recording live drums

I'm trying to record drums to a click and a guitar guide track and finding it really really hard to keep in time
 
no matter how loud i set the click or the guide track, i just cant hear it enough when im playing!
 
Also it doesn't sound brilliant when I play it back either but that's down to other things like the room and mic placement etc
 
Ideally i'd like to keep the acoustic kit but it causes a lot of problems. I was considering purchasing a full electronic drum kit like the roland td9 which i've used before but it costs loads
 
it all just seems so much easier to record and mix with but I dont know.....
 
any thoughts?
 
 
thanks

hey thanks for the link, looks interesting

i should've mentioned that I still want to be able to physically play a drum kit, just torn between and electronic and acoustic one

JoeyVanzetti


hey thanks for the link, looks interesting

i should've mentioned that I still want to be able to physically play a drum kit, just torn between and electronic and acoustic one

Jim designed JetCity PD2 to be the ULTIMATE sample set for playing on an electronic drum kit.

I think he accomplished his goal.

best regards,
mike

I know a number of drummers that use a cowbell sound as the click sound (I think there is one available in the audio-click mode of Sonar). It seems to cut through the mix better. Be sure to use closed-back headphones to avoid leakage into the drum mic's.

It took me a while to get a good sound with an acoustic kit. There are some playing techniques that make a difference and drum tuning, head selection, etc can make a huge difference (avoid open hihat rides at all cost). The room can make a big difference too, but close mic placement can help a bit. Mic selection is important too. The kick mic is usually a fairly specialized large dynamic. Overheads are usually condensers or ribbons. Snare and toms are somewhat varied, but a 57 is fairly common. Moon-gel or similar damping on the snare can make a difference in killing resonance at the snare (but can be eq'd out later in most cases). Sometimes fractions of an inch in mic placement can make a difference. I have often mic'd hihat, but seldom ended up using the track. I try to avoid compression during recording, but sometimes use limiting before the a/d to keep a testosterone-inspired take from causing clipping. If you don't have a kick mic, you can use a 57 (or equivalent) to get the beater slap, and use a speaker into a direct box as a mic to pick up the low end. Another trick to enhance kick is to use a spare floor tom (preferably with only one head) set a few feet out from the kick with a mic close to the head. (It picks up a nice ring for hip-hop tracks that you can mix seperately to taste).

Mixing tricks can be a help, but can't make a bad performance or recording into a gem. I've had some luck with multiband compression on kick to bring out the low end and beater click (and eliminate most of the rest). One favorite lick I've used is to copy a weak snare track to a new track and pitch it up or down about a fourth, and send both track to the drum bus. Also using a compressor (with some attack delay) to put a point on the snare and toms. Parallel (New York) compression is a fairly common trick in drum mixing (try google). A transient plug in can be useful on snare and toms as well. Toms can be enhanced with an eq to peak the fundamental and another peak on the stick hit. Watch the high end EQ for cymbals and hi hat. Pan for realistic images. I usually avoid extreme wide panning to leave room for guitars and reverb returns at the outside edges. Mic bleed isn't necessarily a problem, but I usually gate toms to keep the sympathetic ringing under control.

As much as you guys love these sample packs...and don't get me wrong, I have some of them....I just don't like to hear songs where they've been used on an entire drum kit.  MOST of the time I can tell because the dynamics and expression of the drums is so stagnant.

I'd like to encourage the OP to continue working on recording live drums.  It doesn't happen overnight...it takes a lot of practice.  Yes, it's HARDER to record your own sounds with a live player.  But it sure does feel good once you've reached a point where you no longer NEED to augument or replace your recorded sounds with sampled sounds.

Hey, I know how to record drums too!!!

:-)

There are products out there designed specifically for drummers.  Here is a headphone set designed by a drummer.  I have been using an earlier version of this product for many years and they are great.

They were originally designed specifically for the issues that drummers playing a kit encounter when practicing and in the studio (i.e., hearing the click or music over the drums).

Dave
 
http://gk-music.com/ultraphones.htm

argh sorry for the long reply, I've been without internet for a while!

anyway, I took what all you guys said into account and decided to stick at recording live drums

I started messing more with compressors, eq's etc and amazed myself at whats possible from a mixing point of view with drums

I also gave my room a bit more treatment which helped

anyway thanks again!

and just to anyone else whos considering giving up recording acoustic drums, dont give in

quantumeffect


Here is another headphone set by Vic Firth, again, designed specifically for drummers.  I have never tried them so I can't say anything good or bad about them but, I have been using Vic Firth drumsticks exclusively for mor than 20 years. 

http://www.vicfirth.com/products/headphones.html

Dave

These might have been the best $50 I ever spent towards recording live drums.  Something else to add is that it really helped me over time to practice drumming with the headphones and a metronome or click track.  After a while it becomes second nature and recording with a click is more natural.

It took me two years of trying before I started getting sounds that I was proud of, but as others have mentioned, it was so worth it.  Something that worked well for me was to work on different tones until I was satisfied.  I worked on getting the kick sound that I wanted exclusively until I was happy with it.  Then I moved on to the snare etc.  The snare for me has been by far the toughest to get right.

Good Luck!