Snare Drum Micing and Compression.

[thesilentdrummer]

In my quest to get the best snare sound I can, I recently pulled my snare out of my kit and started playing with it. So I miced up the top and the bottom (first time with a bottom mic) with a 57 and hit record. Then I worked the tracks with some compression (super fast attack and release) and was somewhat surprised. My real surprise was the the sound of the bottom mic. It gave the crack that the top mic was missing. So here's what the sound clip has:

1. Snare Top Uncompressed, Panned Left
2. Snare Top Compressed, Panned Left
3. Snare Bottom Uncompressed, Panned Right
4. Snare Bottom Compressed, Panned Right
5. Top (Left) and Bottom (Right), Compressed
6. Top and Bottom compressed and centered

All the modifications are made to the same track, and the top and bottom were aligned to be in phase.


Understand that my top head needs to be replaced (I cranked the shit out of it). So obviously the raw tracks could even be better with a new head (getting that, I'll do a before and after on that) and good tuning (still on a quest for that, new head will help). But what if a drummer was dead set on his tight out of tune snare head and you needed to record the all tracks by the end of the day (not ideal, but I am sure some of us have/will face this)? I think using a bottom mic can REALLY help if all you are getting is crap from the top.

The purpose of this half baked "shootout" was to help newer recording guys work and discover the use of the bottom snare mic and the impact of compression on the snare drum sound. In review of the drum video on the presonus website the snare was crappy to begin with so I didn't like the top bottom or blended example in that video. So this is more to expose newer recording people to whats out there.

I would love to use a single top or bottom mic, but on this snare I would have to use both. If I could get away with one I would. I might even try micing just the bottom next time I record my whole set.

Experienced members and new recorders comment's welcome. Hopefully I presented this in a way that makes it just as helpful to you as it was for me.

[brandondrury]

I like the concept. Sitting down and playing around with compression, snare bottoms, etc is a great way to learn.

The snare bottom has tremendous value in certain instances. Today I recorded a drum kit and did not use a snare bottom. These days, I'm in the "chunk" phase of my snare drum life and I haven't been using snare bottom in mixes for anything other than reverb sends.

While there are HUGE lessons to be learned from this sound clip, in this "controlled" environment, the fatal flaw / limitation is that we are only hearing a snare drum and not a full mix or even a full drum kit. It's very important to understand that we can add a decay to the snare bottom by crushing it, but it's just as important to realize that we'll have an off-axis kick drum and a hi-hat pounding away if we compress a snare bottom too much. We just have to use our ears.

You should try leaving your settings the same and then playing a real song just to see if those settings are still usable.

Great job on the sound clip! I created a new section of the forum specifically for this sort of thing. When I get my cash mods finished, you'll be able to earn some big time Marks for posting sound clips.

Brandon

[thesilentdrummer]

Thanks for the words. Yah, I do realize that the fatal flaw is that we don't have it sit in a whole drum mix, let alone a full band mix, but this definately Helped me figure out how to get certain sounds out of the snare. Even though more advanced engineers know how micing and compression affects the sound of the snare, and could tell me all about that, for me, this was a great learning experience. Nothing beats actual experience. Using words to tell about positions and knob settings and to describe sounds is one thing, but moving mics and knobs and actually hearing what is coming out is completely different.


Submitted clips forum is a great idea! Sounds like a great tool for hearing how stuff works in a "shootout" environment.

[Newsboy]

That was an excellent demonstration. Nothing beats hearing samples played one after the other for comparison. My ear certainly preferred the compressed, centered top/bottom mic'd version.
I would like to do (or see someone else with more experience do) a similar comparison done with different microphones, different compressers and, especially different compresser settings. I know it would be ambitious but how many cookies I could give!

[brandondrury]

Even though more advanced engineers know how micing and compression affects the sound of the snare, and could tell me all about that, for me, this was a great learning experience.

How do you think they got advanced?

Brandon

[thesilentdrummer]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

How do you think they got advanced?

Brandon

Good point. I guess they had to go through the same thing I did.

[charliemantica]

the video talks about inverting the phase when recording snares...what´s that???

[thesilentdrummer]

Originally Posted by charliemantica

the video talks about inverting the phase when recording snares...what´s that???

Whenever you have two mics pointing at each other, or if they are pointing at the same source and are in close proximity to each other, the mics are said to be "out of phase". This means that if you look at the nice old sine waves for each of the clips, one wave is going up while the other is going down. This kinda "cancels out" the sound, making it thin and undesireable. But all you need to know ios that in your recording software, tjere should be a tool that says "Invert Phase" or "Invert Polarity" or soemthing like that. That will flip the phase.

Polarity and Phase are things that I barely understand, so hopefully someone can explain more about when you need to use it besides combinedtop and bottom snare micing.

[charliemantica]

oh right..
thanks for the explanation..
if im not mistaken, you can do that on the mic itself too right??

[Baron]

Originally Posted by thesilentdrummer

Polarity and Phase are things that I barely understand, so hopefully someone can explain more about when you need to use it besides combinedtop and bottom snare micing.

This is not an absolute, unfortunately. The idea is simple enough in so far as, if you have two mics pointing at a single source and those mics are 180 degrees apart, or pointing at each other with the source in between, then you might find that the signals are subtractive.
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This means that each mic might sound really good, by itself, but when mixed, the guts seem to fade away. If you flip the polarity, on one mic only, then you can turn the mic signals into an additive process. Only do this on one mic as flipping both puts you right back where you started.

The test is easy enough, just solo one mic then add the second and listen. If the guts drop out just pull the second mic down, flip the polarity on it and push it back up. If it sounds better, this time, then you have fixed the issue.

We are privileged with DAWs, as we can zoom in and correct phase issues and get almost perfect alignment of the tracks. The polarity (or incorrectly termed "phase") button is limited as it only changes the signal by 180 degrees and your issue might be at 45 degrees
Live guys are limited in all but the top end rigs but us recording people, with DAWs, have untold power


Baron