suggestions regarding recording drums w/ mbox

[kvanhimb]

hey all,

i'm new to pro tools and have an mbox...was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for recording drums in the best manner possible

thanks.

[kvanhimb]

sorry for the bump...i just want to keep this fresh...

[Aussie169]

The easiest way is to use a mixer to submix the drums and send a stereo mix to the Mbox. But of course you are stuck with what you get.... no remixing later.

But if your project is more serious, I would suggest........
1) Pay to record drums and bass in a professional ProTools studio. Then take a copy of the session home, load it up on your Mbox system and start tracking everything else.

or

2) Borrowing/renting something like a Roland VS-1880 / 2480 etc, multi-track the drums, then transfer via S/Pdif (2 tracks at a time) into PTLE and go from there. A bit slow, but it works.... I've transferred VS-880 sessions into PTLE via an Mbox a few times. They will sync together via the S/Pdif if you have cables going both ways.

It all comes down to how much of a keeper you want your drum tracks to be.

Good luck

[spong]

I have often used a drum machine and then replaced those tracks in a studio with a live drummer. Best part is that you can weed out the material that will not make it on an album, you can record several tracks in one session and you have something to give the drummer to practise on before the recording date.

Other ideas are recording with overheads and then using sound replacer to beef up the kick and snare etc - I don't know if sound repacer will work on a non tdm system though

[Hammersmith]

I'm no ace sound engineer, but I have 2 cents to add. The other replies offered good advice, but didn't consider the obvious - recording drums to two tracks with just two mics. I got good results from this method. Try an SM57 (or whatever you would use for the snare drum) somewhere between snare and HH - further from the snare head than it would be if it were dedicated to the snare. The second mic (I used a large diaphragm condenser) directed towards the kick from a few feet away. You can hear the result I got on "Dashboard Madonna" at Hammersmith Songs.

The Shure website has some good docs on mic techniques - great reading for a beginner. I hope this helps.

mm