The DijonStock Digital Home Recording Support Forum

New member, longtime user of the aw16g.
Great forum.

Question: Does anyone here hve a chart or something that could help
me carve out the proper drum frequencies to stop the muddling and
just plain confusing nature of recording a drum kit.

I have recorded before, but not a drum kit. I'm having one heck of
a time even getting good signal (dang drummers).
I suppose that once I get good EQ for each drum, I will get better
signal. Or vice versa.

Matt.

There's some general guide lines, but it's going to vary with how the set is tuned. The first rule is to have a properly tuned set and that the skins are of good quality (good skins can make even a cheap set sound good). 90% of recording drums is getting the sound right on the way in.

There are some notrious zones for the toms and kick. Look at the EQ patches offered in the G for Kick 1 and Toms 1. Look where and how much they cut with precision on the low end...those are them. That should give a starting place. I would also add a HPF on the toms, starting somewhere around 100 Hz and working it back to get rid of the fluttering wow-wow.

In general, there's a little technique you can apply. I call it the SLS technique (newbie of the month if you figure out the accronym). Set the Q really tight (10) and crank the gain all the way up. Now, slowly sweep the freqs. When it sounds really, really, and I mean really bad (it's not going to sound wonderful no matter what, but search for the spot that makes you want to puke), that's the area you want to cut.

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Honor is a debt you owe to those that see it in you.

Is is sweep, listen, sweep?

Thank you kindly for the timely response.
I'm gonna try that right now and see if I can get it right.
I really want to get some kind of skeleton for this drum kit
so that when we do the live set I'm getting all I can get from that.

This is my first go at somebody else's band and dang it, they have a drummer. He's real laid back, but at times gets pretty into it.
They want a live demo so that later, if anything is gitched, they
can blame it on that....
Right now, I just wanna do it for the experience....so I'll let ya know
how it works out.

Sorry dude. Valiant effort though. It's called the Sounds Like Shit method.

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Honor is a debt you owe to those that see it in you.

I did a 7 channel recording of my brother on a Yamaha kit a couple weeks ago. And I got a really good sound doing this:

Roll off a lot of the lower frequencies on the toms, even the floor tom. Add some mids and tops to the tom toms, not the floor tom. Roll off lower freqs of the snare and give it a nice upper mid boost. Roll off some lows on the kick (yes the kick) and give an enourmous high Q boost to the 3.5Khz area of the kick.

This is all very vague... so if you like, I can send you a backup of an empty song with those EQ's stored if you like? Or if you would prefer the numbers, I could write them down for you?

In the end I'd go with DC, sweep the range and find the rubbish, remove it... but for MY golden rule, keep removing bottom end...

Golden Rule:
Keep removing bottom end. Everywhere. Especially in the places you least expect you would have to, like Kick and Bass guitar.

There. Its official.

Art.

The kick is sounding like a big wet rag. the sound pressure is kinda there, but the overall impression is ....well.....I dont like it.

Having lots of luck with the presets and tweaking those a bit.....
So much bleed through it's hard to tell which mic is which....

I have to find out what they want to do with this....if nothing then
I'm wasting my time.....
Not gonna put too much into this one....

if you take good notes, it can be a valuable learning experience, whatever the outcome of the actual recording.

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To attain knowledge, add things every day;
To attain wisdom, remove things every day. Lao Tse.

I agree with Carey. If you think you'll want to record drums in the future, it wouldn't be a waste of time working on this regardless of what the band does with it. Think of them as lab rats.

you may not think you're learning anything - but you are.
it *will* process..........

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"Let there be bass." - Leo Fender

this is a great thread!
thank you!!

SLS, awesome.

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People lover city builder future liver bigger dreamer louder rocker greater giver looking at the bigger picture.

Well, I'm back at it (2 years later) and gonna try this one more time.
Thanks for the advice back then. LOL.
Glad I was able to re-find this.

Google is your friend.

Good luck at your new attempt - keep us posted.

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Don't judge the coffee by its cup.
The proof of the cheese is in the eating

I record acoustic drums quite often.

Best advice I can give you is two quick pointers:

1) This advice was given early in the thread but it is THE most important tip. Make sure the drums are tuned properly and sound good in the room. You can polish a turd all day long and at the end of the day it will still be sh*t. New or recent drum heads are important.

2) Check, double check and triple check for phase cancellation. Anytime you are simultaneously recording with multiple mics, you bring phase cancellation into the equation. I spend tons of time positioning (and repositioning) drum mikes to ensure everything is in phase. An inch of movement in the wrong direction can make an open sounding crackin' snare sound dull and lifeless.

Gary

To add to Gary's very good advice...........

Assuming multiple mics on the kit.

If you have access to a multiband filter or compressor you can have more control over each mic than EQ alone. Like Gary said , flip the phase switches (off headphones) while listening to your monitors. It will be a night and day difference. Use the setting that sounds the best. That goes for all the mics.

I use less mics than I used to. 2 overheads. one mic catching the snare and hat and one for the BD. Sometimes I get real adventurous and place a distant room mic to mix in later if needed. (a boundary layer mic works real well for this)

Believe it or not , any effects you add , any EQ done , dynamics , can also affect phase to a degree. Sometimes worse than others. Again , don't be afraid to flip the phase switch after these are added. ( I cheat , I have a phase correlator especially helpful with difficult phasing problems micing Hammond Leslie cabinets and wide open lid grand pianos)

Although a bit on the advanced side , there are times when a phase switch seems to make little or no difference. What's that telling you ? The phase is off by more or less than 180 degrees. (another use for the phase correlator) Hmmmm no position in between huh ? Sure there is..........advance or retard the suspected track by a few ms either way (by editing) and see if it gets better or worse. If flipping the switch starts to make a difference then quit.

OK off to bed.......buenos nachos

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THE MUSIC IS DOWN IN HERE
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Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.