Week 10 - AA1

This week’s exercise was to record drums which compared to others is a total pain in where the sun never shines. Since the instrument has several parts and depending on the music, the importance of each part’s sound differs, there are many ways in which drums can be recorded. However, the two main categories of setting the microphones are “minimal” and (I think) “not-minimal!”

There are few points that are to be noted; the tuning of the drum heads, the comfort of the player, the positions of different parts, etc play a huge role in the final result. Personally, as a sort-of funk drummer, I DO like a nasty ring for the snare and toms. (According to Steve this is not shared within all sound engineers and producers.)I did two different sessions of recording. (Because I am the only drummer in the batch and I had to play as well as record!)
The first one was with Edward Kelly.
I used a Shure 52A beta for the kick (bass) drum, a Shure 56A beta for the snare, 2 Neumann KM84 microphones for the over heads (which were panned to left and right) and 2 AKG U87 condensers in front of the drum set so-called Middle-Sides (MS) audio capturers.
The protools session is as shown below:The final MP3 result is here as well: I used a 7-channel equaliser and a compressor for my bass drum track, a one-channel EQ and the same compressor (with different parameter settings) for my snare, a 4-channel EQ and a compressor for each of my overheads, one-channel EQs for my MS mics and finally a 7-channel EQ and a compressor for my master drum sound.
This was an experience of a minimal microphone setting. I purposely did not use any noise gate since firstly minimal setting is not my priority and secondly I intended to use the original reverb of the recording space (which again is not my first choice)

Second recording of mine had more microphones and was done with the help of Bradley Leffer and Darren Slynn.As it is quite obvious in the protools picture, I again used a 52A for the kick, a Shure 57 for the snare, a Neumann KM84 just for the Hi-Hat, a Shure 52A beta for the floor tom, two Sennheiser MD 421s for tom-toms, two NT5s for the overheads, and again two AKG U87s for the MS.
One of the main differences of this experience of mine with the first one was the fact that I used a noise gate as well as the compressor and the equaliser for the master track of the session. The final result was closer to my personal “taste” of a drum sound; pretty funky,.. and.. What a good drummer!

References:
- Knave, Bryan: ‘Capturing the kit’, Electronic Musician (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://emusician.com/mag/emusic_capturing_kit/)
- Steven Fieldhouse 'Audio Arts I' Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide, South Australia, 15/05/2007.
- Shambro, Joe: ‘How to record the perfect kick drum sound’, Home Recording – About.com (Accessed [20.05.2007]), (http://homerecording.about.com/od/recordingtutorials/ht/perfectkick.htm)