i was wondering if anyone had some tips for two-mike drum set recording. i've had great luck lately with an AT 4051a(small-diaphragm cardioid capsule) overhead and an ATM 25 kick drum mike. the drums are tuned pretty dead, and there's only one cymbal and one tom. we've been using 7A sticks, so it's hard for a drummer to make a big racket with the cymbals...a problem i've encountered before when i wanted to use the overheads as the basis for a drum sound.

i think if the drums sound alright, the room is cool, and the drummer has good control over his dynamics, then this can work well. a couple big plusses are that it eliminates most phase issues and it simplifies mixing. if you are careful with the placement, you can get a good snare/kick mix, and if you really want a stereo drum sound you can use any number of stereo overhead mikes.

that's my 2 cents, i was wondering if anyone else had tips for this approach.

thanks,
tw

I don't remember the mic types when we tracked our drums like this but I believe one of them was a Lomo and the other an AT (?) anyway, we had one mic aimed sorta down at the drums from about three feet away maybe six inches above the kick. There may have been one more mic here, I don't remember.

The other mic was on the side of the kit aimed over the the tops of the toms and snare. The cymbals and hi hats were loud enough and brighgt enough to show up in the mix, and didn't need individual mics.

Overall, I prefer mic-ing the kit as opposed to individual drums as I feel it sounds more natural. I'm not the drummer, but I feel that it sits with the music a lot better. I also was not the engineer, so my recall of the events is surely cloudy at best.

You can hear the results on our page in my www link below-the footer is a one mic recording of the band done later. Adjust your ears for mp3 crappiness.


Faiz

good question... how would you mike a drum kit with:

a) 1 microphone

b) 2 microphones

c) 3 microphones


?

thank you!

In my practuce space we use a Digi001 and small Mackie for more pres, but this still leaves us with only 4 inputs. So when we go to record demos, we track the drums first but need a guitar or bass plugged into it at the same time, so that leaves us 3 inputs for drums. Usually we put a 57 on the snare, a large dynamic on the kick and a large condenser as a room mic, positioned high enough to get cymbals and more snare, and far enough away for some sense of space. When it comes time to mix the drums are usually treated Beatles style, ie, as a single mono signal panned left, right or center depending on the sounds of the other instruments and whatever feels better. We also add a good amount of verb for even more space. The room is like 12x12.

Sometimes we overdub a ride or floor tom and pan it opposite to give an idea of a stereo image, but usually its only 3 tracks. We don't see the limitation as holding us back. We see it as an opportunity to make the most we can out of it and are always happy with the results.

We want to go into the studio and rerecord the songs, but have been debating that we might not get as good of a sound or a better result with more mics on the kit.

For a really minimal recording of a drum kit, you can get good results just sticking up a £30 stereo mic about 6 feet in front of the kit. It seriously works. Sounds quite good if you compress it quite heavily, too.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my first "tip" for the Electrical board. And probably my last for a very, very long time. Enjoy.

all my stuff is mic'd using this : http://store.yahoo.com/minidisco-store/ ... --114.html

and it sounds like this : http://web.ukonline.co.uk/jon.kennedy/l ... _post.html

That ought to do it !

jk

i use four mics right now.
one on the kick, one just above the kick facing the snare and rack tom,
one facing the floor tom and one as an ambient mic.
i use my old four track as a mixer and run that into my computer.
i get some pretty good sounds from this set up.

I've had good luck recording drums with 3 mics. In fact, I've often been more satisfied doing it that way then with 12. Check out these MP3s:
http://www.palliardmusic.com/palliardsite.music.html
These were recorded with three mics on the drums. In front of the kit was a ribbon mic (Oktava ML-52), about 3 feet out, 2 feet high. Just 6 or 8 inches out from the floor tom, I had a large diaphragm condenser (AKG 414 BULS) pointing across the tom at the snare. The last mic was a small diaphragm condenser (Josephson C42), over my right shoulder pointing in between the rack tom and snare. You can measure the distance to the mics from the center of the snare to the 414 and C42 to minimize phasing. You want these two mics to be equally distant. In these MP3s there is also leakage from the drums into the vocal mic which was an Audio Technica 4033a that was limited and slightly compressed. This was all recorded live in the same room.
To be honest, the most important thing with this technique is that the drummer hit the snare and toms hard enough and not bash their cymbals. As far as mic choice goes, think of your mics as ribbons, small or large diaphragm condensers or dynamics; think about their polar patterns. Don't get hung up on particular models and name brands, think about their general characteristics. Also, mic placement will probably have more effect on the sound than what mic you choose. Once you find a good placement, start switching out mics to fine tune if necessary.