here is how you record drums....

[Bill Hatcher]

simple.....

[Rick Schacter]

It works.
One thing nice about keeping it simple...no phase issues.

[Tony Prior]

while true, keep in mind many times they were recording on a 4 track console.

I would agree however that multiple mics for drums , which appears to be the rule of "law" is overkill. I don't think I ever used more than 4 and should I ever track "LIVE" drums again I will more than likely use only 2 .


I'm saving the other 22 tracks for Steel guitar .

[mtulbert]

Love your comment Tony.

You have things in the right perspective. On the History of the Eagles documentary, they talk about going to London to record with Glynis Johns the producer of Led Zepplin and the Who.

The Drums were miced in a limited fashion and when Henley asked Johns to make the bass drum louder his reply was "Kick it Harder"

Have a great weekend.

[Rick Schacter]

while true, keep in mind many times they were recording on a 4 track console.

Of course.
I said "it works".
I didn't say it's the only thing technique that works.
But if you only have two mic inputs,...heck ...don't let that stop you.
Go ahead and lay those drum tracks down. It will definitely work.

Right now, I'm experimenting with a mic on each drum as well as two overheads.
To be honest with you, I'm not so sure that my tom mic's are worth the trouble.
I've been listening to tracks from Glynn Johns (Rolling Stones, The Who, Zeppelin).

Like you said, Tony.
Four mic's are usually plenty enough to get a nice drum recording.

Rick

[ajm]

So what I take away from this is:

1) Get a good drummer.
2) Put him with a few other talented musicians.
3) Give them a few good songs to play.

After that, the rest is relatively easy.

[Rick Schacter]

So what I take away from this is:

1) Get a good drummer.
2) Put him with a few other talented musicians.
3) Give them a few good songs to play.

After that, the rest is relatively easy.

If you don't have all of the ingredients listed above, it's impossible to produce a nice recording.
(Not counting all of the crappy, sterile, programmed,use loops type of recordings that you can hear on any local Z100 station across the country).

Rick

**It also helps to have a nice sounding room.**

[Jerry Fessenden]

I'm with you Tony .... but , why only 22 tracks for steel?

[John Macy]

xxx

[werner althaus]

In the past two weeks I have recorded drums on sessions with two mics (kick and overhead), four mics (kick, snare and stereo overheads ala Glyn John's) and 14 mics (kick in, kick out, snare top, snare bottom, three toms, two overheads, one inside kit, two room,one mono crush and one high ceiling)...each situation reflected the style/artist and all were equally valuable in realizing the sonic textures required...whatever works at the end of the day

Thanks for "saving the baby" while we throw out the bath water.

[Mark van Allen]

A good sounding room, and a fine drummer… a great song even better.

I agree with John's (now invisible) comment. I have been able to get really good drum sounds even with an 8 foot ceiling with close miking and coincident or spaced pair overheads… but a higher ceiling and a nice sounding room makes the Glyn Johns technique or similar approaches much more attainable. And less phase issues to watch for. After completing and tuning my new tracking room I was thrilled to get great sounds nearly effortlessly with four mics. Happy times.

[Tony Prior]

I'm with you Tony .... but , why only 22 tracks for steel?

Jerry the 22 Steel tracks are for overdubs and punch in's.

[Godfrey Arthur]

John Bonham 3-mic style.

Some studios have good drum rooms. Good drummer is a real plus. Another approach, mic each drum, use Sound Replacer and change all the hits with pro drum samples.

[David Mitchell]

All the different mic techniques create different sounds. If you want the drums to be in your face and your head stuck in the bass drum then mics on every drum will do that but does require more skill to be done correctly to conquer bleed and phasing issues. Gates can solve a few problems. I use to have an 8 card rack of Kepex Gates in the 70's and 80's for that very thing. That was long before the DAW days. If you want a more concert sound like the listener is out in the audience then one or two mics for overheads and a mic on the kick drum is all you need. Neuman U47 FET's or similar work great in front of the set.
Remember in the 60's they had plenty of inputs even if it was outboard Ampex tube MX10 mixers. They just didn't have many recording tracks or enough if any Equalization. So they could get the drums sounding pretty good before they even went to tape. Believe it are not it was our beloved Chet Atkins that desired a punchier drum sound and requested a mic stuck up in the bass drum. I read that in an article in Recording/Engineer producer decades ago when they interviewed Chet.
The early 70's outlaw sound movement took that dead studio acoustics and close miking technique and ran with it. Still popular today. They cut extremely hot today on the new country stuff to the point it nearly sounds like a drum machine and surprise! Sometimes it is.
Nashville studio drummer Paul Leim said at a recent conference he has been hired many times just to program the drum machine because those were the sounds the producer wanted. Who better can do that than a world class drummer?
And as mentioned earlier drum replacement software is an indispensable tool in a modern tracking studio. A real life saver sometimes. When the musicians are on a jet going back home you can't call them back in the next day. It might be a year before you can get their services again.

[David Mitchell]

This is how many mics I use on the lead vocalist. You can only imagine how many I have on drums. Lol!



You can see how much gear I used in the 80's to get a decent mix. Most of it for drums. Pictured here I have (6)UREI 1176 limiters and (2)LA-2A's. Shortly after this picture was made I acquired (3) more original LA-2A's. We had a room full of EMT plates and tons of Neumann, Telefunken, Sony, AKG mics I use to use Sony C-500 Biscuit mics for overheards. Telefunken U47 and Neumann M-49 tube mics for vocals. Sennheiser 421's, 441's 451's, RE-20'S on drums. You really needed it all to get a decent sound back then. Typical of most any professional studio back then. Consumers didn't have computers. I've recorded quite a few country artist in my 50 year recording career and lots of famous steel guitar players. I guess you all like steel guitars since this is a steel forum so I'll throw in a few pics of some country people you might know. Pictured - Ray Price, Johnny Bush, Tommy Allsup, Walter Haynes. Not pictured Junior Knight, Gary Carpenter, Tom Morell, Buddy Emmons, Randy Reinhard and the list goes on. Got tons of cool pics but that's enough for now. I really wonder who even cares anymore. I'm the dark haired kid with the moustache and sometimes a beard.

[David Mitchell]

A few more pics I have on this hard drive. The last picture is a gem. I'm holding a tea glass while in Seivervile, Tn. at Walter Haynes house while he's introducing to the "Steel Guitar Forum". He said "Look here David. You can find out anything you want to know about a steel guitar here." Walter played steel and fiddle in my band for the last 10 years of his life. My best friend. We ran around together to music stores, night clubs were others were playing. Sure miss that guy. A very deserving member of the Steel Hall of Fame. I bought his LeGrande 111 from his wife Cindy when he passed. Cool thing about Walter he knew all the old Nashville bunch. You could ask him a question about anybody and he might say "I don't know. Let's just call them. He dials and hands the phone to me and it's Merle Haggard, John Huey or whoever on the other end. I'm retired now but lots of good memories.

[John Booth]

Can you hear me now?

[Godfrey Arthur]

This is how many mics I use on the lead vocalist. You can only imagine how many I have on drums. Lol!

Geeze David what do you call that? A Blumlein octopus? Was that phase-switch till it sounds right or you had a system written down?

[David Mitchell]

We were doing a microphone shootout of mics less than $1,000.00
I recorded each on a separate track all at once in Nuendo software. We would listen to the playback simultaneously parallel to each other one at a time unmuting each one. You can't get an accurate picture if the exact same program material is not present running side by side. Most people waste their time doing mic shootouts because they are not hearing the exact same program when they put a new mic up. You could get 2-3 working correctly at once by reversing the phase but that was not the purpose. Phasing is not a problem till you play more than one mic back at once. You can bring each mic in and out of phase on playback with the phase switch in your software.
That was the easiest way I could think to do it without changing out mics all night long and wasting my friends time.
The guy behind the mic is an old friend of mine and a Nashville engineer named Steve Wright that was curious too about these mics so he brought a few too to check out. None sound just like his Neumann M49 but a couple were close and maybe even better for some applications because they were brighter. Had a little 10k bump that helped. That was just the first batch of mics we put up. That's all I could get up that was equally spaced 6-8" from his mouth.

[Bill Terry]

So much cool stuff (and folks) in those photos!! Awesome David.

[David Mitchell]

The CAD Equitek 300 was a nice mic. Best mic I ever heard for bass. Makes upright basses sound like the voice of God. The APEX 460 was a very nice mic even stock in anybody's collection. The modified version Avantone got popular with Taylor Swift. Very C-12'ish. The MXL 2003 is a great mike for everything. Sounds like a U87 without the honk.

[David Mitchell]

Thanks Bill! You are welcome. I might start another post of photos if you folks are interested. Many times people came and went and no one ever thought about a picture and I regret that. Many are not with us anymore.

[Brett Lanier]

Thanks for sharing David. Really cool stuff.

A friend of mine recently came back from a party/release at Daniel Lanois' house in California where he met and chatted with Bob Ohlsson (from Motown). It was cool to hear some of the details of how they did stuff over there. For instance, they used km84's on everything, and no compressors. They only later switched to km86's because people were walking off with the km84's. Also, no vocals were ever close mic'd, 3 to 5 feet back... And I'm sure most of you know about their cool 5 channel Altec DI / monitoring rig. Just goes to show there are a lot of ways to do things.

[David Mitchell]

Yes Brett. That is correct. The km84 was the only mic back then that would get that snare sound. Shure dynamic mics just wouldn't do it. You're welcome friend. I started recording people in 1967 but I got to hang out with the older guys in studios and learned a lot from them. They were really good at tracking back then. Wasn't any fix it in the mix.

[Godfrey Arthur]

The MXL 2003 is a great mike for everything. Sounds like a U87 without the honk.

Thought I recognized the MXL in the photo. Surprisingly the 603s that were giveaways with a purchase of its larger diaphragm brother has become a go-to in live drum overheads and Leslie speaker micing.

Novel way on the mic shootout.