Ambient Microphones?!?!?!?

JamesNorman

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Oct 8, 2009
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Ive read and seen alot of articles pictures recently that use ambient microphones on drums. as the only place i can/have recorded drums in a isolation room (deadbox) at college i have never really experimented. I have another drum recording coming up soon and was wondering if it would worth recording drums in an open room with ambient mics?

What would it add to my recordings? And what do you guys prefer to do use them or not?
 
It would add ambience of course! You tend to get a sense of depth to the drums that you don't get from the overhead and close mics alone.

I also like having a room mic really smashed with a compressor mixed in with the rest of my drums, it does depend on you having a good room though and depending on the room/mic/positioning sometimes the cymbals can become really overbearing. If you have access to a ribbon mic then try that as the natural high end roll off will tame the cymbals somewhat.
 
What do you use to place it 3/1 ratio? and would you advice setting them low down to get more of the actual kit instead of just cymbals?

I don't have access to a ribbon microphone either, limited to using condenser for this. I tend to use AT4050's for overheads and the se300b's for the cymbal mics. So i would probabley use the c414 for the ambient microphone. I also have access to two at4033's aswell so i might experimaent with a single c414 set low and then a stereo pair of at4033's
 
even though the room is dead, you will still get ambiance. It will just be tighter and not have much reverb naturally. That would be a better candidate though for harder compression on them. I like to not compress the OH and compress the fuck out of the rooms just to get a parallel style compression between OH and AMB and since the OH will be louder the Rooms can be compressed to high fuck without the worry of having pumping cymbals. and compressed rooms will add the largeness of the reverberating sounds which will help give you this massive sound.

Get the 4033's as far back as you can and as high as you can pointing down towards the drums, and stick that c414 about 5 feet back about eye level with the toms, then run that mic either to a mic'd guitar amp, or an amp sim with a slight amount of distortion, render it and compress it to as desired.

The 3:1 rule is general. just keep the pair of mics about that distance, and dont' worry about how close the OHs are the the room mics too much, just make sure each pair are spaced apart of you are micing up with a split mic tecnhieuq and don;t worry about it if youa re using the xy pattern.