Recording drums on a limited budget/resources - Mic Suggestions

[spiderjazz]

I'm looking to record a drum kit on a tight enough budget, mostly to make a good amateur level recording. At the moment, I have a Focusrite Saffire 6 to record, which give me two inputs. It's for a metal band, so I realise that I'll be getting more of an ambient sound than is normal for that style, but I'm looking to get the best results from the gear that I have.

From reading up on recording a drumkit with 2 mics, what I think I'm going to do is:

Input 1: Put 2 condenser mics through a small mixer, balance the signals, and connect this to input one. One of the condensers will be on the kick drum (using a condenser to get the low end), and the other will be used as an overhead mic. I realise there will be frequency overlaps on this track, but hopefully I should be able to do the relevant processing on each end of the frequency scale.

Input 2: Dynamic Mic on the snare.

In terms of the mics, I currently only have a Peavey knockoff of a sm58 (Peavey PVi). I have access to a couple of other dynamics as well, but I don't think they're going to be ideal for the kick and the overheads. Would the following mic be good/suitable as a budget solution for micing the kick and as an overhead mic (using 2 of them separately) http://www.thomann.de/ie/the_tbone_s...mbranmikro.htm

Any other suggestions on how to mic the kit using 2 inputs?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

First of all, odds are you won't be happy with the results. That being said, I'd suggest the following:

Input 1: Two condensers as overheads. Play around with mic placement until you get a somewhat decent balance between the kit. These mics will capture the cymbals, toms and snare. It's tough to get good results, but if you absolutely can't afford any more inputs/preamps, you have a hard task ahead in any case.
Input 2: A dynamic mic on the kick. Sample replace. Going all natural is a beautiful thought, but without proper gear, odds are the natural tones you get will be sub-par. If you want to, you could also try and combine a kick and a snare mic on this input, and with careful frequency filtering try to trigger kick and snare separately from the same signal.

The best advice I can give you, though, is the one you don't want to hear. Get more inputs. With eight, you can already mic the kick, snare, three toms, two overheads and HH/ride/mono room.

 

[dale_a_smith]

If your going to use that set-up, I'd be tempted to mix the snare with the OH instead of the kick. You'll have to do a few trail runs to get the mix right between these 2 mics.
The eq your likely to apply to the kick will be drastically different to that of the snare and OH, and I think would stand a better chance.
admittedly, you would eq the OH and snare differently as well, but I think those 2 would be closer than your original suggestion.

Its a massive compromise, but, a good room, with a good kit and you never know.

Also consider taking a few individual samples of the snare and kick. Might pay you in the long run.

have fun..

 

[spiderjazz]

First of all, odds are you won't be happy with the results. That being said, I'd suggest the following:

Input 1: Two condensers as overheads. Play around with mic placement until you get a somewhat decent balance between the kit. These mics will capture the cymbals, toms and snare. It's tough to get good results, but if you absolutely can't afford any more inputs/preamps, you have a hard task ahead in any case.
Input 2: A dynamic mic on the kick. Sample replace. Going all natural is a beautiful thought, but without proper gear, odds are the natural tones you get will be sub-par. If you want to, you could also try and combine a kick and a snare mic on this input, and with careful frequency filtering try to trigger kick and snare separately from the same signal.

The best advice I can give you, though, is the one you don't want to hear. Get more inputs. With eight, you can already mic the kick, snare, three toms, two overheads and HH/ride/mono room.

Thanks for the response.

I'd love to be able to afford a bigger interface, but it's definitely not on the cards at the moment. This will really be more of a favour to friends than anything else, they did some recording with a guy recently, and it was poor enough, I ended up having better results using one dynamic room mic on the kit, process the arse out of it, and getting them to track guitars over it.

I was thinking about sample replacing the kick alright, that would probably be the best solution for it it. If I wanted to try and trigger the snare and kick from the same mic track, where would be my best place to put the mic, to get the best differentiation frequency wise between the kick and snare?

 

[spiderjazz]

If your going to use that set-up, I'd be tempted to mix the snare with the OH instead of the kick. You'll have to do a few trail runs to get the mix right between these 2 mics.
The eq your likely to apply to the kick will be drastically different to that of the snare and OH, and I think would stand a better chance.
admittedly, you would eq the OH and snare differently as well, but I think those 2 would be closer than your original suggestion.

Its a massive compromise, but, a good room, with a good kit and you never know.

Also consider taking a few individual samples of the snare and kick. Might pay you in the long run.

have fun..

That's another possibility alright, before I record anything properly with it I'll definitely try a few permutations to see which one allows the most control with mixing. One of the few saving graces of it is that the drummer is a very solid and consistent hitter so he shouldn't be ducking in and out too much.

 

[luismars]

If you prefilter theoreticaly you can record kick and snare at the same track and then sample replace both.

 

[AdamWathan]

If I was in that shitty situation I would just be using a stereo pair of overheads and manually dropping in samples on new tracks wherever the drummer played each drum. It would suck but it is by far the best result you are going to get if you want it to sound at all modern.

Or alternatively just program the drums with no cymbals, setup two overheads and get the drummer to just track the cymbal parts playing along to the programmed drums.

 

[AllanD]

I remember seeing a video where you use ReFir in Reaper to run a gate on certain frequencies to sample in a snare and kick. It's pretty genius. All you do is duplicate the track, set reFir to gate mode, find the main snare frequency, set ReFir so that the gate only opens when the snare is hit, then set a drum sampler after ReFir in the chain. You can do the same for kick as well, but for toms you'll most likely have to do it by hand.

 

[MrBongo]

i read you got a small mixer as well ?

put 2 mics into that thing, pan them left-right, and send it to the line-in of your computer via adaptor
if the noise level is low enough, you just got a third and fourth channel

i will probably be recording drums today, with sm57 as overheads and some akg vocal mic in the bassdrum ... could upload them, so you see what you can get with them

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

I was thinking about sample replacing the kick alright, that would probably be the best solution for it it. If I wanted to try and trigger the snare and kick from the same mic track, where would be my best place to put the mic, to get the best differentiation frequency wise between the kick and snare?

Unfortunately, it's pretty impossible to answer that. Trial end error, lots of it. Place the mics somewhere, record a little, try to filter the fundamental frequencies of the kick and snare, see if you can sample replace them individually, repeat until you get a decent result.

 

[DanLights]

If I was in that shitty situation I would just be using a stereo pair of overheads and manually dropping in samples on new tracks wherever the drummer played each drum. It would suck but it is by far the best result you are going to get if you want it to sound at all modern.

Or alternatively just program the drums with no cymbals, setup two overheads and get the drummer to just track the cymbal parts playing along to the programmed drums.

I would go this road as well, record good stereo overheads and then if no possibility of renting/borrowing some triggers for the drums, simply manually programming in the drums following what the drummer played.

 

[spiderjazz]

If I was in that shitty situation I would just be using a stereo pair of overheads and manually dropping in samples on new tracks wherever the drummer played each drum. It would suck but it is by far the best result you are going to get if you want it to sound at all modern.

Or alternatively just program the drums with no cymbals, setup two overheads and get the drummer to just track the cymbal parts playing along to the programmed drums.

That could be a good solution. I program my own stuff, but the drummer is against the idea of using programmed drums. Meeting him half way like that might work.

 

[spiderjazz]

I remember seeing a video where you use ReFir in Reaper to run a gate on certain frequencies to sample in a snare and kick. It's pretty genius. All you do is duplicate the track, set reFir to gate mode, find the main snare frequency, set ReFir so that the gate only opens when the snare is hit, then set a drum sampler after ReFir in the chain. You can do the same for kick as well, but for toms you'll most likely have to do it by hand.

That sound cool, I must check that out now, that could work well.

 

[BLUElightCory]

If I was in that shitty situation I would just be using a stereo pair of overheads and manually dropping in samples on new tracks wherever the drummer played each drum. It would suck but it is by far the best result you are going to get if you want it to sound at all modern.

Or alternatively just program the drums with no cymbals, setup two overheads and get the drummer to just track the cymbal parts playing along to the programmed drums.

I think this is the best advice. If your overheads sound bad, the whole kit will. I'd focus on them and sample replace the close mics - it'll be a pain in the ass but it'll probably sound the best.

First of all, odds are you won't be happy with the results. That being said, I'd suggest the following:

Input 1: Two condensers as overheads. Play around with mic placement until you get a somewhat decent balance between the kit. These mics will capture the cymbals, toms and snare. It's tough to get good results, but if you absolutely can't afford any more inputs/preamps, you have a hard task ahead in any case.

If you do this it'd probably be better just to put one mic on the overheads - it's just going into a mono input anyway. Two mics are more likely to create phase problems.

 

[spiderjazz]

I remember seeing a video where you use ReFir in Reaper to run a gate on certain frequencies to sample in a snare and kick. It's pretty genius. All you do is duplicate the track, set reFir to gate mode, find the main snare frequency, set ReFir so that the gate only opens when the snare is hit, then set a drum sampler after ReFir in the chain. You can do the same for kick as well, but for toms you'll most likely have to do it by hand.

Tried this, it's awesome. From a one mic recording, I was able to get the snare and kick drum, and I'd say it was about 95% correct. I reckon I'll try and get a kick and snare track recorded, and trigger the both of them, and then get the drummer to record cymbals and tom's over it. I might program the tom's, could be better.

 

[spiderjazz]

i read you got a small mixer as well ?

put 2 mics into that thing, pan them left-right, and send it to the line-in of your computer via adaptor
if the noise level is low enough, you just got a third and fourth channel

i will probably be recording drums today, with sm57 as overheads and some akg vocal mic in the bassdrum ... could upload them, so you see what you can get with them

I didn't know that was possible, how would I record from my interface, and from the line in at the same time? Is it possible in reaper to use my saffire 6 as the interface, and record through the line in on the computer?

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

If you do this it'd probably be better just to put one mic on the overheads - it's just going into a mono input anyway. Two mics are more likely to create phase problems.

True, but metal kits are often quite wide-spread, and I like to keep my OH's rather low to get a clear, present tone. One mic might have trouble getting the whole kit properly, and I'd imagine in this case the drums aren't in a good-sounding room, which can result in a less-than-favorable tone when miced from high above. In any case, it will be a compromise :/

 

[spiderjazz]

I think this is the best advice. If your overheads sound bad, the whole kit will. I'd focus on them and sample replace the close mics - it'll be a pain in the ass but it'll probably sound the best.



If you do this it'd probably be better just to put one mic on the overheads - it's just going into a mono input anyway. Two mics are more likely to create phase problems.

What it looks like I'm going to do now, is record 2 tracks with a mic on the snare and kick. I'm going to sample replace them then with a trigger. I'll then get the drummer to record the cymbals separately. For the overheads, when recording cymbals on their own, would you recommend using one or two mics?

 

[spiderjazz]

True, but metal kits are often quite wide-spread, and I like to keep my OH's rather low to get a clear, present tone. One mic might have trouble getting the whole kit properly, and I'd imagine in this case the drums aren't in a good-sounding room, which can result in a less-than-favorable tone when miced from high above. In any case, it will be a compromise :/

Room isn't great at all. Where would you recommend placing the two mics around the kit? For the overheads, I plan now on just recording the cymbals through them.

 

[Wohma]

Seriously consider recording an e-kit with real cymbals (2 overhead mikes). If you can borrow (or buy used and sell afterwards) an e-kit and the drummer is willing to record this way, you'll have a much easier life and chances are that the results will be much better sounding (considering it is a metal record - I wouldn't record a blues or jazz drummer this way ).