Recording my Acoustic Drum Kit. Where to start?

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 5:10 pm

Got a pic of the kit in your recording space?

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:50 pm

ashtonron wrote:To do this will set you back $$ though so it is worth reading ....

http://www.phobospeepl.dk/documents/shitty1.pdf
http://www.phobospeepl.dk/documents/shitty2.pdf

and just keep it low-fi with a cheap dynamic mic hanging from the ceiling. The main thing as always is to listen carefully...

Thanks for the tips.

Those articles are a great read. No doubt controversial though. I couldn't help but think of band I coached last year, two teenage bro's and their cousin who played the heaviest math rock. They literally bought a $9 omni directional lapel mic, set up in a factory warehouse, DL'd a demo DAW and spent 2 days recording 5 songs. They just experimented with the mic placement and the volume of the guitar and bass amps. It was just plain rough. However, they sent a copy to one of our national music mags and got an awesome 4 out of 5 star review because of the 'flavour' and originality of the tunes.

The drum kit in particular was a real trashy entry level POS, but they got the job done, a great review and a live gig on a radio station. It was "..all so refreshing..."

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:55 pm

Moody wrote:Got a pic of the kit in your recording space?

I will try and replace the pic on the first page of the thread with one of the kit in the place we use it and try and show some of the room. Warning... my space is very messy and very unprofessional (and I wonder why my kids never tidy their rooms

)

channelite · Post by **channelite** » Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:16 am

Has anyone tried recording drums with a motu 8pre? I was thinking about getting one of them soon.

I've gotten some really good drum recordings with a Rode NTK mic and Shure 52 beta in the kick. I'm mostly making loops, however..

Tone Deft · Post by **Tone Deft** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:39 am

found an article on the topic.
http://www.recordingeq.com/EQ/req0301/feature.html

(take KK's advice though.)

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:59 am

Ahhh, very much appreciated. Helps me understand some peoples choices of kit and why.

Tone Deft wrote:...take KK's advice though...

He had me at....."I'll rip your throat out"

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 2:26 pm

Unless you have a decent accoustic space for the job - give up and get a good electronic kit

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 5:16 pm

Khazul wrote:Unless you have a decent accoustic space for the job - give up and get a good electronic kit

Could someone comment on what makes the acoustic space decent for the job?

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 6:10 pm

gjm wrote:
Khazul wrote:Unless you have a decent accoustic space for the job - give up and get a good electronic kit
Could someone comment on what makes the acoustic space decent for the job?

The simplest way to interpret that is it sounds nice when picked up as ambience in whatever mic recording you are doing - ie it sounds good - fine - if it sounds disturbing in anyway - then it aint fine - quite simple really

Overhead mics, or even better more distance ambience mics are a good way to figure out what your room actually sounds like - ideally get a mate to random beat the crap out of your drums will you wonder around the room with a mic wearing a pair of cans to find out where it sounds best

Kind of problems:
Flutter echos - very rapid echoing of transients that take a while to decay
Effectively echo that are fast enough to make a tone all of their own and fine some resonant mode of the room.
'Boxy' ambience - tend to have a pronounced mid range boost to it, tends to decay to one of the above problems as they are often evident too.
Several resonances in certain frequency bands - can be anything from your usual bass mode monitoring issues right up thorugh the frequency range - with accoustic recording can make certain frequencies really ring or simple sound really harsh.

In the case of a drum kit - you get the worst of everything - snares for eg have a strong transient that will aggravate flutter enchoes and ringing - broad spectrum sound from the snares tends to catch every resonance mode in the room, which in turn can actually make the other drums resonate - end result boxy nasty indistinct sounds, and overhead micing is a completely waste of time. Close micing works better just because your closer to the source relative to reflected sound.

You may find it really hard to tune lower toms and kick due to room resonance (modes) close to the frequencies you want to tune to. Those modes will keep making the drum vibrate off tune in bad cases.

Fixing these kind of problem isd just like fixing any other accoustic space for eg for studio mix monitoring, the only difference is if the room is of a useful size (ie > 5mx5mx3m or so) then you may actually want to not over treat it and keep some of the natural ambience.

For a tiny room - well you may as well give up and treat the whole thing (ie allmost turn it into a vocal booth) and try to keep the frequency response balanced, and reflection well absorbed and/or well dispersed.

In the end - I thought sod it and went down the roland v-drum route - TD12 kit - I didnt really want to turn my living room into a padded cell - no matter how appropriate that might have been to some

knotkranky · Post by **knotkranky** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 7:58 pm

gjm wrote:
Khazul wrote:Unless you have a decent accoustic space for the job - give up and get a good electronic kit
Could someone comment on what makes the acoustic space decent for the job?

Ok, well what is the job?

If it's Beyonce then Khazul is correct.

If it's Chemical Bros, get busy with what you've got.

Listen to this 2min sample > http://cjdevillar.com/2008/07/08/tracy- ... tudio-mix/ This was done in my buddy's tiny living-room apt with cheap gear and native app software. No treatments either. The only treatment would have been the plants, couch and the catbox.

The diff is the drummer is a monster. When you have that, fidelity is less of an issue.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 9:07 pm

knotkranky wrote:Ok, well what is the job?

Just a middle age hack with a teenage son who likes to play drums. A hobbyist with a tight budget, who gave up long ago any notion of being musically talented enough to make money. Its all purely escapism.

knotkranky wrote:If it's Beyonce then Khazul is correct. If it's Chemical Bros, get busy with what you've got.

Simple drum, bass, guitar, piano. Realistically just beginner stuff, 3-5 chords, 3min long, cookie cutter chops and bollocks. Simple drums as in snare, kick, HH, 1x cymbal.

knotkranky wrote:Listen to this 2min sample > http://cjdevillar.com/2008/07/08/tracy- ... tudio-mix/ This was done in my buddy's tiny living-room apt with cheap gear and native app software. No treatments either. The only treatment would have been the plants, couch and the catbox.

To me that was simply outstanding!

My room is 3m or 12ft x 4.5m or 15ft x 2.1m or 7ft.
Carpet on the floor, with 50% of the walls covered in dimple foam.
It has an office desk and a piano and a couple of shelves

knotkranky wrote:The diff is the drummer is a monster. When you have that, fidelity is less of an issue.

Oh, for some talent!! My kit is not the greatest either.

My current thought is that buying some mic's, cables, stands etc will be cheaper than a decent electronic kit.
Plus, if I can identify mic's I can use also for vocals and acoustic guitar (Body, neck, room) then I kill two birds with one stone.