advice on a sacrifice.....

[bryan_kilco]

Thinking about sacrificing my dog to the metal gods.....

j/k

Going to be recording a 2 song demo for my band starting tonight.

We will have to sacrifice one mic somewhere.

We ave 8 input interface.

Kit is kick, snare, 3 toms, 2 crashes, splash, china, ride, hat.

Would you:

- mic snare top/bottom

OR

-mic kick front/back, or inside/outside?

I'm thinking we'd be best off to do snare top/bottom and just sample replace the kick 100%.

Opinions or advice?

 

[KHE]

i rarley use two mics on kick or snare during the mix, so i would use the last channel for spot-micing a cymbal if needed or a room-mic.

cheers!

 

[heshian46]

1 kick mic, snare top/bottom, and use the extra for the ride or china cymbal.

I am of the school that a bottom mic is absolutely necessary. When processed correctly it really adds the snap needed make the snare sound like a million bucks.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Thanks. But I started getting very good results by dual-micing the snare. I was thinking, for room sound, we could just play the tracks back thru the PA and mic the room. This is just a quick demo to have something to hand out at our first gig thats coming up in about 2 weeks. But still, I want the drums to sound as good as possible (in our shitty room =/). Could program them, but I think our drummer wouldn't be completely thrilled about that, neither would I if they told me they were going to program my guitar parts.

 

[bryan_kilco]

1 kick mic, snare top/bottom, and use the extra for the ride or china cymbal.

I am of the school that a bottom mic is absolutely necessary. When processed correctly it really adds the snap needed make the snare sound like a million bucks.

Aight. But we have 2 condensers that I was going to do a spaced pair, which, if we did 1 kick, 2 on snare, 3 on toms, and 2 OH, we'd be out of inputs.

 

[Sloan]

don't worry about mic'ing hats if you need to free up an input. you prob won't find hat mic useful.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Well, our drummer hits his hat way too hard anyway. 0.o

So are you guys saying I'm better off with a single OH mic?

It's really been a while since I've mic'd a full kit and I always get frustrated trying to keep the 3:1 rule and measuring and moving stuff around.

 

[bryan_kilco]

I guess I COULD technically take a bunch of samples of the snare with top/bottom mics before the session, and use only 1 mic for the actual recording, and replace that signal with the dual mic'd samples? Trying to get through this as painlessly as possible. I tend to overthink things and spent the past 2 days brainstorming and trying to plot this out. I'm sure I'll get to the jam space and realize we are missing cables/mics/etc and end up getting even more frustrated.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Might I add that we have some triggers as well. I've never recorded a kit with triggers and only experimented with them once.

I really want to keep the natural toms and snare.....But I could trigger snare and kick.

But the only drum VSTi's I have are SSD4 Essentials and the demo version of Slate Trigger. So, I don't think I'd be able to load any of the actual kit samples....

 

[Sloan]

1.KICK
2.SNR TOP
3.SNR BTM
4.TOM1
5.TOM2
6.TOM3
7.OH L
8.OH R

 

[Proggm]

For starters, make sure you have:

Kick In
Snare Top
T1
T2
T3
OH L
OH R

If the band is into a fast-paced genre (power, death, etc.), a room capture may end up being unnecesary in the mix, and you could have the snare bottom mic'ed.
But otherwise, I really recommend having a room mic. You can throw a snare bottom sample in the mix, but you can't recreate a real room sound.


EDIT: Sloan kinda beat me to it

 

[bryan_kilco]

Thanks guys!!

That's what I had planned. Pondered using triggers, but why do that when I can just trigger off of the mics and still have the natural sound if I want...

and yeah it's moreso fast metal, wouldnt call it power or death but probably a mix of metal core and death metal but not deathcore by any means.

Never used a room mic before. I think we'll be ok without one.

 

[luismars]

I prefer Room vs bottom snare mics. You can always sample the bottom but not a good room mic (even if it's a sm57) as Proggm said

 

[heshian46]

I was thinking, for room sound, we could just play the tracks back thru the PA and mic the room. This is just a quick demo to have something to hand out at our first gig thats coming up in about 2 weeks. But still, I want the drums to sound as good as possible (in our shitty room =/).

Why would you want to have a shitty sounding room sound? Save the room mics for something else and use a room impulse. If your room isn't any good don't waste your time.

 

[Sloan]

^I agree. Buss drum tracks to a good impulse for a simulated room.

 

[Trevoire520]

Rooms are pretty pointless if your room doesn't sound great and you're struggling for inputs.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah I'm used to creating my on "fake" rooms with verb or impulses. Took us a while to get stuff set up tonight and got decent sounds but kick and snare are almost definitely getting replaced.

I can get a clip up tomorrow if anyone would be kind enough to throw some pointers.

 

[ArnaudM]

Sacrify a virgin to Satan, and ask him 24 preamps, top notch converters, and a Mac specially design by the recently arrived in hell Steve Jobs !

 

[bryan_kilco]

So here's a few clips. Did some quick guitars and makeshit bass. Raw, Sampled kick snare, and full mix.

Drums are just our drummer freestyling while I was checking levels coming in.

Raw kit: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443251/9-5-2012 Drum Mix Test/9-5-2012 Raw Mix.mp3

Samples on kick and snare (from Trigger Demo): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443251/9-5-2012 Drum Mix Test/9-5-2012 Kick & Snare sample Mix.mp3

Full mix: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6443251/9-5-2012 Drum Mix Test/9-5-2012 Full Mix.mp3

Only did slight compression and GClip on drum bus. Guitars and bass are mostly HP/LP, slight boost in guits around 2-3k for some attack.
No eq or comp on individual drums.

Are these drums even semi-workable? I think his toms need some work in the tuning and dampening department, and we had 2 XLR to 1/4" cables, on toms 1 and 3, which made the signal way weaker than straight XLR....going to buy a few cables before we actually start tracking.

 

[bryan_kilco]

And again, I really feel like I'm struggling way too hard to have a clear mix. Just cannot seem to get a HUGE, punchy, powerful mix....granted this was done super fast and I slapped W1 on the Master just to get a little volume out of it. I just cannot reach my next goal..... =/