recoring drums

[brandrezake]

:huh: can someone direct me as to where i need to position the mics for a kick, snare, high hat, symbols, and toms?

[btbam > you]

you should probably mic the top and bottom of the snare, one mic over the high-hat, a mic in front of the kick, one for each tom, and 2 overheads to catch the other cymbals.

[punklet2101]

you should probably mic the top and bottom of the snare, one mic over the high-hat, a mic in front of the kick, one for each tom, and 2 overheads to catch the other cymbals.
Yep, that's how my brother does it.

[ArTkY_]

Theres an article about this on www.ultimate-guitar.com

[btbam > you]

also, if youre getting too much of a resonating sound on the snare and floor tom, roll up a piece of duct tape and stick it on the top, and it takes away a lot of the ringing sound.

[punklet2101]

And put a blanket in the bass drum

[btbam > you]

And put a blanket in the bass drum

pillows work too :).

[ArTkY_]

Yeah, both those work great.

also, if youre getting too much of a resonating sound on the snare and floor tom, roll up a piece of duct tape and stick it on the top, and it takes away a lot of the ringing sound.
Yuppers.

Found the article:

Mic Placement

01. Drums

Believe it or not, you can mic an entire drumset with just a single microphone. Bear in mind this will sound like crap, but it is possible. However, even more important than how many mics you use is the room you are recording in. Drums are an acoustic instrument and as such you will inevitably get the sound of the room as part of your recorded drums. How can you tell if the room sounds alright? A couple of things I like to do are to first shriek and listen to how the sound bounces off the walls, then stomp on the floor a couple times. Is it too shrill and reverby? Grab some blankets or pillows and spread them around the room until the problem is fixed. Is it so warm you don’t hear any reverb? See about getting some plywood boards from a local hardware store to add some reflections. You do NOT want a completely dead airspace. It will make the cymbals sound small and favor lower frequencies to make the whole set sound boomy. If you hear anything at all rattling as you do this, either tighten it down or muffle it with a blanket. Cover any windows with blankets to keep the sound of passing traffic out of the mix.

Once you’ve got your room ready to record, start with overhead mics. Once again, you can make a single mic work. Mount it on a stand about three to four feet high pointed straight at the drumset. If you’ve balanced the room right, you should be able to hear each part of the drumset quite well. If you’ve got two mics to use as overheads (make sure they are of the same type), you can mount them on stands roughly two feet above the top of the set. Try and make sure they are equidistant from each other and the edges of the set.

The way I set this up is, being as how I’m six feet tall, I mount the stands about a pace back from the bass drum with the telescoping part of the lower stand fully extended and the boom out at an angle to leave the mics two feet above the highest crash and then align the booms such that they both point to the center of the drum throne. This arrangement is called a spaced pair and it gives you a great stereo image of the drumset. You have to watch out, though, because it is easy to put the mics in a position where one is picking up the valley of a sound’s wavelength when the other is picking up a peak. The mics will cancel out this sound, this is called phase cancellation. The easiest way to double-check this is to listen to the signals from the mics in mono (pan them both center), and if anything disappears, you know you need to move the mics.

If you only have two mics, use the above configuration, but take another two steps back, so the mics are not directly over the set.

Another possibility is an XY configuration. In this configuration, you mount the mics 90 degree angles from each other with their grilles nearly touching, it will look something like this: /\, with the grilles facing the top of the page. This also gives a phenomenal stereo image without any phasing problems.

Next we have to mic the bass and the snare drums. Bass can be tricky, you really have to listen to how the drummer plays. If you can hear the bass drum reverberating after it’s been struck, you’ll need to deaden it with a blanket or a pillow inside. The sound of the bass drum should be a nice, tight “thump”. The attack is the most important thing to capture with this drum and it alone will have no reverb on it.

Once you’re getting a good sound out of this drum, you can mic it by either placing the microphone right at the entrance to the drum (it should have either a hole in its outer head or no outer head at all), or right up near where the beater strikes the inner head. The former gives a fuller sound, the latter a sharper attack. When it comes to which mic to use on this, a lot of people swear by the AKG D112, however I’ve found this mic doesn’t pick up a lot of the attack frequencies very well and requires significant EQing in mixdown. An SM-57 will do an awesome job of picking up the attack and making sure it’s in a frequency range that headphones can reproduce. You’ll need to EQ in additional low-end with this mic, however. Use your ears with this: if the drummer has a lot of attack, use the 112. If the kick sounds lower (and especially if the drummer is using a piccolo snare!) and needs more attack, use the 57. A great bass drum sound will put it right in the same frequency spectrum as the snare; you should only be able to tell the difference between the two in headphones by the crack of the snare.

To isolate the bass from the other drums, hang a blanket over the top of it, covering it and the stand holding your mic. If you had to put a lot of blankets in this drum to deaden it, you can even just lay the mic down on top of the blankets. Only do this, though, if the blankets take it up to beater level.

For snare, you want the stand to put the mic an inch or two from the rim of the drum, pointed down at a 45 degree angle toward the head. Some like to mount this mic so that the hi-hats are directly behind it. For a cardioid mic, this will ensure that there is a minimum signal bleed from the hi-hat. Personally I like to get a little signal bleed because most of the drummers I work with use a lot of nuance on their hi-hats and thus when the snare gets turned up, it brings that nuance with it. Once again, use your ears and decide for yourself.

If you’ve got enough mic inputs for toms mics, you mount them exactly the same way you do the snare. Bear in mind, however, that if you’ve balanced the room right, you really don’t even need to mic them because the overheads will pick them up more than adequately.

[brandrezake]

i appreciate your input, thank you....

[Blind-Pilot]

For your snare i usually put 2 sm57's on the top of the snare and one underneath...the kick drum i use an akg d112 inside the bass drum, as well as an ATm23 just at the hole and hi hats i use one sm57 pointing straight down on the outside of the hi hats.. tom mics i use atm 25's just off the rim pointing down towards the skin and overhead mics i use two Rode shotgun condensors for both left and right.. i usually set up an oktava condensor mic about 10 meters back from the drum kit at about mid-shin height to pick up i nice room's reverb sound...

[AreTwoKay]

you should probably mic the top and bottom of the snare, one mic over the high-hat, a mic in front of the kick, one for each tom, and 2 overheads to catch the other cymbals.
Exactly

[xmicandmoshpitx]

how did you guys learn about micing/recording stuff?my friend and i would really like to get into that.

[btbam > you]

how did you guys learn about micing/recording stuff?my friend and i would really like to get into that.

by recording multiple times with different bands. it's fun stuff once you really start getting into it.

[xmicandmoshpitx]

by recording multiple times with different bands. it's fun stuff once you really start getting into it.
see, my problem is that i'm from a small two and we have two bands that i know of. the one i know none of hte members and the other, i know them, but i don't think that chase's (one of the members) stepdad would let me sit in on their recording. i don't know his step dad at all.

i mean small town, not small two.

[AreTwoKay]

how did you guys learn about micing/recording stuff?my friend and i would really like to get into that.
I am going to school for recording, and I know about mic placement stuff from trying stuff out like trial and error ya know

[xmicandmoshpitx]

what's your major? recording or something with engineering?

[AreTwoKay]

what's your major? recording or something with engineering?
"Recording Arts"

[btbam > you]

see, my problem is that i'm from a small two and we have two bands that i know of. the one i know none of hte members and the other, i know them, but i don't think that chase's (one of the members) stepdad would let me sit in on their recording. i don't know his step dad at all.

i mean small town, not small two.


where are you from?

[AShannon04]

you should probably mic the top and bottom of the snare, one mic over the high-hat, a mic in front of the kick, one for each tom, and 2 overheads to catch the other cymbals.

yep, exactly. That's exactly how I do it for when my band records stuff. Playing live is similar to that as well if you like to mic your drums

[btbam > you]

yep, exactly. That's exactly how I do it for when my band records stuff. Playing live is similar to that as well if you like to mic your drums

what's your band called?

[aminorthreat55]

For future reference, the expert drummer on this website is Chris (http://www.absolutepunk.net/member.php?u=28867), however, he's gone for the summer, but once he gets back, I'm sure he'll be all over this, he knows more about drums/drumming than anyone else on this site. Seriously.

[AShannon04]

what's your band called?

The Basement Stairs. Even though we've recorded and produced 2 full-length albums by ourselves in like the past 2 years, we're not really taking it too seriously, but we're hoping to record a real demo this summer.

check out www.purevolume.com/thebasementstairs if you want

[aminorthreat55]

Oh yeah and the room you record in matters too. Open doors sound different from closed doors too.

[xmicandmoshpitx]

where are you from?
northeast pa

[Blind-Pilot]

yeah i go to university for audio enigineering... it pretty sweet... just trial and error.. no wrong answer.. just if u like that sound.. u like that sound

[AreTwoKay]

yeah i go to university for audio enigineering... it pretty sweet... just trial and error.. no wrong answer.. just if u like that sound.. u like that sound
What school?

[Blind-Pilot]

its in Australia... Queensland conservatorium of music.. i major in popular music production...