Task 4 Drums
Drums:
The drums were a little challenging to record as most of the channel wiring in the university CMT rooms were jumbled about. I eventually found which wiring was changed and adjusted it accordingly but this was annoying as it took me nearly an hour to figure this out, leaving me with less time to record. I used a total of seven microphones on the drum kit. Unfortunately the only mic available to use on the Kick Drum was an Sm58. I would have preferred to use a D112 or or a mic similar as the Sm58 picked up a little to much treble. I placed the head of the Sm58 into the sound hole which helped me capture more of the thud. This I found surprisingly effective. I have never used a Sm58 on a kick drum but it worked, eventually, to an acceptable standard. The snare drum was miked up using an Sm57. The Sm57 I like to use on a snare but the problem with this snare was that it had too much low end in it. I would have preferred to use a different snare to counteract this but unfortunately this was the best sounding snare I could find. The High-mid toms were miked using an Oktava. I only used one of the two Oktava’s available and placed it in the centre of the two toms. This was because having a mic on each resulted in too much snare coming through in the mix. Eventually I found a nice medium which accommodated both toms and didn’t result in too much snare interference. The floor tom I miked with the other Oktava microphone. This mic placement picked up a nice response from the floor tom which could be easily tweaked in the later processing stage of the mix. The Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride cymbals at uni I found have an horrible sound. This being the case I used a friends Sabian AAX cymbals and Hi-Hat as these were made from a much better alloy. I used another Sm57 on the Hi-hat as the mic has a nice presence on the higher end of its pick-up pattern. The two other microphones I used were the SE electronics. These I used as overheads. I placed the left channel over head in line with the ride cymbal and the right over head facing towards the crash cymbal.
