Anyone doing minimal drum recordings? Few mics or submixing?

[joestanman]

I used to have an 002 and could close mic all my drums, but I scaled my project studio back to an mbox, and have been forced by the 2 channel input to submix 3-4 mics down.

I have actually had better results, and I think it is mostly a philisophical change.

I wanted a small, minimal setup and am now forced to think about sounds BEFORE I record them. Without close micing every drum, I can't fix as much in the mix.

This forces me to spend hours on tuning, placement, and getting good sounds, rather than tweaking in the mix.

Anyone else do this? Of course, my setup is partially economic as well as me being more of an artist and less of a gear head, but I have had better results with 3-4 mics and a submix, then I ever did with 10 mics and post mixing abilities.

[guitwizz]

I dont record drums, but a friend asked me if I could, about 6 months ago, for his son who was being considered for endorsement from Peace drums. I definitely had the room acoustics for it, but only run 4 pre ins. They were trying to record him thru the board at his Church, but the room was so washy, the attempts were unusable.

I saved this link, and it really helped me get a great sound, with an LDC on both sides of the kit, anyway, there is a sample of what he (on the site) recorded, its pretty clean. If you are doing heavier material, this probably wouldnt be so easy.

Again, drums arent my thing at all, so there may be better ideas from drum recording guy-type-dudes.:)


http://weblogs.asp.net/cfranklin/archive/2004/02/10/70643.aspx

[Phil O'Keefe]

I've got a kit mic'ed in the studio right now. I'll post some pictures and clips of it tomorrow after the day's session. Stay tuned. ;)

[where02190]

While I always do close mic, I rarely use them, and most of my mixes end up being OH, room, kick and maybe snare. I've many times used no more than a single room mic and gotten superb results. I do spend the time to place mics properly so I get the best results from each mic, and can use just the OH or room mic and have a killer tone if I want that sound.

[UstadKhanAli]

I got a beautiful sound from four mics a few months ago.

Two overheads (spaced pair)
Kick
Room

The drummer was playing a jazz kit, so I miced the kick drum in front of the kick. The sound was full and present. No close mics, but the snare and toms came out full , mostly because the drummer was very very good, but also because I pointed the overheads at the toms a little bit more.

I could have had more mics on the kit, but my philosophy is to set up the overheads and then simply see what more I need, and keep adding mics until it sounds right and then stop right there.

For rock music, I typically will mic the toms and snare and then have the option of using or not using it (my clients almost always want to use them).

[donuts]

I have read much about minimal drum miking (on this forum and elsewhere) i.e. Glynn Johns mic placement

here are a few helpful links...


http://www.mercenary.com/3micdrumstuf.html

http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=28;t=000007;p=1

good luck!!!

[donuts]

Ohhh, and Phil, i'm looking forward to seeing those pictures from your studio (and checking out the sound clips you mentined)

would these pics be of your "house" kit? or is this another artists kit?

[donuts]

Phil,

Did yo uever get a chance to post those drun kit pics as you had mentioned? I'm wondering if i missed 'em

Thanks!

[CN Fletcher]

Originally posted by joestanman
I wanted a small, minimal setup and am now forced to think about sounds BEFORE I record them. Without close micing every drum, I can't fix as much in the mix.

You couldn't really fix anything in the mix before... you could apply some band-aids... but that doesn't really stop the bleeding, it only contains it.

If you don't have excellent sounds, as in well tuned instruments, excellent players, good sounding environments you're screwed. Doesn't matter if you use 1 mic or 40... if the source sucks the result will suck.

All an engineer does is take variations in air pressure and store them in a manner that can be replayed to sound something like the artist intended. In other words, we don't do alchemy. We can't "fix" a got damn thing... cover, yeah; fix, no.

If there is one thing I've learned over the years is that it's great to know what all the knobs do... and better never to touch them.

Best of luck with it.

[where02190]

If there is one thing I've learned over the years is that it's great to know what all the knobs do... and better never to touch them.

These are the most inspiring words I've ever hear from you Fletcher, and nothing could be more true.

[Paul_Caruso]

I like to use as few mics as possible, although I don't record any metal.

Start with one, overhead or in front/behind and then add a mic on the kick, another overhead, snare. If I can't get it sounding ok at this point then it's the equipment or the drummer so start again!

If you want a more processed sound you're going to need a mic on everything IMHO.