly.

2. Should I remove the cover from the front of the kick drum..my recording (with the cover) lacked "P" and the envelope is wrong.

3. Should I be bussing all of my drum tracks to an aux channel so that I won't have to have plug-in resources on every channel.

4. Which leads me to my next question-I don't particularly hear where I am to be using the gate and compression. I know that some say it is essential-tight attack and release on kick and snare- but I am not hearing it. I put a little compression on both and it sounds fine-is it that easy?

5.I have read quite a few threads on phase since it will ultimatley happen in this such environment-Are there any fast rules to making sure it doesn't occur? and, if it does, what does it sound like?

[Gr0und_Zer0]

About bussing:

I often send almost everything to a buss with a reverb (room) except for the kick. It sounds like the drums were played in a large room (or a small one, depends on the reverb/send levels settings), instead of in a small dead sounding attic (in my case). Oh yeah, I limit the overheads a lot, so you can hear the overall drumsound instead of a bit of the kit and a lot of the cymbals. Some tricks I discovered myself (I'm totally auto didactic.), maybe there are better ways to do it.

[kalle74]

5 answers:

1.Mic placement and angle. Since you use a 57, try to point the rear of the mic toward your hi-hat ( depending on your setup, this might not be practical, or is impossible, but go as far with it as you can ). That´s where 57 has most rejection. Trying to EQ it out is very hard and most likely your snare sound will suffer. Remember that some spill is acceptable...

2. Don´t remove the front skin. First learn to tune your drums properly ( every drum recording session begins with tuned drums ), and learn to kick HARD, especially if you play rock. No amount of EQ tweaking will give you the results you get with good skins and tuning and a capable player. Oh yeah, have a hole cut in the front skin, about 8" slightly off center. Mic off-axis.

3. No, because every drum of your set requires different processing. There are no uniform comp or gate settings for drums. Once you´re happy with the drums, you can always Audiosuite your tracks.

4. No gating is NECESSARY. Toy around with it and you will learn to use gates. Just make sure you´re not gating too much ( -20dB will do ) or cutting the attacks off.When you can´t hear a gate working in a mix, it´s going good. The same goes with compression.

5. When using multiple mics, some phase problems will always arise. Out-of-phase sounds usually lack in highs and/or lows, and generally sound funny ( undefined, overly boxy etc. ).

I would recommend having aux sends on channels requiring reverb, returning to a stereo aux track with a reverb plugin. This gives you more control over the amount of reverb on different drums as well as a master reverb fader.

[ufob]

ANYONE ELSE...???

[Lawrence Arps]

remember the 3 to 1 rule for the overheads...that is three times the distance between the mics as the distance to the source. this will help. For a realy phase coherant overheads use a coincident pair..
For snare/HH isolation, keep the snare mic comparitvely close and pointing away from the hh.
Personally , as far as gates go, I like the spill and odd phasing that comes with a drum kit (in small doses). The only time I insist on heavy gating is when I am using loud FX reverb or similer (to keep the reverb off unwanted sources.)
kalle74 has a point - hit the things that you want loud, hard!!!. If the room mic mix is wrong then work on the performance.(or the drums...I often record with tiny 8" HH - quiet but cool)..then your isolation problems will be lessened.

hope this helps

[zboy2854]

As far as the hi hat bleed issue, there are two things to pay attention to. First is the room you are recording in and where the drums are set up. If there are anywhere near any walls, you will get more bleed from the hat into the snare mic. If you set up in the middle of a large room, you will get less.

If you cannot control your room parameters, the next best thing is to use a mini gobo between the snare mic and the hat. I use a small piece of padded drywall (7" long and 5" wide) mounted on a mic stand, and use it to shield the snare mic from the hat. It works very well in minimizing bleed.