Miking Technique Lessons & Recording Vocals & Drums, 2013-05-01 - Posted on 2013-05-02 by Jason Arca

Today, we were recording over guide vocals the guide drum machine and replacing them with better vocal performance and real drum kit recording. The client is an artist and the songwriter/manager, both French guys living in London. Michael laid out the arrangement and created tracks with virtual instruments. The compositions to me remind me of New Wave with a cool eeriness like The Cure, but the instruments are not so electronic-sounding. Michael gives Ron, the drummer a lot of freedom to add to the drum pattern as he feels would sound great. When setting up the rhythm used as a monitor for the drummer, the click track is turned the loudest, with the drum machine also pretty loud, and lastly the bass and guide vocal soft. All the other tracks are muted. Michael likes to mic the drums as follows: kick, snare, hat, tom1, tom2, ride, and room or overhead mic. He doesn't use a stereo technique for overhead as the textbook recommends. Some instruments, like drums, and vocals, sound better mono, he says. A split pair is definitely a no-no, as it can create phase cancellations. Stereo panning is best left for creating ambience with guitars, strings, etc. The drummer is given a sheet with the number of bars of each section. Verses and chorus are V1, V2, C1, C2, etc. "Vamp" is a repeating section. Sometimes, the drummer speeds ups a little bit for a dramatic effect. The vocals can be shifted to match up.