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Well I'm a little short on cash (read: short about $3000) so I only have an sb live (left and right channels on line in), a small 4 channel mixer, and a mic preamp-amp, a radio shack 3 mic passive mixer and 7 mics to use with this setup. I'm doing some cheap home recordings so I can remember this stuff when I can get a digi001 or C-port and an 8 bus mixer... you know the spiel.

Anyway here's the equipment:
--
2 tracks (sb live line in, left and right)

7 mics
-1 sm-57
-3 similar to sm-57
-3 semi-garbage mics that do the job

1 drum set
-snare / hi-hat / ride / kick
-4 toms, in pairs of 2 (10" w/ 12", 16" w/ 18")
-2 crashes (side by side, above 10" and 12" toms
-1 china (above 16" and 18" floor toms, on the right hand side of set)

1 four channel mixer

1 mic preamp-amp

1 three mic passive mixer

. right now it's mic each pair of toms with a mic, the snare with sm-57, the kick: all going into the 4 channel mixer, which goes into left channel of sb live. Then hook the 3 mic passive mixer up to the mic preamp, Micing the hihat, 2 crashes, and china/ride (all with the crappy mics): going into right channel of sb live.

Is seperating the snare/toms/kick from the cymbals a good idea? or should keep everything together and leave the kick seperate?

Comments

anonymous Tue, 12/03/2002 - 11:59

Do you have any mix buses on the mixer? If you do, you could send 1 overhead mic hard right, 1 hard left, and then mic the snare and kick to center of second bus. I would not be concerned about micing the toms, use your overheads for that. You will need to experiment with placement of your overheads for the best sound.

BillT :cool:

anonymous Tue, 12/03/2002 - 18:32

its not clear exactly what type of music your recording so its hard to give the best advice to suit your situation but here is one idea if you havnt already thought of it...
if the snare and kick are really important to the song (most likely they will be), try and record them both to one track (ie. left side). im saying this as i presume the kick and snare are never hit at the same time during the song. this way you can seperate them in your DAW. this may be a quick or lengthy process depending on what software your using and the tools available (eg. strip silence, etc.)
how you record to the right track is up to you but maybe try a submix of an overhead and/or room mic combination...
now you can have at least 3 seperate tracks for mixdown instead of 2...

chrisperra Tue, 12/03/2002 - 23:16

hi breezes

what features do the two mixers have? do they pan? how good is your drummer? what style of music are you recording?

these are the questions that come to mind when i look at your situation. if you can pan, and your drummer is good.

try to go stereo. i do like ok computers idea of separating the kick and snare later. but you will probably wind up with mono sounding drums. unless the remaining drum parts can be panned later in automation. thats alot of work though.

what platform are you recording on? the more info the better to answer your question.

chris perra

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