azulay said:
Well, I'm pretty fond with how I manage to capture drums right now.
But the one thing that doesn't fall into place is the centerpiece - snare.
Tried loads of different mics, from AKG condensers to Sennheiser 421
then coming back to the 57. Snare just sounds... well... not so good.
Doesn't sound bad... but, lacks something.
I heard the Bob Clearmountain drum samples the other day, and
well, i'm not naive, i'm sure they eq'd the shit of out the recordings,
and probably it ain't the snare track by itself, but... wow! just sounds
amazing.
Any tips? Any help?
Ok.. sorry, but decided to read the initial post after writing a rant. My bad.
I have the perfect solution to your problem. Even though you may have tried this. Here goes:
Start acoustically. Build the kit around the snare. A snare should sound good on its own. But for safe keeping, attach the snare, you find the best, to the stand. Walk around room with it and the drum throne, trying it out in different spots in your room. Set up your Kick. Set up your mics (Overheads). Adjust and tune the snare to sound at it's finest and dampen or tune the kick to work with the snare and not get in it's way or draw to much attention away from it. Unless that's what you're going for. Cool? Next add the appropriate cymbals, making sure they are not to thick or to big for recording. One by one. Barrow some from friends or buy a bunch.. maybe have the band rent them. Loud cymbals are a pain in the arse to try and deal with. To little cymbal in the mix? Snare to loud? AWESOME! Compress the hell out of it! Next add the Toms and consider a gate. Pretty simple. Then add the other drums around the snare sound. Adjusting each drum to fit. I'd even consider try different heads. Drummers will always play better, when there kit sounds good in the room. AND TUNE< TUNE< TUNE. A great drumer once told me. "You don't tune drums to themselves, you tune them to the room." Makes sense to me.
.. and last...
A key thing to remember when placing overheads. (because that's where we're getting our killer Snare sound) is ~PHASE~ Study the Glyn Johns tech. It opened my ears up to so many things, but most importantly ~PHASE~. You'll want equal distances from the snare, for each mic. I'm not going to go into detail, you can research that on your own. I'm not saying this is the best way to mic a kit, but IMHO, is a must to know. But the best way to check Phase is to hard pan the Overheads hard left and hard right, put on a set of cans, *CRANK IT*, walk out the drum kit and start subtly moving mics (were talking fractions of an inch here) until the image is centered and there are no strange phasing anomalies going on..Mark it! ( you don't want your cymbals sounding like your pumping them through a MXR Phase 90 pedal... unless that's what your going for.. ha!). Then add the other drums and close mics.. I bought one of those Auralex Producer packs. Comes with a bunch of little square pieces of foam that go right behind the mic's screen. They do a great job at isolating the close mics from cymbals and snare bleed..
Here's me yelling: "HEY!! HI-HAT!! GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SNARE MIC!!!" ha.. hope this helps.
and when all else fails.. hmmm.. I don't know. Just don't be a quiter. NObody like a Quiter.
You don't have to do this step by step.. this is just one of the easiest/fastest ways for me. Good luck!
Scott