Acoustic Drums for Metal: A Guide

Yep, you got it. Get it sounding good before you even set up a single mic.


As for the overheads, I'm still kinda offsetting things & it's working pretty well, even with the double-bass setup.

-0z-
 
Oz, let me add my voice to the hundreds already that have thanked you for this thread.

i set out to record a real kit for the first time a few months back and used this thread as the primary reference for most everything. i've done about 4 sessions now.

you've mentioned most of these - but for whatever it's worth, i thought i'd share my own personal experiences (dumbass mistakes ;)) to reinforce:

  • new heads really DO make a major difference
  • the flamslam kicks ass
  • even if you think you're going to trigger the toms in your DAW, tune em' because a) you might actually end up taking your own and b) they're still coming through the OHs
  • this was just my experience, but if the drummer really hits the hat hard - be prepared to move mics otherwise it'll oversaturate everything
  • work on the snare until you're happy. don't stop until you're happy. tune, change heads, mic position, whatever until it's right.
  • finally, and quite possibly the most important: absolutely, positively pay attention to phase issues in the OHs. i recorded a killer drum session a few weeks back (spaced pair) just to discover this week i've got phase issues. sucks major! I really did try hard to follow the 3:1 rule, but I guess I missed the mark somewhere - or something else unknown was at play (btw - a friend passed along a great little free plug called C SUPERSTEREO. actually shows you phase problems. cool stuff).
 
this is probably already in this thread somewhere, but...

my drummer just bought the Tama tension watch
are there any recommended settings around here to start from?

i suck ass at tuning drums, but really need to get in there and fuck with them.
 
Most of the time when I do a spaced pair, depending on how far away the mics are from the cymbals/kit..they overheads are in phase with one another, but not with the rest of the kit. I usually have the drummer hit the snare while getting tones and I then pull up the overheads and the snare and listen in mono(with no roll off yet in the ov's) and over half of the time when I flip the overheads..all of the body comes back in the snare. The Snare might be in phase now, but sometimes the kick might not be so then I do the same with the kick.

I know that i'll be replacing the kick completely and blending the snare, and on top of that rolling off a lot of the bottom of the ov's, but I still just feel better knowing that my ov's are in phase with the rest of the kit.
 
@Grave Desire

so I guessed that there are phase issues while recording with spaced pairs. Do you follow the 3:1 rule? How do you fix your Phase Problems exactly?! ^^I unterdstood it so, that you are fliping phase on the Overheads to ged rid of the phase-erasement, right?! Would another way be to move the Overheads until Snare and Kick sound right? Have you tried to do phase allignment of the overheads in the DAW after recording, because I think that's the most comfortable way or not?!
 
Hey, small but important question to anyone who can help.

I want to have a huge, epic, snare and tom-sound and I've fixed reverb that I use for them, but in the mix the reverb "gets lost". You can't really notice there's actually very big hall-reverb on there, but It does work just as I wanted on toms. How to make it right for the snare, maybe some setups are wrong with the reverb or comp?
 
M.Lehto said:
Hey, small but important question to anyone who can help.

I want to have a huge, epic, snare and tom-sound and I've fixed reverb that I use for them, but in the mix the reverb "gets lost". You can't really notice there's actually very big hall-reverb on there, but It does work just as I wanted on toms. How to make it right for the snare, maybe some setups are wrong with the reverb or comp?
Click to expand...

You might want to add some healthy pre-delay on the verb, for starters. It'll give a bigger sense of space.
 
OzNimbus I agree with basically everything you have said about recording drums. However I am going to have to call you out on drum reverb :) . I believe using room microphones to get your drums reverb is the way to go. It captures natural reverb, and with the mic's placed in the sweet spot of the room you can beat any plug-in or hardware reverb every time. I am a fan of Brian Mcternan's drum recordings, I think they are the best sounding recorded drums I have ever heard, and he only uses room microphones to get the drums reverb. Just listen to the drums on the 1st song of Circa Survives myspace, www.myspace.com/circasurvive . It is all room microphones.

I know its all preference, everyones style is different, but I didnt see any mention of room microphones in this thread and I felt obligated to post something, because they are a huge aspect of a lot of different styles of drum recordings.
 
They are, unfortunately, assuming a good room... I love a massive room sound like Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks as much as anything else I've heard, but that's not always possible. Plus, digital reverbs are infinitely more controllable, and they've gotten very good over the past few years.

Jeff
 
even if your recording in your basement, put some mic's upstairs/in hallways/in closets/in boxes/anywhere to give your drums a unique sound. digital reverb is still going to sound like digital reverb imo.
 
There is tones of reasons fake verb would be wanted over real verb:

Your room sounds like horrible.
Your limited in how many mic inputs or microphones you got.
Your reverb unit is a convolution one and you just happen to have a Carnagie Hall impulse (or some other crazy nice room).
You want reverb that can't be recreated in a real environment.

Digital reverb has gotten amazing (like Jeff said) over the past few years.
 
Actually, I just got my first set of Omnis & I've been experimenting with them for room miking. Pretty cool, actually! They don't have the hi-end hash that cardioids do... just a really smooth vibe... that & they sound fucking huge.

Like I said in the articles: I didn't have much luck with room mics. Never got a good sound. Perhaps that's changing now, though. For me, recording drums is a never ending learning process. I've also got some new mixing techniques for the snare as well... starting to get the sort of sound I've been dreaming about.

I'll have to add an update in a couple of weeks. Too busy with productions for the time being though. Stay tuned.

-0z-
 
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