What beats to play for setting drum levels?

[BJH]

Question for all the sound engineers. When you need some beats on individual drums to set the levels before a gig, what do you prefer the drummer play? I always play single strokes on the drum spaced about one second apart. Is this good, or do you prefer to hear different tempos and/or a couple rolls thrown in?

[samkokajko]

When I am checking drums I usually like straight quarter notes. But hit with confidence as hard as you will hit because the first thing I'm setting is gain.

After we get all the individual drums if I'm doing a full mic check I like to have the drummer do some beats utilizing everything as much as possible to check levels.

[flanc]

 

When I am checking drums I usually like straight quarter notes. But hit with confidence as hard as you will hit because the first thing I'm setting is gain. After we get all the individual drums if I'm doing a full mic check I like to have the drummer do some beats utilizing everything as much as possible to check levels.

 

 

+1

[BJH]

Cool, thanks.

[Black Frog]

 

When I am checking drums I usually like straight quarter notes. But hit with confidence as hard as you will hit because the first thing I'm setting is gain. After we get all the individual drums if I'm doing a full mic check I like to have the drummer do some beats utilizing everything as much as possible to check levels.

 

 

Being a drummer and also running sound for other bands, one thing I have run into is when doing a kick drum check (with nice forceful hit), the engineer will put a gate on the kick and have the threshold set a bit high so that during the show some of the lighter-played kick strokes don't open the gate.... So when doing the kick drum check, you may want to throw in a few lighter hits as well.

[MXDAD]

So True. I guess it