Should I mic the HiHats?

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 6:35 pm

I have an important recording coming up and need to record a full drum kit and rock band live.
I am limited with the amount of tracks and microphones I can use.
I was wondering how important is it to mic up the hihats. I want the most detailed drum sound I can get and am using a full eight tracks on the drum kit alone.
Is this overkill? Could I record the kit with less tracks with the same quality?
If so how?
I have tracks for Bass Drum , Snare , Three Toms , two overheads and one spare which I thought I could use on the HiHat.
Is that a good idea?

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:22 pm

I have found that is almost impossible to keep the hat from bleeding into the snare mic, so if you are short on mics, hihat would be one of the first to go (especially since you said you had 2 overheads)
I still mic my hats, but often don't even use them in the mix.

Good luck
MarkG

Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:27 pm

Thanks I was kind of thinking the same. I always find lots of hihat bleed as well. Just thought the extra control might help things a bit.

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:07 am

I would say if you have a spare mic and channel avaliable then mic the hi hats anyway. There is no harm in this and will give you better control of the hi hat sound.

Use a hi-pass filter to reduce the chances of the mic picking up air form the hi hats.

Also use as many noise gates as you can (if possible) on each track to reduce bleed.

Hope this helps;)

Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 5:15 am

If you got a spare mic, i would go for micin it. Always good to have the control, and you can always take it away

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