OT: 3 piece drum kit, only 4 inputs. Wha'd ya figure?

[Boy_Narf]

Hello Everyone!

So we are recording a live session for a limited release in two days. I have 8 inputs on my interface. 1 for guitar, 1 for bass, and 2 for vocals. I only get 4, how sad D:

I play a pretty compact kit:

13" snare
12" tom
16" kick
13" hats
20" crash

So originally I planned to have two overheads in stereo, one mic on the kick, and one on the snare. I then got to thinking that I would really like to mic the tom as I've had issues in the past with toms getting lost if only coming through the overheads. So what would you guys do? I don't want to do the "sub-mixer" thing as I want direct control over as much as possible in the DAW.

So here are two options as I see it:

1. As stated above. Stereo overheads, one mic on snare, one mic on kick.
2. Mic the snare, mic the kick, mic the tom, mono over head over my shoulder and pointing at the kick pedal (heard this is a good spot for a mono mic). Figured I could add a stereo verb to help widening things a touch, and can even try panning the close mics to widen the mix slightly.
3. Ditch the close mics, and run stereo over heads and a kick mic.

So what do you guys think? Sacrifice the close tom mic for another over head? Or sacrifice the overhead for a close tom mic? Or go ditch the close micing? I don't have time to test it in a mix, but could test the kit on it's own tomorrow evening. Just looking for a bit of advise if anyone has found themselves in a similar scenario.

Mics that I have at my disposal:

SM81(2)
SM57(3)
Beta52(1)

THANKS!

[Thinline_slim]

Look up the Glyn John's recording method and you'll be set with a little time.

[jontheid]

Look up the Glyn John's recording method and you'll be set with a little time.

Exactly this.
It seems weird but it does work!

[bclaire]

I have a three mic drum doc on my computer:

There a half a dozen "3 mic drum techniques" that I'm familiar with.
Is there any particular one to which you refer?

Here are a few of them:

I usually start with a mic in front of the kit. It could be 6 feet or one foot off the bass drum. The object of this mic is usually to get the "front of the kit". I look for a good bass drum sound, but also the bottom of the toms and a bit of snare...cymbals will also exist here. The tuning of the kit, the proficiency of the drummer, the mic selection and placement are all pretty damn important...you can do a little EQ to this, but not a whole hell of a lot. When you use equalizers on this mic, you will find that you often mess up the balance of the drums within the context of the kit. Depending on the tone you're looking for, a ribbon, lg. diaphragm condenser or dynamic might be the most appropriate.

For ribbons my choices are usually Royer 121's, RCA-77's...for lg. diaphragm condensers, Neumann 47 FET's, M-147's; Soundelux U-195’s/U-95S’s and/or U-99’s; dynamics MD-421’s; AKG D-30's often work pretty well, but they're a bitch to find and I don't own one. Sometimes [rarely] a Shure 57.

Now, in mono, one speaker, I put up a second mic. This can go anywhere from directly over the snare to over the drummers right shoulder...or anywhere in the arc in between. The key here is to add that mic so you get the snare, hat, top of the toms and cymbals without the cymbals being out of balance with the rest of the kit. If the drummer can't control this balance, you're pretty much fricked and should revert back to the close mic'ed SR methods they teach at the recording schools.

The reason I do this in mono-1 speaker is to insure that I'm not going to dollywaggle with the bottom of the bass drum because of an inconsistent phase relationship with the front mic. For this I will often use a ribbon, like a Coles 4038 , or a condenser. U-67's often work. I find that as I get closer to 'behind the drummer', a small diaphragm condenser, like a KM-54 will often work a bit better.

Mic #3 is often placed next to the floor tom, just peeking over the rim of the drum at the snare. It's usually placed equidistant from the over mic as it relates to 'ground zero' [where the drummer actually hits the snare drum, not the center of it]. As always, one speaker mono is your friend.

Another set of fun ones...a pair of small diaphragm condensers about 4-5 feet over the front mic, aimed at the outer edges of the crash cymbals. I like an SM-2 because I have to worry about the phase relationships of the two mics less, but still worry about that relationship as it relates to the 'FOK' [front of the kit] mic. Lately I’ve been using a Royer SF-12 in this application, and absolutely loving it. Big , clear, open, not too brash, yet no shortage of high end “silk”. Absolutely my first choice these days.

There's another I've done where I use two lg. diaphragm condensers [like 47's] and spread them out. Like one in front of each rack tom [on the side of the toms. When I do this one, it seems that if all three mics are equidistant from 'ground zero' my setup time is pretty well reduced. Don't forget mono one speaker, or you may end up wanting to drink Drano when it comes time to mix.

Adding room mics is often cool, it kinda depends on how you're tracking. I hate musicians performing with headphones, so I like to get everyone set up in the same area so they can hear themselves. Like the old record said...'Let It Bleed'. The biggest problem with doing this is the bottom of the bass bleeding into the FOK mic and causing the bottom of the bass to get really smeary sounding. You may have to move the bass amp around for a while until you can get clear audio and the drummer can still hear and lock up with the bass player.

Sometimes a small speaker like a 10” or a 12” done as a satellite speaker placed in the null of the pickup pattern of the mics will work wonders getting the drummer to lock with the bass player while you move the bass amp farther away from the drum kit...gobos will often come in pretty handy too.

I find I get alot of my guitar reverb/ambience, at least on the basic track, by moving the guitar amp so the little bit of bleed in the drum mics makes it a cool ambience for the guitars...but doesn't overpower the drum kit.

You will be surprised the first few times you do these tricks how little bleed there actually is between instruments. If there are two guitar players, I recommend setting them up on opposite sides of the kit, that way you'll get a better stereo picture when you disengage the mono button.

So...room mics...now that you have the whole band set up in a room...mic the room. You should get a reasonable balance of all the instruments...it should sound like a band in a room [fancy that!!]...the mono button is still in until you're positive that you're not totally freaking up the clarity of the bottom of the track.

Need more snare you think [first of all, if you really do, the drummers a feline and should learn how to hit the fuckin' things]...but in those applications...a Shure 57 aimed about a foot off the side of the center of the shell of the snare drum usually will add all you need without complicating the rest of the balance.

A few other notes...first, the drummer *must* be competent...second, the kit should sound good, and be well tuned or you're screwed. There will be damn little EQ that can be applied to any of this without totally screwing up the whole picture, so it's gotta be right the first time.

You will also find that a large room, or at least a room with a high ceiling comes in damn handy or this can start to sound boxy in a hurry. I usually try to get soft things around the drum kit. I actually carry an 8' high, 20' wide [in the back], and 10' long [sides] that descend from 8' high in the back to 4' high in the front soft [4" insulation, cloth covered] booth. Front gobos as needed, usually just a gobo between the amps and the kit will work pretty well at helping you control the bleed.

This usually alleviates the bounce and splatter that will be caused by reflections off of hard walls. Depending on where you position the kit, these reflections [especially on the cymbals] will come back to haunt you as "Haas effect" pile of poop...

[Boy_Narf]

Wow thanks for the info will try out as much as I can before tomorrow. The trouble is we are recording live all in my living room, so the room mics, or ambient mics won't work for the drum mix, there will be way too much bleed from the other instruments. This is why I was considering the close micing at the expense of one overhead, to get a bit more punch out of the snare/tom and minimise the bleed into the drum mix. Bleed is perfectly fine with me, but of course, less is better.

[liaztraht]

Drums don't need stereo. They should be in the middle of the mix usually. You could keep stereo and put the snare Mic in a modified Tchad Blake method. Pointed between the snare and rack Tom leaning heavier toward the snare. Though instead of over the snare pointing at the hats it would be over the snare/Tom pointing towards where a floor Tom would usually be. I'm a big fan of the original technique for demo recording. Good mixing and post can really make it shine with multi-band compressors and parametric eq.

[Boy_Narf]

Hey Folks!

So I did some testing today at lunchtime and settled on a setup, that actually involves 5 mics

The bass player only has one section of OOO AHH in one of the songs, so we are cutting his mic from the live mix, and will do those as an overdub. For future sessions however, I have ordered a Coax SPDIF --> XLR (D/A) converter. This will allow me to have another xlr input running into my SPDIF input meaning I will gain an extra input on my interface. YAY!

Anyway,

Tests:

1. 2 over heads, 1 snare, 1 kick: Good sound! Nice clarity on the cymbals, but the snare sounded a bit thin.
2. 1 over head, 1 snare, 1 tom, 1 kick: Snare sounded "fuller", and everything was more focused. The odd thing is this mix sounded way better on my crap laptop speakers, where as it sounded much worse on better quality speakers.
3. Glyn John method: Sounded decent actually. Brought more clarity to the whole mix it seemed. My band picked this as the favorite.

That was until I tried my 5 mic method:

2 over heads, 1 snare, 1 kick, 1 tom: Not sure if it's the bleed into the extra 57, or the punch obtained from close micing the tom, but the entire drum mix just seemed more punchy. I threw a touch of verb, and saturation on there and now have a very convincing "vintage" tone. Sounds great for doing it in a living room with no sound dampening aside from a couch and arm chair

Thanks again for the help guys. For the next session, I'm going to book some more time with the boys so we can experiment with mic placement in the live mix. I am concerned that the two condensers might pickup too much of the other instruments, but I'll never know until I try it. Heck if our initial takes turn out sounding like dog sh1t, I'll be moving the mics tomorrow.

I'll upload some samples after we are done tomorrow.

THANKS!