First atempt at recording drums

[Tony Ramone]

Hey all,
I was gonna put this in the unfinished bash section, but this is not a song and it's not even the beginnings of a song so I figured audio engineering would be a better place
Up to now I've always used EZdrummer for my mixes, but me and my band want to put out a release early next year and I figured it's be unfair on the rest of the band if they weren't all involved in it, so I recently started putting a kit together, got myself an 8-channel interface (upgrade from 2) and started making some mic cables (I got a cheap Eagle drum mic kit about 6 months ago).
Tonight I figured I'd put one of the techniques I've read about into practice - the recorderman. I'm not sure I've implemented it totally correctly (it's been about a week since I watched the video ), but here's the result I got with a kick mic and two overheads.
Bear in mind that I am not a drummer by any stretch of the imagination, so the drumming is totally shit.
I've done a little bit of processing - maybe I shouldn't have. There's a little EQ, some compression on the kick and there's a little bit of all 3 tracks sent to a parallel "SMASH" bus.
Just trying to figure out if I'm going in the right direction.
Might try with more close-mics at the weekend...

[paul999]

I listened in phones so I can't tell too much. What I hear is some distortion from over compression and the recording sounds off to the right a little. You are smart to be doing trial and error early.

Cheers

[Tony Ramone]

Off to the right, eh? Hmm...
Well, I didn't really spend much time on the panning - I just hard panned the two overheads, so maybe if I spent some time sitting down with it (my son burst into the room and decided he wanted to play the drums ) I might get somewhere.
As for overcompression, I probably mixed in a bit too much of the SMASH track (i.e. my first attempt at parallel compression).

[garageband]

On your drumming, if you'd concentrate on making the feet and the left hand agree exactly with the eighth notes in the right hand (which are pretty consistent), things would tighten up very quickly.

Paul's right, there's too much compression on the snare, in particular. It's both crushing all the life out of it and producing some bilnking artifacts. The balance and the room and mics sound pretty good. Easy on the compression early in the process otherwise, you may end up with cardboard boxes at the end.

[Tony Ramone]

Cheers dude. That clip there is the result of 20 solid minutes practice beforehand (all of which was recorded). I just picked the best bit out of what I had
On the snare - I don't have a close mic on the snare, just 2 overheads, but both are sent to a parallel compressor - should I just turn that down in the mix in future?
I haven't gotten to the drum recording section of KHR yet, which I should probably read before any more arsing about

[String7th]

I'm not too familiar how the 3-mic set up is supposed to sound, but you got very close to a good sounding drum session. I think there's too dark of a snare sound that may be drowned out by guitar. If you were to move the overheads directly above the snare in an XY setup, that may bring more life to the snare and less kick in the overheads. That ride is loud, you may also need to raise the overheads.

Kick needs something, it's too quiet, but I don;t think volume will fix it. The way I eq a single kick mic, (don't know if it works well with 3-mic technique), is a shelving boost around 80hz, and a thin and deep cut at 90hz. then slight cuts or boosts in the upper-mids to get the attack I want.

[garageband]

On the snare - I don't have a close mic on the snare, just 2 overheads, but both are sent to a parallel compressor - should I just turn that down in the mix in future?

Because the snare has the most amplitude, the compressor affects it the most. When I do an analog mix-down and use parallel compression, it's usually very light: little more than budging the meters.

my son burst into the room and decided he wanted to play the drums

When this happens, I put him to work immediately. I make the offending (!) child play the drums while I adjust the machinery. After about 7 or 8 minutes, they are musically satisfied and you've likely got better settings than otherwise.

[Tony Ramone]

Originally Posted by garageband

Because the snare has the most amplitude, the compressor affects it the most. When I do an analog mix-down and use parallel compression, it's usually very light: little more than budging the meters.

I see. I'll bear it in mind

Originally Posted by garageband

When this happens, I put him to work immediately. I make the offending (!) child play the drums while I adjust the machinery. After about 7 or 8 minutes, they are musically satisfied and you've likely got better settings than otherwise.

Ha! Good call dude. I'll have to give it a try

[Tony Ramone]

Hey guys,
Didn't get a chance to record with more mics yet (although I did start setting up some close mics last night), but I did get time to get a mix-down of the previous clip with all the processing bypassed to give ye a better idea of the sound that I'm actually getting in the room (that should probably have been the first thing I posted, I know ).

[awaken1]

It sounds cleaner and tighter then the other one, but I noticed on certain hits on the snare and toms there was a slight buzz kind of distortion sound. When ever I've tracked for drums, I try to play a beat or something kind of slow and simple. kick on 1 n 3 snare on 2 n 4..hi hat or ride cymbal 1/4 or 1/8 notes.. That way the playing velocity and levels into the mic's will be more consistent..it also gives each drum some breathing room to hear whats going on..