unique drum micing situation, advice needed.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:16 am

Codemonkey wrote:

You MIGHT if the kit is six metres wide

what, you mean they're normally smaller than that? Wink

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:12 am

Haven't you seen these new 52" kick drums?

Oh wait, that was an HDTV I was looking at.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 5:53 pm

actually, thats a funny coincidence, because i was screwing around in my school's band room today and i was thinking about what if some really crazy ass drummer made a drumset with all the same parts as a normal set, but each peice was replaced by its conert- or marching-band equivalent.

so, like, a marching snare, big hand-cymbals for crash, a giant marching bass drum for a kick, marching quads for toms, etc.

i could see it working for someone.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:06 pm

My friend John has a marching bass for his kik - I think it's a 28".

PITA to record.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 6:24 pm

i was thinking actually maybe like an orchestra bass drum, the ones like as tall as the people playing them.

Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:50 pm

I've been working with a Roland VS-1824 for a while now and while it's very limited in that it can only record 8 analog inputs at a time, it's actually done quite well for me. However, there are plenty of times that I find myself having to compromise because of the number of tracks.

Compromise and audio quality just don't go together.

An example: I recorded my friends' band. Four piece; drums, bass, keys/electric and acoustic guitar, and violin. Everyone but the drummer sings. We went up to a little cabin on a lake for New Years, had a big mostly-finished two story garage with a loft (so it had cathedral ceilings on one side) to record in, and had an absolute blast... but the band wanted to record everything live, as if it was a controlled gig or rehearsal, even as far as bringing a PA and blasting the vocals through it. It took several hours of explaining to them that all of that bleed will make everything sound absolutely awful, and I was at least able to talk them out of the PA system. I had eight tracks and a 24 channel mixer with 2 aux sends and 4 subgroups. I used the aux sends for headphone monitoring and the board's inserts and subgroups for tracks. Here's what I ended up with:

Tracks 1 & 2: Drum overheads & Tom Mix
Track 3: Kick
Track 4: Snare
Tracks 5 & 6: Instrument Mix
Tracks 7 & 8: Vocal Mix

The end result was awful. The drums sounded great, the instruments were fine but I wish I had more flexibility, and the vocals were completely unusable because of the drum bleed. I ended up giving them the instrumental tracks and they overdubbed vocals on their own. If I didn't have to record vocals, I would've had four tracks to record the instruments. Bass on 5, violin on 6, and guitars/keys on 7 & 8. The next year when we got together to do the same thing, they just let me do my thing and the tracks ended up on their last release.

Moral of the story? Don't record what you aren't going to or simply can't use. You waste your time and you compromise the quality of the product.

My advice for your situation? You have 8 tracks right?

Track 1 & 2: Overheads L & R
Track 3: Kick
Track 4: Snare
Track 5 & 6: Tom Mix
Track 7: Bass
Track 8: Guitar

Run the overheads, kick and snare right into the MOTU. Use the Peavey board for the toms. You're going to have to spend some time making sure you get your levels and pans where you want them because you won't have the ability to change it later. The advantages are that this allows you to effect and EQ the toms as a group, the disadvantages are that gating out bleed will be pretty much impossible. But keep in mind, they're just toms. The kick and snare are the most important drums, and the drummer is constantly riding on the cymbals, so they're just as important. Toms fall behind these two in the priority ladder, so miking the living crap out of them really isn't going to matter. In fact, if you're not recording in a great room, with great mics, a great kit, a great drummer with great equipment, miking the living crap out of them is going to sound worse. Bleed, phasing, noise from the board... you'd be shooting yourself in the foot.

But, keep in mind that there is no wrong way to record. Since I've taken a bit of a step back in things and moved away from the city, my highly untechnical friend and occasional bandmate has taken it upon himself to buy a Korg unit similar to mine and record rehearsals and demos with his bands. I'll be recording his band's second album this July, and they've been recording demos of the songs in the pre-production stage of things. The last mic setup he used was 9 mics in some of the oddest ways, but it actually sounds good! He had two kick mics, three room mics, -no- snare mic, it was recorded in a basement, and when I heard what he was doing I fully expected it to sound like garbage, but oddly enough it really does sound good. Now, it doesn't sound great, but it sounds like a good representation of the drummer's kit, and more than good enough for a demo. So, whatever floats your boat!

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