How to record drums/techniques (drum recording)

The Drum is one of the most complicated instruments to be recorded, getting a great drum recording results not only from the quality of the drummer and engineer, but also affected the quality of the tools used (drums, mic, cables, etc.) and position the microphone technique. In this tutorial, we will discuss the basics of recording the drums in the studio.

Equipment
Drum Set Microphone Pre amps and other recording equipment

Tunning
To get a good drum recording results, you need to tune of the drum is concerned. Tune the drum affects audio quality, and if it's a good already then tune the editing and mixing will be easier.

Kick, Snare, Tom and the table generally has 2 skins (up & underside)
1. the Batter head skin (top): effect on "attack" and initial pitch
2. The Resonant head skin (bottom): effect on "overall pitch" and sustain.

Each drum kit (Kick, Snare, and Toms) has a size of & material of different material, and that means each size & material has a resonant tone sound different. There are several Snare which has resonant sound with a wide, meaning badwidth Snare can be ditune from low to high pitch tone and still produce a Tone that is perfect. Preferably tunnning Snare according the basic tone of the songs, and tunning of tom and the table follows the intervalnya tone.

Recording A Kick
Bass guitar and kick drum is what keeps the flow of the song, and the Kick drum is the heart of the rhythm section of your song. To record a kick, you can use microphone such as the Sennheiser E602, SM57, D112, Neumann KM184 RDA or R92 (ribbon microphone) so it's up to the tastes and the budget that you have to buy a microphone. Start placing the microphone in the kick drum and listen. How is sound produced? If the boomy (too low and unclear), place the microphone closer to the beater for sound clarity, if it sounds produced are too tight, then sliding back up to get sound as desired. Do experiments to test the mic position, and there is no right or wrong way to do it.

Tips:
Use 2 microphones (in &). Microphone placed inside to get the "attack" of the batter well. The Microphone was placed outside to get sound sub low.But for the use of 2 microphone note also about the Phase (the correlation between these two microphone). When getting a position felt good (In-PHASE), trying to do check PHASE, by means of reversing the phase of one of the microphone. If his voice is so strange/weak/low his ilang (Out-of-Phase), the mean mic position before his behind phase is correct.

Recording The Snare
Get a good snare drum sound is very easy if the voice is indeed nice snare, tune, according to the character of the song and played by drummers. For the record, you can use the Snare microphone Shure Beta 57A, Josephson C42, Heil PR20, BeyerDynamic M201, and others. You can use the 2 microphone for recording the snare, 1 are placed above and below the 1 again.

Tips:
3. use the mic (2 above and 1 below). For 1 mic over to get the "attack" & "snappy" and 1 mic again to get the "Body". Both the mic we tie with duct tape with the same position and is placed under the hihat with 45derajat slope overlooking the Center SNARE (opposite of hi-hat) to minimize leakage/spil of the hi-hat.As for the bottom snare you can use a dynamic microphone for sound rattle recorded not too sharp and more natural than using a condenser microphone. And don't forget the reverse phase to snare bottom because the direction opposite to the microphones to capture him on top.

Recording Toms
In most drum kits, you will find a wide number of sets of tom, all of different tonal range, usually a drummer would have a high tonal, midle of tom, and tom lowh. Sometimes you will find a more diverse drummer utilizes some of tom's all tuned differently. But in the studio recording is usually enough to use 2 tom and 1 floor only. Microphone that is used is not much different with the snare microphone.

Tips:
You can also use the 2 microphone for 1 tom, but also already cukupPosisikan 1 microphone microphone 45 degrees leading to the middle of the skin

Recording Hi-Hat Ride &
You may not put a microphone on the Hi-Hat or the Ride, and voice recorded through overhead. But we recommend using chanel herself or fixed record it on an individual basis for Hi-Hat and Ride (with separate overhead), it will also simplify the process of mixing. The first thing to record hi-hat hi-hat was the election itself, the hi-hat is very vulnerable her voice recorded sounds cheap and very sharp-voiced as cans. Use the hi-hat and percymbalan are nice, thick character and not too sharp.

Tips:
Use the microphone to his transient ribbon can be maintained properly.Position the microphone approximately 20 cm above the hi-hat. The goal is to reduce the leakage of spil/snare that is hindered by the hi-hat.Height of the microphone was set up so that the overall sound of the hi-hat dapet recorded properly.

Recording Overhead
Mic positioning for overhead is the most important thing to get a great sound overhead, in addition it will also be very influential to the overall sound of drums. The main purpose of the Overhead? This is to take the entire sound piece instruments (but more focuses on the cymbals) and to unite all other sound so that the mic's individual everything sounds as 1 unit. You can use the AEA R84 microphone, RDA, Oktava MC012 C414, Marshal MXL series and so on.

Tips:
Initial placement starts with the following basic techniques? 3-to-1 Rule, namely the basic positions of? the placement where the distance between the 2 microphone mic 1 mic 2 with 3 x shall be from the distance between one of the mic to the instrument (drums). This Formula was created to avoid the problem of Phase/comb filter.Pan microphone 1 full right and mic 2 full left (dead Left and Dead Right) Check Phase reverse phase, by means of one of the mic. If sounds are heard to be heavy to left/right (out of phase), then it means the previous position is correct.Rooms/room, which will either acostic very influential on tracks overhead.After the steps above drum recording, start to record. You'll usually need the effect Gate and Compressor for editing after tracking is complete.

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