What The Pros Know About Drum Recording

continuing in my series of recording technique videos this is from my pro drum recording techniques video one thing concerning this is that people talked about in the original video about the overhead mics the type of overhead mics now any overhead mics can work any stereo pair can be condensers small diaphragms these happen to be large diaphragm tube condensers but you can really use anything and the mic placements will be roughly about the same so here it is on the overheads we have u47s as a spaced pair they're pretty much equally distant in height from the snare drum the snare drum is close to being in the center of the image but not exactly it's pretty much like it actually looks behind the drum kit on the kick drum the outer kick drum mic is a wonder u-47 fat mic and then the inside pointing slightly at an angle to the head is a electro voice re20 on the tops we have a single sennheiser md 421 place just a couple inches above each of the toms that's the rat tom let me come around to the floor tom as you can see they're just placed a couple inches above on the snare i'm using two transformerless sm57s they've been modified i got them at zen pro audio by my good friend warren dent i like transformerless 57s because they have a little bit more bottom end this is really subtle stuff that people like me notice but most people probably wouldn't notice so you can use a regular 57. anyway so the distance i'm going to go to this video here distance is about three finger widths away from the snare on the top and the same thing with the bottom mic is about the same distance away from the bottom head of the snare you want to have the mics the same distance away and you want to flip the polarity on one or the other mic depending on what they sound like in the overheads before we go any further i want to talk about the phase relationships between the microphones because you have microphones placed at different distances from the drums and you have all these open microphones the time delay for example from the snare to the overheads is different than the time delay of the snare to the kick drum because you're going to get some bleed in these microphones the microphone in front of the kick is not only going to pick up that but it's going to pick up the toms it's going to pick up the snare so all these relationships need to be balanced let's head over the white board for a really quick discussion on what phase is to begin we need to actually look at the components of a sound wave so i drew out a sine wave here amplitude is how far above or below the center line is that's x-axis which is time the peak of the sound wave above the x-axis is called the crest and the lowest point is called the trough okay makes sense okay so the amplitude is the distance above or below the center line and the frequency is the number of cycles per second now to go one cycle here for example from here to here that's that that is wavelength it really can be anywhere that is the wave length but you can measure it only in there we go or you can go from here to here that is one complete cycle through the waveform where it goes above it below it and back to the x-axis again the most important thing you need to know about phase is when you have a particular source like a kick drum bass drum that has two mics on it or a snare drum or a tom that those mics are in phase with each other which usually involves flipping the polarity on one of the mics and then the phase relationship between those mics and the overheads here's a little clip from a video i did about two years ago on phase i do a quick demonstration of what close miced in and out of phase drums sound like let's check it out okay i want to hear the snare now now i'm going to flip the phase on the snare bottom okay again it's very obvious when the snare is out of phase it sounds incredibly thin next let's go into pro tools and see what the waveforms look like when it's in phase versus out of phase okay here's the snare top and this is the snare bottom see how they're perfectly in phase the crests are happening right at the same time you know this is once again this is time time delayed a little bit because you have the width of the snare or the depth however you want to think of it so it's going to be a few you know it's going to be a few samples behind it here if i had to look at it it's 12 samples behind that's how long it takes for that for it to get from one mic to the next so if i move to my out of phase sample you're going to notice once again that they are perfectly out of phase here you have a crest there you have a trough there this waveform actually goes down as a trough first because it's moving away from the microphone okay and the air is moving towards the microphone there that is an out-of-phase snare let me talk about the mic pres that we're using for the drums we're using all these neve style mic pres these are all bae two of these are 1066s two or 1073s two or ten 32s which is a 1073 with an expanded mid range that bae makes and i also have these neve 1081s down here the only other extra mic pre is a is an electrodyne 501 that i'm using for the hi-hat now i'm using the onboard eqs here except for the kick out i'll talk about that in a second so in the kick in the only thing that's being taken out on the eq is some 360 hertz that takes out the boxiness the kick out is being routed over here to this 560 api uh graphic eq and i'm dumping out 500 and 250 hertz to once again take out the boxiness of it it's just gonna give it a tighter sound and take out some of the muddiness uh the snare top is going through a neve 1066 snare bottom is going through the 1073. on the on the snare top i'm adding some 7k which gives me the sound of the snare wires adding a little bit of 220 to give it a little bit of bottom end on the snare top snare bottom the polarity is reversed so it sounds like it's in phase with each other the overheads which have the u47s are going through these uh 1032s and then the toms are going through the neve 1081s they have a little bit of eq on them taking out a little bit of mid-range but we'll talk about those when we get to them next we're going to have jack play a couple different beats now what i've done is i've balanced all the mics into a mix that sounds good to me so i've taken it there's no eq there is no compression nothing on the drums this is the straight drum sound with the eqs that i just talked about the couple little things that i did single mic toms double mic snare double mic kick let's check it out [Music] all right let me play that same take now i've got no effects on anything here there's no nothing on the sends there's no eq this is just the balance that i came up with i'm gonna isolate the individual instruments and show you what they look like and what they sound like soloed here we go [Music] let's look at the kick drum i'm going to zoom in as you can see what the phase looks like see how the two humps are in phase with each other here they go up here they go down here this one's a little bit behind now a lot of people will drag these things over to make them in phase like this don't do that you don't need to do that that's close enough there if it sounds good it is good next i'm going to have jack play a mid tempo groove let's check it out [Music] let's check that groove out in pro tools [Music] [Music] [Music] they kick out really makes that kick drum sound huge and puffy [Music] next we're gonna do a third groove at a faster tempo let's check it out [Music] let's check that take out in pro tools [Music] you guys know from watching my videos i like all different biking techniques i just did a video on the glen john's four mic or three mic technique this is more of a modern drum recording approach what we've been doing in this video now many times you have the bass drum and snare drum double mic'd i like to have on the snare drum many times to have two mics on the top of the snare one mic in the bottom i guess triple mite i'll have a 57 along with a small diaphragm condenser mic here's a mic clip that actually holds the two mics the sm57 and the akg 451 as you can see the capsules are right next to each other so the phase will be dead on another thing i like to do is to double mic the toms let me show you that on the top of the tom i have an akg 414 facing the center of the drum and then on the bottom of the tom is a sennheiser md 421 about the same distance away same thing on the floor tom so on the top of the floor tom i have the akg 414 and on the bottom way down here i have the sennheiser 421 let's check that out [Music] let's check that take out in pro tools i'll solo the top and bottom mics on the tom so you can actually hear what they sound like isolated [Music] let's just take a look at those toms by themselves the top and bottom let's look at the rack here play this solo it here's with the top when i add the bottom let me play the bottom by itself then together if i zoom in you can see that they're perfectly in phase with each other you see here perfectly lined up i mean that perfectly i could move it but you don't want to do that it's always going to be delayed a little bit right just it's time traveling here let me loop a single hit and i'll turn the rack bottom on and off here we go [Music] way bigger with that bottom end just sounds much fuller with no eq or anything let's do the floor time here first of all let's look at the floor tom zoom in once again oops so here we go let's look here you can see they're perfectly in phase with each other let's listen what that sounds like here's the floor tom by itself [Music] it sounds good by itself here it is with the floor bottom here's the floor bottom by itself see how much tone there is listen to the single hit let me loop it so you can hear your with and without [Music] when i add that bottom mic in yeah it does get louder but it gets fatter you can hear the entire roundness of the drum it sounds like the drum like you're hearing both sides because you are that's all for now don't forget to subscribe ring the bell and leave a comment check out my new quick lessons pro guitar course that just came out also the biato book if you want to learn about music theory that's how you do it and check out my beato ear training course at beautiful.com and don't forget if you want to support the channel even more think about becoming a member of the biato club thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 115,430

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, music, music production, studio recording, record production, drum recording setup, drum recording techniques, pro secrets, great drum sounds, bob clearmountain, brendan obrien mixing, rock drums, 3 mic recording technique, metal drum sounds, recording studio, drum set, drum machine, home recording studio, drum pad, mic placement drums, how to mic a drum kit, drums, glyn johns drum mic technique, audio engineer, how to record drums

Id: n5p_WuRLmFc

Length: 14min 37sec (877 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021