Drum Help

[Mortal_Dezire]

Getting ready to start reording my bands first album. I'm looking for some advice on what the best way to track would be with only 8 simultanious channles. I have Cubase LE (Because I'm broke and it was free!) and It only allows me to track 8 at a time. Wouldn't be a problem for a normal kit, but my drummer has 2 kicks, 6 toms (including 1 floor), snare, and a shit load of cymbals. The style of music we play is Iced Earth, Megadeth, Blind Guardian type metal and I want to get as good of sound as possible with what I have available. Any suggestions would be helpful.

D.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Holy fuck 8 chanells and that is the kit... hmmm

Well I would say:

mic both bass drums
3 mics on the toms
2 OH
1 Snare

It probably won't sound that stellar but if I were in your shoes that is how I would do it.

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

Yea, nobody said it was gonna be easy!

D.
www.myspace.com/mortaldezire

 

[Pman]

hmm
i have a similar kit to you dude,
2 kicks
one snare
5 toms
and plenty of cymbals

and also, the 8 input with the free cubase LE. is it the fw-1804?
anyway, i tried micing the toms before, and leaving some out, and its completely uneven, hearing clear tom hit and then hearing another quite faint due to only some of the toms being mic'ed
i then tried pointing the mic at several toms at a time, and it picked up wayy too much of everything else, and destroyed the clarity of the overheads, with its bleed.
so at the moment i just use two overheads, one snare, and two kick mics
i duplicate the overheads track and:
compress one of the overhead tracks and cut them from like 1000hz upwards, to bring out the toms, and bass drums, etc
and on the other, i cut from like 600-700hz and bring out the cymbals
this way works for me, but my main point was, only micing a few of the toms isnt very effective, due to the reasons i stated above

 

[smy1]

Get a mixer in-between with enough channels. Then mic everything and make groups like:

1) Kicks
2) Snare
3) Hat
4) Toms Hi
5) Toms Lo
6) Whatever
7) OH L
8) OH R

That's how I used to work back in the day when I only had a Tascam DA 88.

 

[azzxaa]

or just use DFH

 

[Gnash]

You can use a double kick pedal, and save you a mic there. You can make a tom bus for two tracks instead of individual tom tracks. Do ALOT of equing and setting levels before hitting record. The drummer ALWAYS plays harder, when playing to music, than by himself. 8 isn't enough for me, I wind up with maybe 15 drum tracks with trigs on everthing and mics. Get Sonar, so you have no limit on tracks.

 

[-Gavin-]

Couldn't you record this in Audacity? Hahahah

 

[scorpio01169]

the 8 input with the free cubase LE. is it the fw-1804?

you must be talking about pro-tools m-powered if he had that interface he could then add extra inputs via spdif

 

[Pman]

you must be talking about pro-tools m-powered if he had that interface he could then add extra inputs via spdif

yeah, good spot there

 

[doclegion]

I only have 8 inputs this is what i did. I trigger my kick drums for sampling reasons but i would run your kicks seperate (2 tracks) your snare (1 track) and get a mixing board for the toms only blend them well and EQ them a bit then run that in (1 track) with the toms you wont have single tom control over them its only one track so blend them nice!! now your left with 4 inputs left plenty of cymbals you say? There ya go thats how i track everything for now

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

So far I'm getting a lot of good ideas. What I'm using is a Multifix 16 firewire mixer.

I almost thought about using more than 1 set of overheads, but point them mainly at the toms. Seeing that these are obviously condensors, in theory this should work....or am I completely wrong?

I know what I'm doing with guitars, but drums are new territory for me. Thanks for the help.

 

[everybody's x]

tell him to ditch 3 of the toms and make him practice like that for a week

6 toms man thats just dumb
IMHO

 

[JeffTD]

1. Use a double kick pedal or blend the kicks into one channel with a mixer
2. Snare
3. OH Hat side
4. OH Ride side
5. Rack Toms 1-2
6. Rack Toms 3-4
7. Rack Toms 5-6
8. Room mic


I'd use a mixer (or four LOL) to blend the kicks into one channel, and then group the toms either 2 or 3 at a time.

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

tell him to ditch 3 of the toms and make him practice like that for a week

6 toms man thats just dumb
IMHO

I already thought of that. He uses everything on that kit! A lot of...I guess "war drums" or "tribal beats"

Its a thorn in my ass, but its my job. So I gotta find a way to get this acomplished.

 

[everybody's x]

understood.
Well it's blasphemy to say it around these parts but I have gotten some fine tom imaging using a glyn johns type setup

I think borrowing a double bass pedal would be helpful
kick
snare
one overhead directly over the snare drum, two drumstick lengths above the snare
one mic behind the drummers right shoulder two drumstick lengths from the center of the snare
two room mics
etc.
flip the phase on the snare most likely

lots of ways to do it
the tom pairs mentioned above arent a bad idea either

 

[Lopes]

Have you thought about maybe just overdubbing the toms?

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

I have thought about it, but I've only worked with 1 drummer who was willing to try that. Everyone else said it was too hard to do. I'm sure the current guy could pull it off, but I'm worried about the sound not being right in the mix.

 

[broken81]

if you did 1 Mic per 2-3 toms and then went into cubase and separate each tom from that Mic on separate tracks and then sample your kit and use drumagog to trigger toms. There would be a lot of cutting and pasting shit in cubase but other than that use a mixer like everyone else said but make sure your toms are all even in volume and eqed nice on board!

good luck but honestly if your looking to record like this more often it might be a good idea to get some more gear. I knew i would run into drummers like that so i swooped a ada8000 from behringer and got myself 8 extra preamps and i run protools so I'm set on tracks and preamps now and it cost less than most mixers

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

I've been seeing a lot of threads about "sampling." I don't know a whole lot about triggering a sampling, but I've thought about checking it out. How tough is it? What kind of gear do you need? I'm not a newb, but the studio I used to work for was a demo at best kind of place.