Tips for Recording Live Drums

This week, I researched more about drum recording techniques as well as recording live guitar in the the studio in preparation for my next project. I will be recording a jam session with some of my friends that have decided to help me out by coming into the studio to record some drums and guitar. I also have a Trimester 5 student, Carlo Gucciardo (blog site: https://gucciproductions.wixsite.com/website), who has experience, recording, mixing and mastering live performances in the studio and has agreed to help me with these aspects as well as learning about his workflow and from his experiences recording artist.

Firstly, I decided to research some techniques that are commonly used by audio engineers in the industry to record drums. In a three-part video article on the pro audio files, I observed each technique before going into my session to record drums. Part 1 discusses overhead stereo microphone techniques like ORTF, X-Y and spaced pairs. Carlo and I decided to use the spaced pair technique was this gives a lot of stereo spread and was exactly what I wanted for the track.

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Next I looked into close miking starting with the kick drum. Just explains techniques using a kick in mic which can be directly facing the beater or off to the side of the beater. For our drum kit, we didn’t have a hole so we decided to place a D112 on the edge of the kick as well as a 52A for the middle of the kick drum to capture the low frequencies. For this track I wanted to get a fat and tight kick sound with less beater sound, which was achieve by using this technique. In the video, Justin shows techniques for miking the snare, one where the mic is pointing to the centre of the snare and one facing the edge, which gave the snare more or a clean crack which is what I wanted to go for. Carlo suggested some microphones to use which he has used in the past and that I’ve heard and liked so I decided to go with them.

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For the room mics, Carlo suggested using the mid-side technique which is one of his favourite techniques. I listened to a session where he used this technique and heard how noticeably larger the drums felt after blending in the mid-side room mics. To properly hear this technique, you have to separate the mid channels within Pro Tools by aux channels and flipping the phase of one side.

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An article on uaudio.com goes in-depth on the mid-side technique, talking about the history, math and advantages of this technique (http://www.uaudio.com/blog/mid-side-mic-recording/).

resources:

Uaudiocom. (2017). Uaudiocom. Retrieved 28 April, 2017, from http://www.uaudio.com/blog/mid-side-mic-recording/

Theproaudiofilescom. (2017). The Pro Audio Files. Retrieved 28 April, 2017, from https://theproaudiofiles.com/video/recording-drums-part-i-overhead-mic-placements-compared/

Theproaudiofilescom. (2017). The Pro Audio Files. Retrieved 28 April, 2017, from https://theproaudiofiles.com/video/recording-drums-part-ii-close-mic-techniques/

Theproaudiofilescom. (2017). The Pro Audio Files. Retrieved 28 April, 2017, from https://theproaudiofiles.com/video/recording-drums-part-iii-placing-room-mics/