Ronan’s Recording Show

Nice tips…Im kinda lucky to have enough mics and inputs to do what I want but so many out there only have 2 inputs.
I think it was important to note that the KSM32 is an LDC and will be better at getting that tom and snare sound than most SDC mics…alot of people associate SDC with acoustic instruments and overheads.
Ive been using a pair of AT3035 mics as overheads…I saw an online video from Gretch drums that had a decent sound only using one 4′ above the drummers head…but I may sell them both and buy another KSM32 to use on my drums and Grand piano.
I did notice that you were sitting in front of a very large organ…are you trying to compensate for something?…lol.

I think it was important to note that the KSM32 is an LDC and will be better at getting that tom and snare sound than most SDC mics…alot of people associate SDC with acoustic instruments and overheads.

I did notice that you were sitting in front of a very large organ…are you trying to compensate for something?…lol.

Thanks for the input Darrin. I really appreciate it The KSM32 is technically a medium diaphragm condenser, but your point is still spot on. The KSM 32 is my favorite overhead mic at any price point. I will be doing a whole show about it in the future. As for your last point…. I guess I will have to leave that one a mystery.

I really enjoyed this episode. I was wondering if you used an attenuator pad on the kick mic,and if so, what was the db? Thanks.

Nice Ronan!
Another 2 mic setup I’ve ran across is two Ribbons,One overhead and the other out front of the kik Starting out about 18″ and anywhere from 6″ to 18″ off the floor.I’ve used 2 Michael Joly Modified Apex 205’s and gotten a lovely old school sound. Of course checking for phase is always important!

Great series of shows!!

Richard

Hey Ronan! Thumbs up! From a drummers point of view I know what I’m looking for long before I start pulling out mikes. You are correct when you say (get it right at the source) that things have to be done (jazz sounding, rock sound…,) up front and according to your genre. Great stuff! I always come away with something here. Thanks your point is well taken.

Ronan! Awesome show again! Even though I have access to a lot of inputs, it’s great to think of creative new ways to record drums. Keep it up man!

Another 2 mic setup I’ve ran across is two Ribbons,One overhead and the other out front of the kik Starting out about 18″ and anywhere from 6″ to 18″ off the floor.I’ve used 2 Michael Joly Modified Apex 205’s and gotten a lovely old school sound. Of course checking for phase is always important!

Richard, Thanks for chiming in with this. I have done a similar thing with two condensers. A U47 out front and a KSM 32 over head. Its great for nice organic drum sounds. Tough to get modern rock/pop punch, but lots of records do not need that.

Ronan,
Not sure the downloads worked correctly…
Both versions sound “white” to me! {:-D
It’s great to see these techniques revived, and so nicely taught.
You really ended up with a good meaty snare on the analog mix too.
More proof that the free Digi plugs just do not have the horsepower or elegance of the higher end goodies that are getting closer to hardware.
Thanks again for another great show!

As a drummer I liked this one.
My first Kit was a rockstarDX! I totally recognized that kit.
One thing I did with 3 channels once back in the day…for a Metal song…Ha, Was this. Kick, Snare, Oh. Kick and Snare center, with the OH panned like 30 to a side. I cloned the snare track and drastically filtered out everything under 2K ish so it was Mainly the Hihat bleed, and Panned that out 100 Percent in the other direction. It sorta worked after I triggered the Kick.
Thank God for my 18 Input system now!

great show!!!!

Could you give everyone here a quick run down of the analog chain you used in the analog mixes. Also, what mic did you use for the snare in your second setup?

Not sure I remember exact details and I just used stuff that is normally up and patched in to know the mix out in a few minutes, but the big things I am sure about. EQing was done with the EQ on my D&R Triton console, and both tracks where compressed in parallel using, using an FMR Audio RNC and a Pete’s Place BAC 500. The Reverb was a Lexicon PCM-90. It also went through all the stuff I normally keep on my two buss (A Designs EM-PEQ and Hammer, Manley Vari Mu)

Thanks very interesting!

Hey Ronan!

Enjoyed the video – thanks. Your approach is so simple and provides a solution to a problem I’ve been having, which is how to keep the snare centered in the mix with a spaced pair of overheads panned L-R. So, I know this is slightly off-topic, but for those of us who do want to do stereo overheads…how do you keep the snare (which is not in the center of the kit) in the center?? I may also try your approach (single LDC overhead) in conjunction with a couple of stereo room mics…wonder how that would sound!

Thanks again!
Dave

Excellent video – covered a load of info in a concise and helpful way.

great episode, very useful advice!

Hey Ronan! Loved this one! One thing you mentioned early on is to make sure the drums are tuned. Is there a PROPER way to tune drums? I’ve never actually found anything on the net about proper tuning with demonstration. Most of the bands that I have seen in the last 35 years haven’t got a clue how to properly tune drums for recording. Mostly, they tune them to sound the way they want them to sound. Would it be worth having somebody, if not yourself, do a show on proper tuning?

When you mixed the tracks did you keep everything in mono in the end? Would you consider duplicating the condensor mic track and panning left and right with it?

Thanks for the comment Ivette, On the quick mix I did on these tracks, I kept them mono, but added a bit of stereo Reverb to the tracks. If you duplicate the condenser overhead and pan it left and right, the result would still just be mono unless you added some sort of delay between the two tracks.

So…a total of 13 mics is what you used for Terri Bozzio (Missing Persons)….how many would you use for say…Carl Palmer (Aja…ELP)?

I would try and get most of the sound from about 5 mics and then puts spot mics I things that might need emphasis or unique processing at mix time

Loving the show Ronan. Thanks for taking so much time to share some of your experience and love of engineering with all of us. Wishing you the best for a restful, relaxed holiday season.

Take care.

Thanks for the video Ronan

I have a few friends here in Brasil that understand english watching them too!!

love me some outboard on drums vs plugins, but without a level match, it was a sorry slap in the face to plugins. the outboard example was way louder than the others.

Shane, Thanks for your input. I agree with you 100% That is why I mentioned that the tracks were not level matched as part of the show. (the analog mix is also far more compressed) The idea of putting the quick free plug-ins mix on as part of the show was not to show how much better my analog set up is, but to show that you could get some pretty darn good sounds with just the free plug-ins that come with your DAW and a few minutes of work. – Ronan

Cool Video . Never thought of mixing the the kick and Overhead on a track and giving the snare its own track , I’ve got a project soon and they only have 2 inputs for the drums so we’ll probably do it this way .

Ronan,

I love this show the best.
This was very informative and leaves everyone with alot of homework to do.

Take care,
Nick

Hi Ronan,

Nice episode ! It’s good to see some minimal techniques being promoted, and to encourage people to go for a real drum sound even with limited inputs.

I found some great drum tuning tutorials on YouTube which I posted on my blog – some of your readers might find them useful, I hope it’s cool to put the link here ?

http://productionadvice.co.uk/drum-tuning/

Ian

Hey, everyone. I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the kind comments!! I really appreciate it. Very happy people are getting something out of the show.

you, my friend, are a god send. an analog minded engineer who wants to teach others how to make good, lasting, timeless music. what a gold mine… keep it coming!! thank you!!

Could be so kind, and give us some more details how did you used samples in that example? It seems to be quite easy when you have every drum on separate track, but in this case toms sound great and they were recorded only by one mic! It’s amazing for me

Hi Radu, Nice to see I have fans of the show in Poland. All of the drums sounds on the video were mixed in about 25 minutes total, there are a lot more cool things you can do if you have extra time, bit the way I triggered the samples was quite simple. I duplicated each of the tracks. The snare was easy, I just used drumagog, and the other track that had kick drum and overhead was quite easy as well. I just used a “high pass filter” that cut of everything above about 150hz, and triggered the kick sample off of that low thump. – Ronan

Silly question, but do you think I could mic a snare with an AT803 miniature omnidirectional condenser mic (lavalier)? I’ve got a holder that could position it above the head.

Its not a crazy idea. You just have to make sure that the mic can handle the high SPL of the snare drum, and since its omni directional it will pick up a lot of the other drums, especially high hat. The the drum plays well and balances himself it could be a cool sound.-Ronan

THANK YOU RONAN,

I love your show I tell everybody I know that would be interested. I dont have too many connections in the business so its awsome to here opinions, tips and tricks from a pro. I have watched every show and cant wait for the next one.

PS loved the packing blanket episode you saved me a bunch of time and $$ thanks..

KEVIN GRANSTROM

Will, Do not worry about your mic stand not going as high as mine. A lower overhead can be a great sound, just keep in mind that when its a little lower, small changes from left to right, or forward and back will make a bigger difference in the balance of all the drums – Ronan

Will, I used A Designs Pacifica mic pres. I use them for most things. I just used the stock converters on the digidesign 888/24 converters in that demo. I normaly track through Apogee converters which are now an AD-16X. But it was just stock digi on the demo.

Yeah Sean, A lot of people don’t realize that if you get the drums sounding decent at the source you can get some really cool sounds with one mic. Its tough to get a one room mic sound to cut through a modern style production, but if you have more space in the arrangement and do not require modern forwardness of the kick and snare, a single mic can be very very cool.

Thanks for the kind words Laurent. Nice to see fans of the show in France. The Recorderman technique seems cool, even though I have never used it myself. The thing to be careful of with that, is that overheads usually will not provide enough definition or presence in the kick drum that a lot of modern styles of production require -Ronan

Hi Keith, I use a Canon VIXIA HF200, but on many of the episodes (like this drum recording one) I am using a Rode Videomic on top of it. – Ronan

Ronan — great stuff here. I play and record in a 3 pc project where I have been using 4 mics (one bass, one snare and two overheads in stereo). Because it’s a smaller band, it’s nice to spread out the drums a bit, but now I’m also playing in a larger project with more diverse instrumentation and really contemplating the two mics or at least mixing the kit in mono for this larger band. The style of music will be much more wide open (guitar, cello and bass plus 2 vocs) so I’m thinking the stereo should be reserved for other things and keep the rhythm section tighter in the middle. Your video here was great and really made me thing on space a little more than I might have otherwise. THANKS!

There must be something wrong with me …. I liked the sound of the drums from the mic on the camera . God help me !!!!!

I just stumbled upon your show, and I think it’s great! As well as watching this video was very helpful, reading your replies to comments is also extremely helpful.

I will definatly try this out if I’m going somewhere to record a demo track to my protable recorder. I’m sure it will work alot better than using the onboard mics. But when tracking a kit with close mics and overheads do you think it would be a good idea to use these onboard mics for room? Could it help add to the mix, or just muddy it up? (Tascam DR-100)

Cheers!

Just curious about the room dimensions of our ‘live room’. In particular ceiling height. My ceiling in my space is only 8′ and I know I’m limited by that – do you think I can still get good results in there?

Doug, Don’t let 8 foot ceilings hold you back. If you got check out Episode 19 (the one about the Analogue Tube Compressor) you can download some sound samples right under the video. There are three drum sets in those samples. Every one of them was recorded in rooms with ceiling around 8 feet.

Thanks a lot for the cool vids. For the 3-mic setup what is the easiest way to deal with the OH/Kick? Do you just copy the track and cut all the lows out of one and cut all the highs from the other resulting in 3 tracks to mix? I am a relative idiot so please forgive the dumb question. See your site is great for all levels!

Hi everyone!
Thank you for your videos, Ronan!
What can you tell about my try to mix your wav sample?

Two little different versions:
1st: http://webfile.ru/4679901
2nd: http://webfile.ru/4679920

Thanks anyway!

P.S. No viruses, i promiss

Oh, i’m sorry. Just try to click the play button in the middle of the page.
Thanks a lot for trying!!!

really interesting site.. very useful.. This is another fantastic episode that I just discovered. thanks for sharing.

Great job with those videos and tips. Tanks a lot ! Keep it goin.
Tank you again ! great work !

I’ve been watching your videos to the early morning hous, and I really learned a lot of good advice as well as validated some of the techniques I’ve used to record drums with limited resources. I’ll coming back to get some 411. Thanks and great job!!!
Jon Rowell

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another wonderful episode. i love the internet. i love ronan!!!!!

I’m doing almost exactly the same thing with 2 Behringer B1 Compression mics, but i’m not getting any sound when i listen in the program.