Tracking Drums PDF

[mickrich]

I have just finished a Keynote for a class I am teaching tomorrow on tracking drums.

This is for a lecture to 1st year Music Tech students before we do tracking on Thursday.
Starts pretty basic but goes into mic choices and positions and gain staging etc.
Hope it helps or is at least an interesting read

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2133088/tracking_drums_class.pdf

 

[Sloan]

thanks for sharing, you've been posting a lot of helpful stuff lately!

 

[colonel_claypoo]

thanks man, much appreciated.

 

[Trevoire520]

Typo on page 22: "Tend to have large diaphragm to capture"

 

[mickrich]

Typo on page 22: "Tend to have large diaphragm to capture"

Missed that thanks.
The frequency chart covered the "low end"
Same link

 

[Diego Rugiero]

Downloading, thanks!

 

[Melb_shredder]

Just checked it out! Really good dude. Pretty thorough for just notes. Well done

 

[iceman666]

This is nice man! Thanks

 

[drew_drummer]

Nice PDF; I'd have left out a large chunk of the "this is the way this drum is played" type stuff though imho.

 

[-Noodles-]

Thanks - I'll have a look through it and pass it on to my students.

 

[Mago]

looks really good, seems it is aimed for people who never saw a drumkit before.

One thing I noticed though "need to reverse the polarity of the bottom mic"...I dunno...I mean, for me it was the case in 90% of drumrecordings I did, but I also had some were it didnt sound better to flip the phase. So maybe you could re-express that, not to get people to just flip the phase and not listen to what it does.
Also I wouldn't say that dynamics are "best", but more "favored" by most people. I've heard a killer snare with a neumann km84 (iirc). More cymbals in it of course, but since the snare is a lot brighter on default, you don't need to boost any highs.

also I didn't see zone micing in overhead techniques I think, and I don't think it falls under AB...

just nitpicking of course

 

[mickrich]

Thanks for the kind words guys.
The students got a lot out of the class today so we should be in good shape for the tracking session on Thursday.
These are first year students and up until now they have been covering a lot of theory and this is the first time they will get into actual recording.
A lot of these guys really are beginners with no "band" experience, just music lovers who want to get into recording.
I have found that starting with the very basic stuff means nobody is left in the dark.
I even had some questions about the operation of hi hats and kick pedals.
This tutorial was about getting them ready for the tracking session where I will cover more but won't get bogged down with the basics.
Mago, thanks for your observations.
In second year we cover spot and zone mics and snare side, under ride, centre kit mics etc.
I absolutely don't want a drummer hitting and breaking a vintage 184 on my watch so we will sticking with dynamics for close mics.
U87s sound amazing on toms too but no chance of using them just in case ;-)
You are right about not always needing to reverse polarity on snare bottom but nearly all the time you do.
I say that 1176 or distressor will be better than plugins so use them.
I probably should change that to "use them in preference to plugins if you want to compress"
I will cover that in the studio just to clarify.

Here is the studio if you want to have a look.
Studio 1 or 2 use depends on availability and the size of the class.
Drum tracking on Thursday is in studio 1.
It's amazing to work in either.
http://www.windmilllanerecording.com/studios/studio/1
http://www.windmilllanerecording.com/studios/studio/2

 

[Mago]

Mago, thanks for your observations.
In second year we cover spot and zone mics and snare side, under ride, centre kit mics etc.
I absolutely don't want a drummer hitting and breaking a vintage 184 on my watch so we will sticking with dynamics for close mics.
U87s sound amazing on toms too but no chance of using them just in case ;-)
You are right about not always needing to reverse polarity on snare bottom but nearly all the time you do.
I say that 1176 or distressor will be better than plugins so use them.
I probably should change that to "use them in preference to plugins if you want to compress"
I will cover that in the studio just to clarify.

ah well, ok makes sense...did you allready cover stereo micing techniques? Just out of interest, I'd guess doing the first (real) stereo pair (whatever techniques it maybe) with overheads is a pretty mean task haha

HAHA, yeah nobody would want that...but I think that if you don't trust the specific drummer with his aim and control of where he hits, then the quality of the drumset wouldn't be worth to catch with such mics anyway, cause it *probably* is beaten to shitville and back allready
and u87s on toms is a whole different story than a km84 on a snare...at least pricewise, if I remember them correctly.

the only reason I mentioned the snr btm phase was to not get people to just switch it and forget it...just because I've seen people doing it going "nah, I've always done it" without realizing that they just killed the body of the snare.

The studio looks reaaaaaally neat!

 

[slaytah]

Nice one mickrich, I've been looking for this sort of thing recently.