My favorite way to record drums is a pair of great cardiods overhead in ORTF and a spot mic on kick and snare

If you have the mic's, I'd suggest adding a room mic.

From a mixing point of view, the overheads (mono or stereo) are the sound of the kit.

The spot mic's add the punch and whack.

And the room mic adds the space.

If you have some buddies who have mic's you can borrow, try and recruit at least one other person that can move them around as you "tune" your positioning. After a couple of takes, switch who does the monitoring and who does the moving. Just put the takes on different tracks for now and label them well (you can learn about doing single track takes and punch ins latter).

Then mix them without any fx and see how the different setups work together.

 

Never let "limits" stop you. They are great for getting the creative juices flowing! The old ,.. mother of invention thing.

You have to realize that grawk has a pretty minimalist approach to recording, he probably meant the overheads for both kit sound and ambience.  (Feel free to correct me, though, we've talked about recording but not specifically that.)  It's useful for those of us on a budget, and/or with access to only a few microphones.

 

Chris -- that sucks, I hate blowing a day like that.

I think a good pair of cards as overhead can get a good sense of space.  (By good, I'm talking AKG 414, schoeps CMC4s, Neumann TLM170s, etc).  I'd really have to like the room to add more than that.  That said, there are a lot of great rooms out there.

Great point Dan! I'm sure you have waaay more practical experience tracking drums than me.

I think we can all agree that getting good drum tracks takes practice and patience.

And while we'd all love to jump in there and make professional sounding recordings right off the bat, it isn't likely.

On the plus side, I always learn a lot more from bad sounding results than from good ones (the good ones just feel a shit load better!).

 

Another word of advice for acidbasement;

 

Recording is much more of a left brain activity than playing an instrument. So when you sit down to play, do your best to put recording levels, microphones  and such out of your head. You might try playing a few bars to get focused before the real stuff. You can always cut that crap out later.

Good tips, thanks guys.  I'll share some of the sounds around if I can get a project sounding good this summer/fall.

Got up early, changed my camera batteries, and got my lenses ready for a horse "gymkhana" event ...only to find out it was cancelled.  It's tentatively on for tomorrow, but I'm not sure I want to get up early again tomorrow for "tentatively."  

That's a bummer. I'd love to shoot some gymkhana stuff.

 

**BRENT**

Picked up a new member of the family. Currently named Maddy but that will probably change.

Serious and fierce looking. Interesting.

Actually, she's a chubby timid 5 year old.

Must be new home for cats day. My daughter got a 7 week old this am. Looks remarkably similar to Maddy. Call name Pandora for now.

And he's in a box.  Do you enjoy living a cliche', cat?    PS  Congrats to both of youse.

 

I've been leaving my IP cam on to monitor the front door, but in my heart, I've been kind of hoping to get a shot of Bobby -- I finally did, lollers:

And we have settled on a name. For us, what else could it be but Gumballhead?

 

 

She's a bad cat. 

Congrat Mike and Debbie. An awesome name!

Gumby for short?  's'awesome.

She's gone from hiding under the bed to actively coming to us to be petted and scratched. I believe we have a winner here. And yes, Gumby is pretty killer.

^Full of win!!!!!

Gumballhead rules! And I hate cats.

She's gone from hiding under the bed to actively coming to us to be petted and scratched. I believe we have a winner here. And yes, Gumby is pretty killer.

Told you she looked fierce hahaha

She's gone from hiding under the bed to actively coming to us to be petted and scratched. I believe we have a winner here. And yes, Gumby is pretty killer.

Wow, that was quick.  Profit!

Gumby ... I like it.  She'll have you trained in no time, Mike.  

Yep Gene, I've been owned by cats before.

Congrat on the new family members guys!

 

Gumby is just what you and Debbie need Mike!

Yep Gene, I've been owned by cats before.

 

Perfectly stated!  Glad Gumball/Cumby has felt comfortable enough to take over.

Second first day of med school. After spending 3 days in the hospital this seems ironic. But exciting.