NIOA VS-880 TIP 900-0001:

Acoustic drum recording advice

You can get an excellent result recording to 4 tracks -what we did was:

Put an SM-57 over the snare - pointed at an angle down at the top skin, a couple of inches away.

Another SM-57 went in front of the bass drum, pointed at the hole in the front skin (you may want to angle it away from where the beater hits the other side skin).

Then I used two SM-58's pointed down from quite a high height over the rest of the kit.

All these four mics went into my Mackie 1202 mixer using XLR leads and then to the VS-880 four inputs using jack leads.

If you have better mic's then you might use them.

Now get levels on each mic at the mixer - until they just light the red clip led at their loudest.

Now get levels for each input on the VS-880 too.

Other tips: when mixing, we ran each track through the effects and applied some of the default patches that came with the V2 upgrade. Try them out. So we used compression and eq on the bass drum and bounced to another track, thus freeing the effects for the snare and so on. Then finally we mixed the four tracks to a stereo pair.

N.B. When mixing drums in the final mix, we have found that not having them spread too far apart in the stereo spectrum really makes them punch through well and yet leaves a lot of room in the mix for everything else (in our case 2 x electric guitar, 1 x acoustic, 2 x vocal, 1 x bass). If you have the rhythm section (drums and bass) as almost a mono 'unit' in the centre of the stereo spectrum you really do get a good sound (we think). Perhaps a bit retro sounding too.

Many people like to compress the f**k out of their drums, all I can say is try it - experiment with this.

Also when mixing the bass, I think it was Bill Bromfield who said: cut approx. 3 dB at 180 Hz (well actually 200 Hz if you are using the VS eq as it won't do 180) to clean up muddiness, boost 1 or 2 db at 1 KHz to cut through, and what I do is boost maybe 1 db at about 90 Hz too.

What we also did when recording and which you, Wess, can't do without a DAT, is to stick a further stereo condenser mic up in front and above the kit (like where the SM58's I mentioned earlier were), and then had the SM58's over the toms instead. We then recorded to DAT at the same time as the four tracks to the VS and dumped back to the VS later.

Don't worry about this though, the four mic technique is great and in fact U2 use maybe three or four sometimes (apparently, according to the English Sound On Sound magazine interview with Flood or whoever). Apparently they sometimes put two SM58's at about drummer ear level behind the drummer, pointed at the kit or at the underside of cymbals, etc. I can't quite remember the details just now. Obviously experimentation is the key I guess. Also I heard that the chap who did 'Are you gonna go my way', etc. (sorry can't remember his now right now), really went for a retro sound when he was recording and used three mics for most of the drum recording.

One thing you might find is that you have too much hi-hat sometimes and you have less control over the volume of it with less mics on the kit and less tracks recorded, therefore mic placement is the key - angle the snare mic away from the hi-hat, etc.

James Traxler

jtraxy@classic.msn.com

7 Oct 1997

1997/12


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