Members Stewman_86 Posted August 27, 2003 Members Share Posted August 27, 2003 I'm a complete newbie to recording. My uncle bought a boss 8 track digital recorder. He's doin a project and wanted me to do some guitar and drums for it. The guitar went completly smothly. The drums however, were havin a little trouble. we have 4 drum mics (yes, propar drum mics) set up through a mixer. Everything is fine except for the god damn bass drum. We can't get it to sound right. It's too nasal. We tried backing down the treble and mids, and still, no luck. any help would be appreciated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members ApocalypseGuitar Posted August 27, 2003 Members Share Posted August 27, 2003 Originally posted by Stewman_86 We can't get it to sound right. It's too nasal. We tried backing down the treble and mids, and still, no luck. any help would be appreciated What kind of mic do you have on the kick drum? How far away do you have it from the head? i have always put the mic about 3" away from the drum and it gets a good sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted August 27, 2003 CMS Author Share Posted August 27, 2003 It's not enough to have a drum mic. Is the mic actually a kick drum mic? If not, the response curve usually won't match the kick, and there's not enough headroom on many mics to handle the extremes of a bass drum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Stewman_86 Posted August 27, 2003 Author Members Share Posted August 27, 2003 well, all of the mics are borrowed. but the mic i have on the kick drum says "Kick/Tom" i have the mic inside the bass drum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Old Steve Posted August 27, 2003 Members Share Posted August 27, 2003 You might also check the recording forum on this question if you haven't. Other than that, here are some basic things to consider: 1.) the drum itself. Is the drum well tuned and maintained, and does it sound good on its own? Take a look at the heads, if they're all beat to hell, it might be a sign that the drummer doesn't give a rat's @55 about his kit. As they say, garbage in, garbage out....you can't polish a turd....etc. 2.) Next stop, the mic. If it says "kick/tom" on it, at least you're in the right zone. The problem is, there are plenty of crappy drum mics being manufactured these days (i.e. Nady, etc.). While you might be able to get away with some of these cheap mics in a live situation, their shortcomings become much more obvious under the microscope of recording. 3.) Assuming #1 and #2 aren't the problem, it's time to play with mic positioning. This is where you really need to experiment. Sound can change significantly depending on where you put the mic. Start with it a couple of inches away from the impact point of the beater inside the head, and then start testing it in different positions within the drum. If none of these things fix the problem, it might be something in your recording gear...how it's set up, eq'ed, etc. There are tons of articles on how to eq drums out there, so do a google search on "drum recording" and that might help. Finally, remember to try and keep things as simple as possible. Recording drums is very difficult and you don't want to make it harder by using too many mics or trying to do too much. Bands like Led Zeppelin got amazing drum sounds using as few as 3 mics when they recorded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted August 27, 2003 CMS Author Share Posted August 27, 2003 Originally posted by Stewman_86 well, all of the mics are borrowed. but the mic i have on the kick drum says "Kick/Tom" i have the mic inside the bass drum Is that like stamped on the mic, or just written on a piece of tape stuck to it? I'm kinda harping on this because your description (nasally) makes me think it's a tom mic or just a gen purp instrument mic. Old Steve's got the right idea too, about making sure the drum's tuned and actually sounds good on its own. If the head's tuned too low it gets floppy and won't sound good mic'd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Stewman_86 Posted August 28, 2003 Author Members Share Posted August 28, 2003 well, we've ironed out most of the problems through placement of the mic. we put the mic outside of the bass drum after and it sounded better. as for the points you made, i know how the drums are maintained, since there my own drums. The batter head is an evans hydrolic, and i'ts tuned well. sounds good un-miced. and the mic is actually a bass drum mic. the brand is audio-technics. we got the sound pretty good now. not bad at all actually. but thanks for the pointers. and your right, drums are extremely hard to record Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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