10th Session - Posted on 2016-01-21 by Brian Powers

1-19-16

John loaded up Pro Tools and started going over all the tools in the editing window and when he would use them.  Next John had a drum set setup and mostly miked.  We finished miking the rest of the kit and John showed me where and at what angle to set the mikes according to the drum or cymbal.  He showed me that he had 2 mics on the kick drum.  A kick in and kick out as he referred to them.  I was surprised that the kick in was only about 4-5 inches in side the drum.  I would have expected the mic to be much closer to the beater side of the drum.  Next the kick out was place about 2 inches from the resonant head and about the same height as the kick in.  John taught me to angle the mic toward the center of the drum and not straight up and down.  This same position was for all drums including the snare.  John had a snare top and snare bottom and two toms, again both angled to the center of the drum. He showed me that if you angle the hi-hat mic away from the snare and toms you will pick-up less bleed in the recording.  John setup 2 overheads in the X/Y configuration about 3 feet above the drum set and a room mic about 10 feet away from the set.  The kick in, snare top, snare bottom, 2 toms, hi-hats and room mike went to the Focusrite MKII pre amp.  The overheads were sent to the Avalon and the room mic and kick out sent to the Neve 107DPD and the "new" Neve pre amp respectively.  I patched everything in and John played the drums while I set levels and recorded about a minute of audio.  John told me the snare bottom was too loud and the floor tom had bleed from the ride so some adjustment to the mike needed to be made.  I had a great time miking up and recording the drum set.  Definitely learned a lot and went home with a full page of notes.