Drum tracking

From the get go there was a discussion about how to approach drum tracking. Tom and I sat down and talked through multiple aesthetics that the drums could bring, how to achieve it and where would be best to go to make a start with recording them.

For the first EP it was agreed that a more dirty, grungy and lifelike approach was completely nessiscary.

Setup & location

Tom found a spot in Bristol which was usually hired by bands that needed to do a full show rehearsal before heading off on tour.

The space was large, concrete floor, high ceilings and a few large acoustic panels on each wall. Not amazing, but I thought it can work providing the microphone and kit placement is managed well.

I re-skinned the snare using an Evans heavyweight and started to walk around the room hitting the snare to see where it sounded best. I also got the guys (Tom and Finn) to shout if they heard anything change drastically for the better or worse.

Once finding the spot, the rest of the kit got its batter side heads changed while Finn got to setting up the rest.

Initially the microphones I wanted to try on toms were the Oktava m219s, however Finn was too loud and even with the pads engaged he was clipping the capsules, so unfortunately I had to swap them out for the smaller and more durable clip on sennhieser microphones

M201 was used on snare top because of its polar pattern and how nimble it is, I wish I had brought some packing / acoustic foam with me so i could better protect it from high hat bleed but alas, I forgot some.

Using the dual element kick mic was a first for me, I usually choose a D112 married with a Shure beta 91a inside a kick. What’s great is this mic houses both dynamic and condenser elements in one body so figured it should get pretty close to the same sound while taking up less space! Turns out it sounds great and picks up minimal bleed.

Overheads got the ORTF treatment because Finn chose to use a 3 cymbal setup, so I figured I could use an approach that would sound really natural and wide on headphones.

Room mics were a little more straight forward, I measured out an equilateral triangle from the snare/kick line of the kit and placed the two Oktavas on each point with a ribbon mic in the middle. The final room pair were as far back and high up as I could go.

Result;

The resulting tones were almost what im used to from a better environment, one where I can monitor in a separate room. On reflection there were a few bleed issues that I had to find work arounds for, and the second set of room mics didn’t really bring as much to the ‘picture’ as I had initially hoped.
The room had a very strong 3-4khz character, most likely from all the hard surfaces and not enough diffusion. Fortunately Fabfilter Q2 saved another life and was capable at carving out the intrusive elements.

The snare top mic had a whisper too much bleed and was a shade dark so I ended up duplicating the top mic across two tracks. One would focus on the body of the snare and the other would be hard gated and eq’d to accentuate the snap and attack of the hit. I chose to do this over sample re-enforcement because of the nature of the music and what was being played.

I did however bring in one of my ever trusty snare room samples to blend into the room mics, only because with the amount of 3-4khz I was having to cut, the initial attack note of the snare was being softened and I wanted to bring that back into the frame without over highlighting it.