OT: Recording Drums - gear selection: status report

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

Hi everyone,

first of all, thanks to all of you (remember Andy Butler [AB], Andy G 
[AG], George Ludwig [GL], Per Boysen [PB] and of course Rick Walker 
[RW]). I'll try to summarize some at this point - additional comments 
from my are marked [RS].

1. General Concepts:
There seems to be a common understanding that the most important thing 
is the overheads, as they form the "basic sound"; everything else is 
just addon [AB] - but the bass drum seems to get almost as much 
attention, even with the suggestion to use two dedicated mikes for it.
In addition to the basic "which mikes on what" question, great 
importance is found in the actual mic placement, both to where and how 
they sit in relation to the drum [various], as well as how they are 
placed relatively to each other to minimize phase cancellation [RW].
[RS] Here's a piece of wisdom from me: using mic placement to minimize 
phase cancellation will only work for a specific frequency series, and 
always give you a comb filtering effect. If we stick with Rick's example 
of toms, and let's say one tom has a fundamental resonance at 300 Hz and 
you proceed like Rick suggests by moving the microphone so it sounds the 
fullest in the mix, you wll have constructive superposition for 300 Hz 
(and 600 Hz and so on), but desctructive one for the frequencies in 
between (i.e. 450, 225 etc.) - which may or may not be what you want.
If you don't want that, here's one trick: This assumes to work in all 
circumstances that you only have one stereo pair (e.g. overheads) and 
all the close-microphones have minimum crosstalk and/or use gates (if 
you use two microphones for the BD, e.g. as [GL] suggests, you might 
want to trigger the gate of the "far away" mic with the signal of the 
closeup mic):
Measure the distance of each microphone to each one of your overheads 
and document it. From that, you can calculate the time it takes the 
sound e.g. from the SD to travel from the SD mike to the left and right 
OH mikes respectively. Now during mixdown, put a stereo delay in the SD 
channel. Set the individual R/L delay so it is equivalent to 
distance/speed of sound (roughly 343m/s at room temperature). Voila, no 
more phase cancellation, and as a side effect, you got an entirely 
fitting A/B stereophony!

Apart from the BD mics, everything else (including SD - [RW]) is 
considerably less important - in order of decreasing importance 
(summarizing what everyone said): SD, Toms ([RW] explains a lot about 
miking them), cymbals in general (about everyone - did anybody recommend 
close-miking cymbals? don't think so).

[GL] also as the only source mentions the use of room mics; in his 
setup, the room is done with a stereo pair, while overhead is one single 
microphone.

2. Overheads:
C1000s are not recommended for their general sound ([GL], [RW]), but can 
serve for SD (see 4 below).
With the exception of [GL], the consensus is on a stereo pair as the 
main mics (see also 1).
There's not much suggestions on the actual placement and mic choice, 
with the exception of [AB]: cardioids in a coincidental or gapped 
alignment with >90° angle (e.g. ORTF). The source also suggests the Rode 
NT-1A as an alternative to the (most fitting available small diaphgram 
condenser) C4.
[RS]: I had a pleasant experience with the Rode for recording the room 
at a live concert (mono recording I did for another group): recorded the 
room with the NT-1A and a C414, used the signal from the NT-1A...
Another idea was to use the M260s for overheads due to their ribbon 
character [GL] - but making sure to avoid problems with the figure-8, to 
wich [RS] comments:
The M260 are not figure-8, they're hypercardioid - but that's even more 
of a problem.

3. Bass Drum:
The biggest amount had been written about bass drum here...and nobody 
seems to know my EV Neodyn or Sennheiser PZM mikes...
[RS]: The E/V is similar to the D112, only it has a) higher SPL 
resistance (even more?), b) HF peaks at 1.5 and 5 kHz, c) LF peak at 55 
(instead of 100) Hz.
For the D112, the opinions differ, from "avoid unless you want that 80s 
click" [AB] to "just EQ the click out but use anyway" [RW].
There has been a lot of discussion for placement. [AG] suggests to point 
the "inside" mic off-axis, pointed at the beater (seconded by [RW]), and 
perhaps an additional mike just outside the hole.
[AB] suggests an additional BD mic for the beater side (tried that 
himself with a Sennheiser 421), to which [AG] objects due to noisebleed 
for that mic placement.
The most creative version is by [GL] with an additional BD mike ca. 3m 
away down a "cushion tunnel".

4. Snare Drum:
If we need it at all (which [RW] doubts that in the jazz context): SM57 
as usual (e.g. [PB], [RW]) or C1000S ([GL]).
Own experience: with Eclectic Blah, we would sometimes use two snare 
drums in the trapset and mic one with a SM57, the other one with a 
C1000S. The contrast was very striking!
Question from me: what about a large-diaphragm condenser?

5. Toms:
Only one suggestion by [RW]: SM57, other's tell not to bother

6. Cymbals:
No need to.

7. The other Concept [GL]:
There is only one suggestion which differs from the standard "BD 
(perhaps 2x), SD (or leave it) and stereo OH", and that's by [GL]: 
Stereo room mics (what kind of? Can I use my beloved extremely wide A/B 
omnis here?), mono OH, SD, BD (perhaps 2x), mic over drummer's shoulder 
and additional mono room mic chest high and 3m in front of kit.


SUMMARY:
All of those suggestions use a maximum of seven channels, so I'm happy 
even with the small setup with 9 available mic channels. With the 
exception of (7), all agree on the basic setup of stereo OH, BD and 
perhaps SD, so that allows me additional room to do the optional 
wildcards on the 5 remaining channels (e.g. second BD, perhaps a small 
diaphragm condenser on the SD?, stereo room mics? additional 
coincidental OH pair with the Rodes?). We'll see...


Thanks again for all those suggestions - stay tuned for the results (to 
be available early in May).


             Rainer

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