Remember that link to John Vestman's site below? I forgot to mention he offers some very interesting advice:
P.S. For a bigger drum sound, have the drummer hit the cymbals softer...I'm trying to figure out how we're going to mix this Tyrannosaurus Mouse album. Because I don't know. I would absolutely love to break the album down to 16 tracks and premix the guitars and mult the basses and such. Yes, we have three bass tracks right now.
So how about this:
1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Toms L
4. Toms R
5. OH L
6. OH R
7. Room L
8. Room R
9. Bass
10. Rhythm Guitars L
11. Rhythm Guitars R
12. Keyboards L
13. Keyboards R
14. Vocals L/ instrumental solo L
15. Vocals R/ instrumental solo R
via
4 comments:
"I mean, when is it that the hi-hat isn't loud enough?" Amen. Whenever the live sound guy or studio engineer puts a mic on my hi-hat, I want to scream "No! Don't! The hi-hat is too loud already!" But I'm just a drummer, not a sound guy or engineer, so I keep my mouth shut.
I'd go ahead and tell him he doesn't need to mic the hi-hat. This tells him that a. you aren't a dick about insisting that every drum you play gets a microphone and b. you can actually control the dynamics of your own kit.
With rock and roll you want to put a mic on each of the toms to really get them to go POW when you hit them. But I'll tell you, I've designed two off-Broadway musicals where we gave the drummer two overheads and a kick drum mic and the drums sounded freakin' fantastic.
I do my best to not be a dick. But I don't know if I can actually control the dynamics of my own kit! I am very envious of drummers who sound good with two OH mics and a kick mic. Heck, I hear that some of those awesome Zeppelin Bonham drum tracks were done with one mic. That guy knew how to play.
Other than the hi-hat (which is virtually impossible to control) drums actually have a lot of nice dynamics to them. A well-tuned kit just sounds great on its own. I think the "one mic" thing is a myth, I feel pretty certain there was a separate kick microphone.
I bet you'd sound great with your Gretch kit in a nice room with a couple room mics and a kick mic...
The advantage with being a drummer is that you can be completely insane and people will still work with you. That's my theory about drummers. If you're not insane then you'll probably end up in a half-dozen bands and playing at SXSW...
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