Understanding micing acoustic instruments?

[DogpitStudios]

Well I am essentially starting this thread to talk about one thing in particular that relates to a confusion of mine about recording that I have yet to have the balls to confront. This is micing toms on a drum set.

Back in my much earlier days, when I would read many of the millions of short articles out there on micing drums (a skill that takes only practice and experience to be successful at), I came across quite a few techniques mentioned about the world of toms. One article that was highly recommended by someone on my other board, talked about micing toms from the inside only. Now, I understand that anything is worth a try, because a different technique by definition will give you a different sound, and blah blah blah... there is no such thing as bad sound, only different sound. With my lack of knowledge for the instrument, this intrigued me a bit too much (of course this was back in the time when I believed everything I read).

Looking back at such a suggestion now, I can find almost nothing but wrong. Of course, I know that its my personal preference that I hold liking the sound of drums that sound... well... like drums? but I assume that most people would rather have their drum tracks sound like a drummer playing a nice kit in a nice room with nothing fishy going on. And obviously I only start this thread to have people fill in this lack of knowledge that I have that leads me to not understand this suggestion, so feel free guys.

So back to the flaws. Well, I guess the biggest one that I see, is that I can't understand how sticking a mic in a drum would sound like me listening to a drummer play. I generally stand AT LEAST 4 feet back from a drum set when a drummer plays and most likely a lot more when a band plays together. I do not to up to the drum set and stick my ear in the drum itself. So why would I put a mic there to capture the drummers tom sound. Close micing would also bring up this issue, but I have to say its more likely that I put my head up to a drum rather than in it, and that the sound outside of a tom would be much more realistic than inside. Obviously the inside of a drum is a large resonating chamber. Sticking a mic in a drum would catch the drums resonation to its fullest I assume. But there is a point when you have had enough of this. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the inside of a tom resonate the note it is tuned to, when any piece of the kit is played? Meaning if you play the snare, wouldn't the snares sound bleed in a nice fat Gb? This would sound a bit off would it not?

I brought up this question to someone on an other board once, and he stated that this technique is used to create isolation from the rest of the kit. I only use my knowledge about acoustics when I say this, but shouldn't the sound inside a tom not only leak exterior sounds because of its lack of mass, and airspace, but also amplify them. Think about it. A tom is a large resonating box. It has a skin made to produce air which then causes vibration to the resonating skin across from it, soo in a sense this is the most natural form of amplification.

The article did state that this captured the purest tom sound. Well I would assume that the purest sound is the one with nothing off done to it. So I could obtain the purest sound by putting a flat response mic 6 feet away from my kit exactly where my head would be. Sticking mics in drums sounds like its anything but pure.

Please guys, help me out with understanding this, tell me if what I say is completely wrong, I just want to know!

Thanks,

Ben

[dach]

I'm not sure what you really want to know and this doesn't directly answer the question but food for thought....

does sticking mics inside the toms sound good to you?

If micing them normally from top, can that sound benefit from adding a bit of mic from inside the tom?

Do you really need to be using all those mics to get a good tom sound?

What do you think about the tom sound from your OH/s?

What does it sound like when your OH's sound good and you pull up the tom mics? What about the inside/bottom miced toms?

The way I look at it most of the time is the main sound comes from the OH's and the Room mics. The rest are spot mics. Get those sounding good (which can take time), then add the "spot" mics one at a time making sure they sound good when mixed with the OH's, etc.... (spend time with this as well...height, angling, degree of bleed/separation, etc)... you may not need to mic everything if it sounds good in the OH's!

The OH's and where you put them in relation to your kit (above? back? in front? and height from kit) and the micing configuration (x/y, m/s, spaced, distance) you use will determine most of this for before you even place a spot mic. Where does it sound the best?

mics play a roll as far as timbre is concerned and using pres that react fast vs ones that don't is a consideration as well. Punch (including the toms) will come from clarity in the stereo image (good mic technique), slew rate of preamps - how fast they react to transients and use of compression to shape the attack and release of the waveform. Eq can also be used to add attack to the transients and clear out unwanted frequencies and to a lesser degree shape the tone if necessary.

Timbre/color/tone/etc is mostly from the "sound" of the room, mics and pre's used not to mention comp+eq

Not much of the general population play drums or have even heard the kit from a drummers perspective... The one thing people mostly associate with a traditional drum sound is the "overall kit sound" from a listeners perspective... think old Motown which used a couple room mics to capture the whole band including drums... then 8 channel multitracks which would allow you to "submix" drums from the console down to 2 channels, one channel for bass, gtr, key, vox, etc...

You can't compare the drum sound of say "The Eagles" to something like Meshuggah which is something else entirely.

Now... to micing stuff...

My rule of thumb is to always set mics so they can capture the low frequencies in focus.... the higher frequencies will "almost" automatically follow. There are a bunch of ways of doing it but here's one that illustrate the principle and helped me understand the concept of micing almost all acoustic instruments.... it may not be appropriate for "your" drum sound but I hope you will try it, understand and appreciate the theory behind it...

Without getting too technical LF waves have a larger period then HF ones. The initial OH distance to your LF source will be at the crest, trough or somewhere in between of the sound wave... and that difference may only be a few inches but it's critical to capturing them more in focus. Of course this also relies on how hard the drum is hit but that's a little OT. Find a place for your OH where the Lo Tom's fundamental and harmonics is clear and strong and of course sounds good... (if you were looking on a graph it would be at one of the points where all of the waves - fundamental and overtones- converge at one spot) vary the distance back and forth (vertically on the same plane) slightly to find where it sounds more "in focus". To place the 2nd OH, place this one where your snare will lie directly in the center channel... How?... you may want to measure the first OH>Snr distance with a string. Then take that string from the center of the snare and swing it up and around. Anywhere the end of the string is, if there is a mic there, it will allow the snr drum to reach both mics at the same time. So if you pan the OH's hard L and R, the snare will line up in the middle... get it? now you have your LF source and the snr being captured pretty much in focus as well as represented properly in the stereo field for how your mics are set. You will want to move that 2nd string and mic around until you get as much of the kit in focus as possible!

Then add your spot mics to augment the great and clear drum sound you just got....

You could have taken a different route and once you set the first OH to the FT, tape one end the string to the center of the snr and the other to where the beater hits the kik.... the end of the "triangle" should be exactly at the first OH mic capsule.... now swing this around to find your 2nd OH possible placements.

Now I don't always use spaced pair on drums but....

What this whole thing did for me was illustrate how important it is to capture the LF of an instrument and it's harmonics as "in phase" as possible. Once I started listening to that, my mic technique improved dramatically on everything. When using spaced pair micing on acoustic instruments, the string thing comes in handy as well. After you do this for a while you won't need the string anymore... you'll hear when something is in focus....

So to wrap it up... sweep to find where the source sounds the best, fine tune that placement on the same axis to get the best focus you can.... that should be a good sound that will take eq well and less of it BTW.

hope that was not too confusing... good luck - chuck

[DogpitStudios]

Well thanks for the reply, unfortunately I already know plenty about recorderman's OH method and have used it numerous times. Thank you for the attempt though, but this thread was not about OH placement. This is great stuff for those who are a bit more new to this than me though, so your getting the thumbs up points or w/e we call those here.

Ben

[DogpitStudios]

Originally Posted by DogpitStudios

Well thanks for the reply, unfortunately I already know plenty about recorderman's OH method and have used it numerous times.? Thank you for the attempt though, but this thread was not about OH placement.? This is great stuff for those who are a bit more new to this than me though, so your getting the thumbs up points or w/e we call those here.

Oh yes, and I spent a very very long time studying acoustics as I think I have previously mentioned, so I'd like to believe I know the basics about sound waves. I guess my 10:00 pm posts are so tired that they sound incredibly novice.

Ben

[dach]

What exactly were you asking for? And just curious, how long is a "long time" studying acoustics?

[brandondrury]

Great post, Dach. Even if it didn't meet Dog Pit's needs, there is TREMENDOUS wisdom in your posts.


Dogpit, here are a few comments:
1) If you have a great drummer with a great kit, following Dach's or Mixerman's overhead technique will get you most of the way there.

2) You seam to be against putting a mic inside a tom. Fair enough. Do you put a mic inside a kick drum? Why? As far as micing is concerned, how is a kick and a tom different? Answer those questions you may find what you are looking for.

3) I'm assuming you are looking for some mega pro tom sounds and you aren't mega happy with yours. I know the feeling. I've been to a few big studios. When the sound of the toms isnt' happening, they replace the toms. They keep doing this until they get what they want.

By far, the most important part of the drum sound is the drummer. I'm amazed how toms will sound great in the beginning and end of a song but sound like shit in the beginning for many of the projects I cram into a weekend. Why? Well the damn drummer just isn't hitting the drums as hard during the middle. Most drummers don't hit rolls hard enough in my experience.

Another thing. If you want the pro drums, you need to become a bad ass at tuning the drums. It's pretty much a given that the drummer can't tune his drums. It's up to you.


Conclusion
Great drummers who balance their kit properly, have a tremendous drum kit (not necessarily the most expensive), and give you the sounds you are looking for are easy to record. All you need is to follow Dach's advice about accurately capturing the instrument in as close to perfect phase as possible and you will get what you want. There really isn't THAT much thought that has to go into tom mics because they other factors are so much more important.

The problems stem from when you aren't dealing with a great drummer. If a guy can't balance his kit and doesn't give you the sounds you are looking for, no close micing will ever fix that.

Brandon

[dach]

What I was REALLY getting at was how critical distance can be to instrument clarity when micing acoustic instruments ie: guitar, harp, ac bass, even especially important with drums.... and a nifty trick for placing spaced pairs when recording. I NEVER see it talked about anywhere... it's usually all about gear and is cakewalk better than pro tools. and I hear plenty of studio recordings that just don't get it.... including most of my pre production demo's that are hacked out. I don't know who recorderman is or what his drum technique is... that's just what I was taught a long long time ago before there were digital recorders... I don't use it, just was illustrating about capturing an instrument in focus and how it may help his tom sound.

I'll shut up now!

[DogpitStudios]

Haha,

Alright let me try to explain what all of my posts meant and answer these questions as best I can. The recorderman technique is something I see come up on other boards all the time. Everyone calls it the trick to getting a kick ass drum sound with only 4 mics. The only difference between it and what you stated is that everyone suggest to put the mics around 2 feet above the drummers snare drum, to capture more of the kit sound the way the drummer hears it. What a lot of people don't understand is why it works so well, which is what you have previously explained. Although Dach you stated that you don't use it, well I do. I switch around with a lot of overhead techniques but the way you explained is always what I end up coming back to (with some simple adjustments here and there).

Brandon, yes I don't think anyone can agree more its all about the drummer. Unfortunately I mainly only get to work with bad drummers. I should learn how to become a tuning expert though, I know nothing about tuning drums right now. Also I plan on trying to get a nice studio kit here, incase some of these shitty drummers only have shit to play on. I know it won't help too much because the drummer can't play, but It's a step in the right direction. As for micing bass drum, I guess I'm not a great person to ask that question, because the only two mics I've used on bass drum have been my Beta-52 and my friends Audix D-6 that I used, and tooled around with for a good month or so. After a lot of moving and different mic placements (different kits) It always turned out that I would mic with them both outside of the kit drum pointing in in various ways. I know there are some mics that sound best inside for specific projects (which could very much include the mics I own), but in my experience micing bass drum on the inside has only been ok if that. Of course I don't say it doesn't work. Really I started this thread so that someone could explain to me why people like micing the inside of their toms. I also wanted to hear how you all miced acoustic instruments like drums. There is some great info that you have all said so far though. Hope this solved everything... probably didn't

Ben

[brandondrury]

Unfortunately I mainly only get to work with bad drummers.

You are wasting your time, then. I hate to be blunt, negative, etc but I've become a little bit bitter about working with people who don't work as hard on their craft as I do. Honestly, I don't remember your exact situation, but do whatever you can to get great drummers in your place. Micing and tuning mean very little. Of course it depends on where you are going.

I must admit that I'm VERY frustrated right now with some of my clients.


The bottom of the toms or inside the toms is nothing more than a trick. If a song calls for it, you use it. It's as simple as that. I must admit that I've only mic'd the bottom of the toms a few times and I must admit that it added quite a bit in those situations. If you are looking for specifically what it does, I can't exactly say. It gives more tone and less attack. Now, I'm talking about with the bottom heads on. I've never tried the inside the tom technique although I'd totally love to.

Brandon