Week 18 - Posted on 2013-10-20 by Jeremy Duplisea

Week 18:  Miking a drum kit.   Tara and I reviewed the questions in the recording connection workbook.  After this we began the miking process.   Another student with the recording connection came in to play the drums, so I could record them.

I used an Apex 325 to mic the kick drum.  For the snare I use sm57 on the top and sm 58 on the bottom.  For the toms, I used Apex 326/ and apex 190 for the left and right over heads.  After all the mics were set up, I connected all the cables to the pre amp and set up the template in pro tools.  I then got Cole to play the drums adjusting the levels so I didn't peak out.  After this we did four takes.  First two takes were Nirvana songs, the next two takes were off the top jazzy feel drum beats.

After the recording was finished, I broke the room down and put all items used back in there home.

This completed week 18.  I have posted pics of the drum miking process. 

Things to remember.

When recording the human voice the producer should be aware of the following traps.  1 excessive dynamic range 2 sibilance 3 excessive bass boost due to proximity effect. 

Recording direct produces a more clean and natural sound of the guitar or bass.

The most common drum miking techinque is to mic the kick, snare, hi hat, toms, and overhead.  It should be noted however that all instruments that are struck in a recorded should have there own mic.  For example if there is a cow bell being used it should be miked seperatly from all the other instruments.