Re: OT: Recording Drums - gear selection: status report

[George Ludwig <georgeludwigmusic@gmail.com>]

Rainer, just to be clear, I would go with a stereo pair if possible to capture most of the sound of the kit, but if the only available stereo pair were two C1000s's, I'd rather have a single, higher quality mic in it's place. I actually suggested working with the ribbon mics for overheads  (I think there was a  pair of those as well in the mic locker), but those can be more challenging to work with in this context due to the figure 8 pattern. But the result would be worth it. Rick suggested you can EQ out the harshness of the C1000s when used as overheads, but I personally never had much luck with that. YMMV.

I read in TapeOp there's a guy doing mods to the C1000s that don't cost a lot of money and supposedly take all that harshness away. Of course after that, it may not sound so good on snare or guitar amp! :)

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 2:09 PM, Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com> wrote:

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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