Recording Drums in a Basement

[TannisRoot]

Recording drums in a less than ideal situation: basement with minimal mics - what would you recommend?

Ceiling is about 7 feet high with those panels you'd find in an office, size is about 30x20 or so, stairwell divides the room a bit off center. Walls have that 70s wood vaneer and floors are carpeted. Some sofas at our disposal to reposition. There's a window and a few shitty doors.

Going for a vibey 60s or 70s sound like EW's Witchcult Today or UA's Bloodlust. Thinking mono drums with a minimal setup. 3 or 4 mics max. Maybe a KSM-141 as a mono overhead.

Have a budget of $1K for mics. Have some 57s to start.

How fucked are we? Lol

[Submarine]

Glyn Johns method which is on half of your favorite records.
http://therecordingrevolution.com/2011/01/10/the-glyn-johns-drum-recording-method/

If you have nasty reverberant reflections or standing waves in the room you are going to have to treat it otherwise no mic, preamp, technique is going to help. 

[nyarlathotep]

That actually doesn't sound too bad to me. I assume by 'office' panels you mean an acoustical drop ceiling, which is actually very good at trapping noise and preventing reflections, hence its use in offices.

You'll want to get moving blankets or something similar and hang them on the walls - don't completely cover it, leave a few spots open, but get like 50-75% coverage.

You could also move the couches close to the drumset to serve as baffles - kind of depends on how things are sounding.

[TannisRoot]

Yep. Acoustic drop ceiling.

Definitely want to try Glyn Johns or a variation thereof (recorder man).

[Submarine]

+1 on the moving blankets and a little room verb is generally a good thing.

A little trick for figuring out where exactly to place drum kit:  take your floor tom (make sure its tuned well) and place it in different parts of the room. Hit the tom and listen to when it sounds like the room is reinforcing it rather than working against it ( I know that is a bit abstract - but trust your ears).  once you find that position, build your drum kit around that. 

We've gone over mics before and the usual suspects for kick mics will work.
The D6 might sound a bit more modern (clicky) for what you are going for but it will still work.
The Senn 602 is my personal favorite.
Shure Beta 52 is a good workhorse.
D112 will be a bit more vintage but might require a bit of extra eq to get the desired result.
SM57 is reliable almost anywhere.

[Corey Y]

+1 on the Glyn Johns drum mic method (or some variation) and the moving blankets. I used to record in a big warehouse and would drape moving blankets over these rolling racks we had and move them around to baffle the sound and get a nice mix between live and dead to the room sound. I'd suggest adding a room mic, close to the floor if you want less cymbals and high end in it, closer to cymbal height or above if you want less kick and more splash to the sound. If you can't really afford to do that, either financially, resource or practically, you can always go back and run a convolution reverb on the drum bus in mixing to cheat a room sound. It works, though you get some nice unique vibe to moving a mic around the room until you get just the right sound. If the ceiling is pretty low and reflective you can always tack up a light blanket or something to cut some of harsh reflections down too. You don't want to go too dead though generally.

In any case, for best results change the drum heads, tune everything up correctly, move the hi-hat over a little farther from the snare and put the cymbals up a little higher than normal and make sure the drum throne isn't super low. All those things have had a bigger impact on recording drums for me over the years than small mic tweaks. Just keep testing out the tones until it sounds good and you're pretty golden there.

[Danny G]

My technique on getting a full drum sound with only two tracks:

Track 1: mixer with kick mic, snare mic and over head.

Tweak them one at a time, then get a good over all mix.

Track 2: room mic 2-3 feet off the ground, pointed at kick drum and about 6 feet away.

Pan the tracks so it sounds equal (track 1 at 10 or 11 o clock, track 2 around 3:30 or 4 o clock)

Not great but works surprisingly well in a decent sounding room


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[spookstrickland]

A couple Beyer m160s will sound super nice and should be close to budget for used.