Our Drum Recording Session

One lesson, we all went down to the Recording Studio in order to learn how to mic up and record a Drum Kit.
First of all, we familiarised ourselves with each of the drums we needed to mic up, they are as follows; Kick Drum, Floor Tom, Mid Tom, High Tom, Snare Drum and Hi-Hat. We then looked at the AKG Drum Microphone Set, this set contains:  1x D112, a dynamic microphone which is used to record the kick drum due to its robustness, 2xC1000S’s which are condenser microphones powered by phantom power (48v) from the mixing desk or its internal 9V battery used to record the hi-hat and snare drums and 4x C518M’s which are small condenser microphones (powered in the same way as the C1000S’s) with an adjustable screw clip which allows you to fix them to the rims of the Floor, Mid and High Toms. We then also looked at the other AKG microphones which are used as overheads in order to capture an overall sound, focusing especially on the Ride and Crash cymbals which aren’t ‘microphoned’ up otherwise.

We then proceeded to start setting up microphone stands in order to learn the layout of the microphones. I learned that it’s best to angle the C1000’s between the ‘bell’ and the ‘rim’ of the Hi-hat cymbal and the other C1000’s nearer the rim of the Snare Drum. Also, that the overheads must be positioned at an equal distance apart at the same height and that you must ensure that the stands are set up tightly, securely and correctly in order to prevent the from microphones ‘sinking’.

We then plugged the microphone’s XLR cables into the Stage Box, ensuring that we followed a certain order which we noted down. We chose to put them in the following order: Kick Drum, Snare Drum, Hi-Hat, Floor Tom, Mid Tom, High Tom, Overhead 1 (Left), Overhead 2 (Right). In the Control Room, we then set up our Pro Tools session and ensured that they were entered in the same order. On the mixing desk we then ensured that all of the channels with condenser microphones had Phantom Power switched on and then panned each drum according to where it was in the stereo field (e.g. Kick Drum in the centre, Snare Drum towards the Right, Floor Tom towards the Left). We then used the talk back we’d set up in order to communicate with a drummer in the Live Room through their headphones and asked them to play each drum separately. Whilst they were doing this, we ensured that the signal was coming through each channel properly and adjusted the gain on both the Mixing Desk and the Soundcard when we noticed any peaking.

After this was all set up, we then proceeded to learn about Grouping. First of all, we assigned each of the eight drum channels on the mixing desk to 1-2 rather than left to right. On the Patch Bay we then over-rode the channels by linking Input 1 to the Output of group 1 (17) and by linking Input 2 to the Output of group 2 (18).

This, however, doesn’t prevent the original signals of the other 6 stereo track drums from being recorded as well as all of the 8 grouped tracks, causing Phasing. Therefore, when recording other instruments, we have to over-ride these.