Alright, if someone could help me with my snare sound, I'll promise you a nice personal email thank you, delivered right to your email box.

I want a better sound than I'm getting. I dig a really huge, resonant sounding snare and manage to get pretty good sounds when tracking drums alone, mostly using room mics, but when recording a loud band in our small room I have to rely more on the close mic and it never sounds all that good. I've tried thus far: SM57 & 58, Rode NT1 & NT5, AKG 414 & C2000B. Can someone suggest a mic? Should I buy a 421? Any crazy tips I can use, should I put a clipboard under the snare, or solo the track after recording and pump it through that PA and mic the speaker to a new track? (I've tried both of these)

The drum is tuned well and sounds wonderful in the room. Please give me suggestions on how to capture this.

Also, what do you all think about tightness of the snares? I personally dig em pretty loose. The drummer I'm recording now prefers them really tight and it sounds sort of choked and marching snare-like. Am I right in assuming that looser snares would increase that ambience?

Thanks much then.

maybe try a beyer 201 or a shure ksm 141 with a pad.

usually i've found that drummers (not unlike the one you mentioned) prefer their snare drum pitched tight for more of the action it provides. one compromise would be to tune down the top head and tune up the bottom a full zone above the top.

im sure your big problem with the room mics is that you get the undesirable cymbal sound, have you tried gating your room mics with a key input of the snare?

and just out of curiosity what do you mean clipboard?

i have the exact same problem at my current space. (1 room for everything). my drums cleaned up and sounded way better when i put the bass amp in the corner goboed off and covered w/blankets to keep from leaking into the "live room" - then had guitar as scratch tracks through a shity distortion pedal for headphone mixes, then go back over guitars later. when i've tried goboeing off all the amps, in my space, it was still too much and muddied up everything too much. it's not the ideal way to do it, but for me it makes the drums sound better.

hell, there may actually be a good use for a line 6 pod (just make sure you erase the track before mixing)

as for mics the blend of room mics/overheads helps the snare sound more like i want to hear it. but for a close mic i use a beyer 201. i used an NT5 as a snare side mic, but have given up on that to have more ambient sound and conserve trackspace. i use the NT5 spaced pair for ambients on the floor (technique stolen from greg)

if it sounds wonderful in the room you're halfway there. stand where it sounds best and put a mic there. then reverse engineer so that your amps don't fuck that sound up.

hope that helps some.

as for the snares, i'd defer to the drummer. it's his drum not yours. personally (i'm a drummer also) i prefer tighter snares. you can tell when they're too tight though, like you said, they choke off. but if that's what you're going for.....

Hey there,
Have you tried mic-ing both the top and bottom and blending them to taste (either to one track or in the mix later)? Remember to check phase.

Also, yeah, len on the room mics more for the sound. I find drummer like to use big cymbals because a lot of drummer like bigger, lower cymbals (ego thing?). However, the volume and sustain of bigger cymbals played heavily can really get in the way of the snare and toms in the overhead and room mics. Try to get your drummer to maybe use smaller cymbals for recording, or just not to smash them so hard.

good luck
Ben Adrian
Oakland, CA

congleton wrote:one compromise would be to tune down the top head and tune up the bottom a full zone above the top.

im sure your big problem with the room mics is that you get the undesirable cymbal sound, have you tried gating your room mics with a key input of the snare?

hmm. usually the top head is the most important for me to have tighter for the action. i'd be most hesitant to change that tension - though that's completely a factor of how the drummer plays.

re: keying your room mics - let me back it up and ask a dumb question - are you talking about only gating the signal, so that only on snare hits your room mics open up in a stricly on/off manner - or are you talking more about a ducking type thing with compression? i am confused. if you or anyone could elaborate i'd be totally grateful.

hmmm. and while we're at it - you can do frequency dependent compression right by sidechaining in an EQ - so that you could EQ out the cymbals and only affect the toms and drums right? hmm. or maybe if you multed out the channels to a crossover... now i'm rambling..

nick92675 wrote:hmmm. and while we're at it - you can do frequency dependent compression right by sidechaining in an EQ - so that you could EQ out the cymbals and only affect the toms and drums right?

Nick,
Using an EQ on a sidechain of a compressor will still affect the entire signal. The sidechain simply allows you to use another source for you threshold to "look at", so you are essentially changing what triggers the compressor. For example, if you run an EQ into your sidechain and cut everything above 1 KHz by 15 dB, you compressor will not be activated by loud cymbal crashes or a high hat, but will be more likely to compress from a kick drum or a loud snare. However, when the compressor does go off, it still compresses the entire signal. Still, a sidechain can be a very useful tool.

From what I understand from your post, you want to compress only the drums and not the cymbals. In order to do something like that you would need to use a multiband compressor (or as you mentioned above, you could run your signal through a two way x-over and then route your "low" signal through a compressor and back to a channel, and bring your "high" signal right back to another channel. Match the level of your compressed "low" signal to your "high" signal).

mike

congleton: I don't have much of a problem with the room mics, other than the snare getting lost when we track everyone live in the room. And I mean a clipboard, like a basketball coach might use. I read it somewhere.

nick92675: I thought of doing the extreme seperation thing, (we have a bathroom and a very small loft area to use for amps also) but the room mics give it the 'live' sound I so desire. It also makes the drummer play better when we're all in there kicking it loud with him... I must be in the minority when it comes to snare wires, I like 'em all the way loose.

benadrian: Every time I use a top and bottom mic, I find myself not using the bottom when mixing. And yeah, our drummer uses a 22" crash. Interesting idea about larger cymbals, didn't think of that.

I'll check out the Beyer 201, where would I get such a thing in the US? My Google searches are sending me all over the world...

nick92675 wrote:re: keying your room mics - let me back it up and ask a dumb question - are you talking about only gating the signal, so that only on snare hits your room mics open up in a stricly on/off manner - or are you talking more about a ducking type thing with compression? i am confused. if you or anyone could elaborate i'd be totally grateful.

He means patching your room mics through a gate or expander, and then patching a mult of your snare drum channel into the gate or expander's sidechain input. This would then open up the channel when the snare drum is played, and turn it down otherwise -- a ducker would have the opposite effect.

q1w2e3r4: Have you tried placing a clipboard underneath the snare drum yet?

It's difficult to know what you mean by "I have to rely more on the close mic and it never sounds all that good" -- is it duller, less reverberant, boxy? Are the drum mics full of bleed from the amps?

I would hazard a guess and say that your problem is too much volume in the room, which means you have three options: 1) Get the amps out of the room, 2) Turn the amps down, and 3) Get a bigger room.

If your drummer plays better without headphones, you could always try putting the amps in a seperate room and setting up a pair of speakers near his head instead, adjusting their placement for minimum bleed.

mb

q1w2e3r4 wrote:I'll check out the Beyer 201, where would I get such a thing in the US? My Google searches are sending me all over the world...

Full Compass usually carries them, if your just looking for a big mailorder joint. Otherwise, check with your local pro audio dealer (unless that dealer is Guitar Center).

I'll cast another vote for the Shure KSM141. Works beautifully for me on snare drum, acoustic guitar, overheads, and lots of other situations.

mb

first of all: matthew, i am an asshole. i am looking for that goddamn mic and i can't find the son of a bitch. i will buy you a new one if i don't find it this week.

second of all: the one thing i could add that i haven't seen addressed is that the placement of the close mic is crucial with snare

lotsa guys put it in a chickeny position, tilted down at the drum and off the edge so the drummer will never whack it in a million years

be brave! get that thing in there. i mean, keep it out of the drummer's way, but get it as far over the drum as you can. try pointing it straight down if at all possible.