THE DRUM MICROPHONE / MICROPHONES THREAD

Re: recording with 2 mics

Sairways response is right on. To get the stereo effect out of a mono setup is easy just mix the track down into two with one panned left and one panned right.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

I know. it gives the effect of stereo because one track is to the left and one is to the right. True stereo is a different beast altogether.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

lilblakdak said:
I know. it gives the effect of stereo because one track is to the left and one is to the right. True stereo is a different beast altogether.

It actual makes no differnce. If it is in mono, it is the exact same thing coming out of both speakers, if you split that into to channels of the exact same thing, then pan on left and one right, it is still two channels of the exact same thing!
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Once again, I know. Its an illusion of stereo. Its like David Copperfeild doesnt realy cut the girl in half he just tricks your brain into thinking he is. When its a complete mono channel the signal is split between two channels weakening it. When you double track and pan it, you have a stronger signal on both sides. Its not true stereo its just tricks your ears into thinking it is.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Having a stronger signal on through both speakers does not make it stereo, that would simply make it louder mono. Stereo involves separate/different sounds coming out of each speaker. For example if you point a stereo pair of microphones looking down at a drum set and pan them accordingly, then that is stereo. You can hear the high hat to your right, the ride to your left, the snare and kick fairly center, the toms going from left to right. Simply making something louder out of both channels in no way makes it stereo! I'll say it again, if you have the same thing coming out of both channels then it is mono, if you have one sounds coming out of one speaker and a different sound coming out of the other then that is stereo. There is no point in taking one track and copying it.

Oh, and David Copperfeild gives your brain a reason to be tricked by pretending to cut a girl in half. Copying a track doesn't even pretend to be stereo. That would be like Copperfeild taking a girl, standing her in plain view of the audience from head to toe, and saying "I just cut her in half". The crowd would not buy it for a second, because he has done nothing.

Another way to look at it is that Copperfiield takes a girl stands her in front of the crowd, then takes another girl that looks exactly like her, and standing them side by side and say, "I have now cut this girl in half and here are the two parts". (That one wasn't as good, but you get the point)
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

lilblakdak said:
Once again, I know. Its an illusion of stereo. Its like David Copperfeild doesnt realy cut the girl in half he just tricks your brain into thinking he is. When its a complete mono channel the signal is split between two channels weakening it. When you double track and pan it, you have a stronger signal on both sides. Its not true stereo its just tricks your ears into thinking it is.

Why not use the volume knob instead? xD Doubling the mono signal (doubling the sound energy) is only going to give you a 3dB increase in the sensed loudness. It will not create any sensation of movement on the left--right axis, which is what stereo is all about.

The human ear can locate a sound source based on the time gap that results when the sound of a point source travels to your two ears that are ca. 17 cm apart from each other. The phase of the signal is slightly different between the ears. If you play two same mono signals that are in same phase in two speakers it is just as mono as the same signal played mono all the way, two speakers being the standard mostly everywhere today.

There are "faux stereo" techniques that use ie. comb filtering to divide the signal to two channels, but a good mono recording sounds way better than any artificially created stereo effect.
David Copperfield is not really a sound engineer of any kind...
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Simbe said:
Why not use the volume knob instead? xD Doubling the mono signal (doubling the sound energy) is only going to give you a 3dB increase in the sensed loudness. It will not create any sensation of movement on the left--right axis, which is what stereo is all about.

The human ear can locate a sound source based on the time gap that results when the sound of a point source travels to your two ears that are ca. 17 cm apart from each other. The phase of the signal is slightly different between the ears. If you play two same mono signals that are in same phase in two speakers it is just as mono as the same signal played mono all the way, two speakers being the standard mostly everywhere today.

There are "faux stereo" techniques that use ie. comb filtering to divide the signal to two channels, but a good mono recording sounds way better than any artificially created stereo effect.
David Copperfield is not really a sound engineer of any kind...


It's good to hear that I'm not the only one who knows what their talking about here!
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

I feel you brotha. I too record with two mics. I have a Blue Kickball a little ways in the bass drum pointing toward the shell, and a Behringer B1 condenser for an overhead. It sounds pretttttyy darn good too. I only wish I had another B1 for stereo. With flat EQ on the overhead mic, everything comes out pretty balanced. I turn the lows up on the Kickball to about 100Hz though.. I'm still experimenting with getting the 'right' kick sound I want ( i think i'll have to invest in a Danmar patch for that 'click'). Also, try some muffling techniques if you arent already doing that... some towels in the bass drum.. . stuff like that.

OH YEAH! One thing i do.. I cover the front of the bass drum with a blanket to isolate the kick from the other mic and vice versa. It may not sound like it does much.. but it's a noticeable difference. To me at least. I just started the recording thing about two months ago and I'm learning everyday! Only problem is.. my band just moved into a practice studio 30 miles away so I have no drums to play on anymore!

Time for a Gretsch Catalina Club, eh?

Edit: I paid $120 for the Blue Kickball at Guitar Center (it's the red ball mic) and the Behringer B1 goes for about $100 everywhere. After trying to get the right sound out of my kit for the first two months with 4 mics (two overhead, snare and kick) I discovered that I could use the B1 to mic the drums..... and this all happened LAST WEEK. Great sound. I love it. G'bye!
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Here's what I would do.

Place the condenser mic at ear level just by your left ear making sure you don't hit it,that way you will pick up pretty much what you hear from the snare and toms, hihat will get caught by it well and frankly yudon't need to worry about that too much, just make sure you are happy with the snare sound.

Put the SM58 either about three feet infront of the kit low down at Bass drum height, try that out first, depending on how hard you hit the kick drum, you may need to put it somewhere else to get a good sound, possible on the batter side under the snare.

I would aviod putting it in the drum as that will really limit what you get out of it, it might produce a nice kick sound but you will get nothing else and with only two mics you need to get as much out of each as possible.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

wow, thanks for the response guys, sounds like you really know alot! the reason i'm only using 2 mics is cause i got a really basic desk that can only do 2 tracks simultaneously (hey, it was £100 off a mate and im only 16). it is the fostex mr8 if your wondering.
im going to try all the different methods and if i find one i really like will post some sounds up! any other suggestions are welcome. thanks again ben
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Dannar said... "My audio engineering teacher always says "mono sucks"..."

That is not true. Some of the best older recordings have drums in mono, panned a little to one side. Listen to Ray Charles records that were recorded 30-40 years ago. They BLOW AWAY the recordings going on in todays artificial world of the "products" of the recording industry. Remember... engineering is an art... and mono is a tool of an artist.

Maybe a mic in the bass drum and one overhead may sound nice. You could play with panning techniques to get a more intereting sound.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

I should go into more detail over my "mono sucks" comment.

"Back in the day" all they had was mono. So since they could not record drums in stereo, they became good at getting a good drum sound out of mono recordings. When engineers became able to do stereo drum recordings, they did so. Hardly any stuck with mono, because if those engineers could get good mono sounds, they could get even better stereo sounds. If you compare the sounds of their mono work, to their stereo, in my opinion, the stereo work sounds much cooler. Plus, the drum sounds they were going after back then were nothing like the sounds every one is going after today. Back then most of the drum sets were jazz style drum sets, so they went for the jazz sound. As heard on many Ray Charles recordings. If your recording a traditional jazz album, you could use mono, but if your recording rock or funk, you don't want mono. You want a good stereo image. Plus no one today makes recordings that sound like the recordings of the 50's or 60's. If your goal is to recreate those recordings, then you could use mono, but it would still be hard to recreate that good of quality mono recordings. Even today most Jazz recordings have drums in stereo, and all rock or funk or anyother style use stereo too. It's a common practice for a reason, it works. If a artist today released a album where all the drums were mono, people would listen to it and go "what the hell is that!"
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

>>>>"If a artist today released a album where all the drums were mono, people would listen to it and go "what the hell is that!"


...it would be called "Rap" or "Hip-Hop". A lot of the loops and samples for that stuff is mono and, personally, I'd love to sell as many records as those guys do. No one who's buying those records seems to mind that fact that the main beats for a lot of that stuff is mono.

I think everyone has a valid point here. Is stereo better than mono? It's all relative. What's important is the feel and the song. The one thing I learned about engineering is that great engineering cannot improve a poor performance nor can it make a song better - period (and I'm not talking about Pro Tools engineering). Further, "bad" engineering won't necessarily ruin a good song or performance.

Ever hear the Van Halen story about how the engineer forgot to record one of Alex's kick drum mics for one of the songs on Van Halen 1? The only person who noticed it was Alex (I feel for you, bro, on that one), I doubt any of the millions of people that bought that record went "where's the other kick drum on this song?".

Bottom line, as long as whatever you're doing is right for the song and you're performing your best, just make sure the red light is on! If you don't record it, it won't matter if it's in mono or stereo...oh, and have fun! It's all good...
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

Dannar said:
Recording with only two mics will really make it tough to get a good sound. Especially two different type of mics.

I'll have to politely disagree strongly with this! The most important factors in the capture of a decent drum recording are the player, the room, and the kit...

The mics that the original poster has to play with are really not that inspiring, but with decent front end you could achieve excellent results!

re: techniques, a simple mono overhead and kick mic can result in a surprisingly punchy full-toned sound as long as your phase relationship between the mics is solid (tiny movements can have dramatic results, so spend some time adjusting positions) and the factors mentioned previously have been addressed! Listen carefully to what each mic is giving you and see how small changes in position affect both the soloed sound of the mic and the relationship with the other! With other mics to play with, say a C12 and either a fet 47 or R-122, I'd be delighted (and have been) to work with just two mics!

With three mics you can go for the classic Glyn Johns technique with one mic front of kick one three stick lengths above the snare and one low pointing across the floor tom three stick lengths from the centre of the snare too! If you can try this with a great kit in a great room with a great player and three U67s in great condition, you're gonna be VERY VERY happy!!! Pan the two kit mics L and R and leave the kick in the middle! Obviously thats an ideal setup so substitute away and see what happens!

The most important consideration with minimal mic techniques is to balance all the elements of the kit yourself while playing EXACTLY as you wish it to be represented on the recording!

Don't beat yerself up over mono/stereo either Dannar, theres a LOT of contemporary recordings with mono or fundamentally mono drum recordings!!!
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

This is really gonna bug some of the super production guys, but if you what down the street and asked 100 peole to describe how the drums sound on any given album, they'll say "like drums" 99% of the time. Meaning the listening audience could care less about the drum sound, they just care about the song as a whole.
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

hey, ive got some sounds im reasonably happy with but i'm getting so much bass drums through the overhead! i have a pacific cx kit so i have a 22X18 bass and then FAST size toms and a chad smith snare. it is a really loud bass drum and i was wondering if there were any tricks (blankets/mic positioning so not really tricks, more techniques) that i could use to reduce the amount of bass coming in the overhead.
thanks ben
 
Re: recording with 2 mics

If you like all the other sounds from your overhead, just throw a thick blanket over your kick. Or put a pillow inside it to tone it down a bit.
 
Microphones

Hi, I am looking into getting some recording equipment to mic up my drum kit. I am studying music technology at A level so I have some idea of what is required.

My kit is a single bass durm, 4 toms and a snare, with 6 cymbals including hats. What would be the best way to mic it up 2 on snare, 2 over heads and one on bass drum, or just one on snare 2 overheads and one bass?

Also should I buy seperate mics of a drum mic kit?

I know for the bass drum I need a special bass mic for low frequencies but for the rest of the kit would condenser mics be fine?

Lastly at college we use AKG C2000 mics which are £100 each, would these be good mics to use for overheads and on the snare drum?

Thanks

Nick
 
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