Recording - February 2011 - 57

minimize phase problems. Make sure the room mics and the overheads are not panned opposite to each other (DOH!). Sometimes you don’t need to mike the hi-hat if enough hi-hat sound gets into the snare mic and the overhead mics, but if you do mike it, try to aim the mic away from the snare or place it so that the hi-hat is between the mic and the snare. Point the mic at a spot halfway between the center and the edge of the upper cymbal. Choose a cardioid condenser mic for this.You can do a lot with eq to make a hi-hat sound good. Roll off some bottom end and find a fun frequency to boost. Mike the toms the same way that you mic the snare, only with more angle. The trick is to point the mics at the center of the heads without getting in the drummer’s way. That’s easier to do on the floor toms than the upper toms. You can use dynamic or condenser mics on the toms, but the most important thing is to balance them out so that they sound like four notes of the same instrument instead of four different sounding drums. You can use eq, but even better is proper drum tuning, damping, mic placement, etc. I usually print toms as a stereo pair to save tracks, but that’s just me. Are we there yet? Once everything is set up, have the drummer play the whole kit while you adjust levels and balances. Does the kick sound good with the snare? Can you hear all the cymbals well? Is there too much hi-hat? Are the toms panned too wide? Are the room mics too far away? Does it all sum to mono and still sound good? You better hope so. It should be illegal for someone to stream a crappy mono .mp3 of your tune on the Internet, but alas, it is not.

Put away that computer, it’s time to record the real thing
By Jon Bare

Back to bass-ics Now, how do the drums sound with the bass guitar? It is far preferable to record bass and drums together than to add either one later via overdub. Musicians will tell you that bass and drums need to lock together, and they can do this better if they can hear each other while they play. That’s fairly obvious. But there’s another reason to record them together. The bass guitar and the kick drum occupy the same bottom end of the eq spectrum. It’s easy to build up too much energy down there and destroy your mix. You want to be able to hear each one clearly without them interfering with one another. Changes that you make to the eq of one of them will affect how you eq the other. For example, if you boost 60 Hz and cut 100 Hz on the kick drum, try doing the opposite to the bass guitar. Or if you find some pleasing low frequency to boost on the bass, like 250 Hz, make sure you are not boosting 250 Hz on the kick as well. What if both tracks sound good with the same frequencies boosted? Mother told you there’d be days like this. I’m not your mother but I’m sure she would suggest something like changing the tuning on the kick drum or tweaking the eq on the bass amp. You are miking the bass amp and going direct, aren’t you? Geez, Mom... I get a lot of CDs in the mail. Who cares if your real drums sound great or your sampled drum tracks sound lame? I do. Jon Bare (bare@recordingmag.com) cares. Check out the drums on his music video Cryin’ Time at www.youtube.com/jonbare.
RECORDING FEBRUARY 2011

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Recording - February 2011

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