Drum micing / mixing

Legionreturns

Just thought this might be of interest to some, but who knows! 

Wanted to mess around with drum recording and mixing, mainly to see what I can achieve using a stock mixing template. 

I've learnt that my current template is a bit over zealous on some of the compression and eq, and that I need to refine it. 

For reference; 7 mics in place are kick, tom x3, snare and two overheads. 

3 audio passes, 1st from my phone which is a Galaxy Note plus, about 4 feet away at face height. 2nd is the unprocessed sound from the mics, and finally the results after applying the template I made. 

Legionreturns

...and yes, I realise I'm not a proper drummer! You don't need to point that out! 

Stuckfast

I hate to be that person, but the unprocessed drums sound way better than the processed ones. You've got far too much EQ going on there.

Legionreturns

Stuckfast said:

I hate to be that person, but the unprocessed drums sound way better than the processed ones. You've got far too much EQ going on there.

Yes I know. The biggest problem I have is a shit, over resonant kick drum, even with damping. Trying to eq / gate that out is my problem.  

Cirrus

Context is everything - that processed sound is quite... processed. But without context, it's not really possible to tell if it's good processing or not. Other than it sounds like a lot of the mids/ tone has been sucked out, which is something I've been very guilty of before.

Legionreturns

Of course, it's worth remembering that in a full mix there's plenty of things occupying the frequencies that are EDd out, and you want to leave room for them while having the drums pop out 

Stuckfast

I don't really agree with that, especially as it concerns drums. Drums are a full frequency instrument. What allows them to fit in the mix is not removing some of those frequencies, but the fact that the sound is transient and momentary rather than continuous. Yes you often don't want them to ring on for ages after each hit, but there should be no problem with the hits themselves having a full frequency content.

What you've done there is add loads of treble and cut out all the midrange so the processed drums sound brittle and thin.

Cirrus

Legionreturns said:

Of course, it's worth remembering that in a full mix there's plenty of things occupying the frequencies that are EDd out, and you want to leave room for them while having the drums pop out 

Yes, but we're talking about a vast range of the spectrum, filled with thousands of individual harmonics.

A couple of narrow-Q cuts to get rid of a clashing snare resonance or thin out the toms where the bass guitar wants to be is one thing, suppressing everything between the fundamental and 3k is something else.

Not saying that's what you've done, but I am saying that removing that much midrange without there being any context to make sense of it makes the drums sound as @Stuckfast describes.


For full disclosure, I've made some pretty ghoulish drum mixes in my time that I am ashamed of.   

robinbowes

Legionreturns said:

Stuckfast said:

I hate to be that person, but the unprocessed drums sound way better than the processed ones. You've got far too much EQ going on there.

Yes I know. The biggest problem I have is a shit, over resonant kick drum, even with damping. Trying to eq / gate that out is my problem.  

The answer to that problem is to fix the source.

GIGO, as we used to say in the trade.

R.

poopot

Google “glyn john’s drums” thank me later.

mrkb

This is a topic I’m interested in. I did a few drum recordings yesterday and am trying to eq/mix them in reaper. Might post a clip of “as recorded” vs my initial mix and how they appear in the song. I’m not happy with the HiHat sound- might need to try moving the mic around, or just use the OH sounds. Please keep the tips coming, or point me in the right direction for good vids/websites.

Cirrus

Hi hat mics are really finickity. sometimes they aren't really needed at all, and a lot of the time they'll just be at a very low level to help focus the hi hat within the stereo field.

Musicwolf

How does the kit sound in the room?  I always think that the order of importance with a drum track is;

Good Drummer

.

.

Nice sounding kit / properly tuned

The room

.

Mics / placement

.

.

.

.

.

.

Processing

Legionreturns

Musicwolf said:

How does the kit sound in the room?  I always think that the order of importance with a drum track is;

Good Drummer

.

.

Nice sounding kit / properly tuned

The room

.

Mics / placement

.

.

.

.

.

.

Processing

The drummer is the biggest issue! 

The only drum I'm not happy with now is the kick, as mentioned above. I need a new one, or at the very least a ported reso head with the mic inside. 

The room is fine for most things considering it's a hybrid studio. 

Mics are a mixed bag but I generally don't need them much for recording, they're more for gigs when it's just kick, snare and overheads. I've experimented quite a lot with placement. I have tried using my Aston Stealth on the kick batter head, which gives me a lot more attack. 

Processing, as I said, this was a preset template, and I wanted to see how far from usable it is. The general consensus seems to be "a long bloody way!"

I'm working on getting my own preset sorted, which, as in any mixing I already do, will start with the principle of "don't apply it unless you can hear that you need to" and go from there. 

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

I hate to be that person, but the unprocessed drums sound way better than the processed ones. You've got far too much EQ going on there.

I am afraid I agree..

The drum balance is going to change totally when a drummer takes over too.
You are barely touching the snare and the hi-hat is loud relative to the rest of the kit.
I'd be slamming the bass drum and snare (rimshot!) and tip-shanking (steady...) the hats.
You won't be able to use your template at all at that point.

PolarityMan

octatonic said:

Stuckfast said:

I hate to be that person, but the unprocessed drums sound way better than the processed ones. You've got far too much EQ going on there.

You won't be able to use your template at all at that point.

Oh yeah, my template is entirely based around L1!

PolarityMan

The actual bass drum sound is the biggest problem, its most prominent in the phone mic which to me indicates that it sounded poor in the room, fixing that would go a long way.. I think..also it would make sense to me to optimise for the normal snare hits not the side sticks...is a bit weird going for that first.

Cirrus

Now to address the real elephant in the room

You mike up drums with a mic. So it's "Drum Miking". No need to thank me, just doin' my jerb.

Stuckfast

This is quite an interesting shortcut to getting a good snare sound, or at least a certain kind of good snare sound. Only works with a 10-lug snare though.

mrkb

Legionreturns said:

...and yes, I realise I'm not a proper drummer! You don't need to point that out! 

I think you did a good job of playing the beats the same for each of the three recordings

Danny1969

Musicwolf said:

How does the kit sound in the room?  I always think that the order of importance with a drum track is;

Good Drummer

.

.

Nice sounding kit / properly tuned

The room

.

Mics / placement

.

.

.

.

.

.

Processing

Yeah, after recording literally hundreds of drummers in the studio and loads of live gigs  I learnt that is the exact order of importance. 

We had the luxury of trying a lot of different techniques at 2020 as there were quite a few days then the studio wasn't booked out and we could piss around with new techniques and different mics. I spent a lot of time learning the science but it varies massively between drummer styles. 

One thing I always do though is set to a pair of overheads, kick and snare mice and listen to those making sure the snare is bang in the middle of the field and in phase with the overheads. That's a good starting point and there's a lot of mixes I've done that only really have that, not being a fan of close tom mic's (especially tom mics pointed down) .... almost never mic any cymbals except the hat and sometimes don't use that.