[playingdead]

Thanks for the input on those rehearsal recordings, Brad ... now I'm working on the real thing from Saturday.

Looking for input ...

http://www.playingdead.net/esaumix1.mp3

This is all just pretty much straight stuff, using a little high pass on a few things (kick, snare, overheads, rhythm guitar, keys, bass cabinet mic), and a little high EQ boost on the vocal mics. No compression anywhere. A little reverb and a tiny short stereo delay on the vocals.

(Jim's vocal was one click off center pan, I just realized. Oops. I probably should pan the snares more center, too, although they are different sounding and I kind of like the spread.)

It proved to be a challenging night, in some respects; the individual tom mixes that were routed to a 2-channel submixer did not record (I know why now, dammit), so drums are just miked kicks and snares, and overhead pairs on each. Also, the soundguy ran the overall output to the Mac too low, so we're not getting near the fidelity and crispness we should have on the individual tracks (compared to the rehearsal where I ran everything hot). Live and learn.

On the other hand, we got some nice comments on how the system sounded. Rather than use the club's mountain of rack effects and 36-channel board, we just parked our 16-channel right on top of their board and plugged right into that, then into their monitors and power amps. Our soundguy used pretty much no effects at all, since it was his first stab at mixing on this desk. Everything seemed really clean.

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

Cool Vic,

that mix is really getting there. Like you said, the vocal could be moved back to the middle. I'm just hearing little things like maybe the bass guitar could be a bit fuller in the sub end, bobby guitar could be louder, and maybe kicks and snares could pop just a bit louder too. The stereo imaging and tones are sounding really good.

I don't know how many mic's you have on the kits, but have you tried Healy's hat miking technique? I can't tell if you're doing it or not, but it sounds like maybe not. If you want to, try placing the hat mic's very close (maybe 3 or 4" away) to the edge of the hats exactly pointed at the edge and with the mic parallel to the floor. You must put a windscreen over the mic because the wind escaping from the closing hats will pop the mic badly. I think the idea is that plenty of hat bleeds into the snare mic, but his hat-edge tone nicely augments that bled sound to complete the image of the overall hat sound. It gives that very tight and crisp, wispy hi-hat sound you associate with a good late era Dead mix.

All in all, it's really impressive sounding. So exactly what am I hearing for your guitar tone here. At times it's uncanny. Especially when you spank the low notes.

Brad

[playingdead]

Thanks so much, Brad ... just these few exchanges from you is teaching me more about mixing than I could learn in years.

Those comments you made about watching Healy really opened my eyes ... or my ears. No crazy EQ, or parametric EQ, no compression, no effects ... just the high pass filters to clean up the mud. What a difference it makes.

That's my backup Strat with the Super II's and CB1 buffer straight into the AxeFX, then straight into the board. No other effects or processing. I'm using a cabinet emulation that I made myself of my JBL K110s. I think I have a way to go getting it perfect, but I'm constantly working on it.

We are limited, somewhat, since the Presonus board at the moment will just let us record a total of 16 mono tracks and one stereo pair. So, with vocals taking three, the bass two (direct and miked), keys one and guitars two, that leaves eight channels for the two drum kits. That leaves eight more mono inputs, plus we have a little four-channel outboard mixer we can plug into the 17-18 stereo track. So, 12 mics available for drums.

We were thinking kick and snare, plus two pairs of overheads, and two additional tom mics on each kit. (Both drummers have three mounted toms and floor tom, so I was thinking to put one mic between tom 1 and 2, the second between tom 3 and the floor tom.

So, for each kit: Kick, snare, overhead right, overhead left, tom 1-2 and tom 3-4.

Maybe we should mike a high hat on one side and put a single overhead in the center on each kit instead. Or we might get enough high hat between the snare mic and the right overhead.

Opinions definitely welcome!

[strumminsix]

We are limited, somewhat, since the Presonus board at the moment will just let us record a total of 16 mono tracks and one stereo pair. So, with vocals taking three, the bass two (direct and miked), keys one and guitars two, that leaves eight channels for the two drum kits. That leaves eight more mono inputs, plus we have a little four-channel outboard mixer we can plug into the 17-18 stereo track. So, 12 mics available for drums.

We were thinking kick and snare, plus two pairs of overheads, and two additional tom mics on each kit. (Both drummers have three mounted toms and floor tom, so I was thinking to put one mic between tom 1 and 2, the second between tom 3 and the floor tom.

Assuming you have a Billy & a Mickey??

I'd go nuts on the Billy with 7 mics
1 kick
2 snare
3 high-hat
4 rack toms (may need to experiment with mics and placement to get both)
5 floor tom
6 overhead 1
7 overhead 2

Leave channel 8 for the mini mixer:
1 kick
2 snare / high-hat (may need to experiment with mics and placement to get both)
3 rack toms (may need to experiment with mics and placement to get both)
4 Overhead

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

I like it Strumminsix.

I always dug Healy's tom pair miking with one mic between the two drums. Something about the Sennheiser 421 pointed between the drums would have kept the bright stick attack off axis from the center of the mic's pattern. I'm sure there was something to that in how it would have tamed the crisp stick attack and brought out more drum warmth and fullness. I've had good luck with that miking technique.


Brad

[playingdead]

Well ...

First off, if Mickey's more active on the toms and so forth, wouldn't you use more mics on his kit?

Second off, it would probably cause a sh-tstorm if one drummer's kit was fully miked and other wasn't. I mean, these are drummers, man. (As a former drummer, I can say that.) The non-Mickey guy is already kinda touchy about the Mickey guy playing too much; the Mickey guy tends to play more because the Billy guy hardly plays at all because he's worried about the Mickey guy. And so it goes. But, I digress.

Besides, it's hard to mix the 2-track input in with the rest of the live thing on the fly, there are no individual meters on that little board, etc. And, you wouldn't be able to pan the kit off a mono input.

My thought would be:

1 kick right
2 snare right
3 tom 1-2
4 tom 3-4
5 kick left
6 snare right
7 tom 1-2
8 tom 3-4

sub 1 overhead right
sub 2 overhead 2 right
sub 3 overhead left
sub 4 overhead 2 left

Since the four overheads are the same mics, and would be positioned in similar spots, it should be easy to balance the four of them into a stereo mix panned hard right and left, then added to the mains as needed to bring out the cymbals and high hats.

Alternatively, the overheads could go on the big board and the tom mics could be submixed. But I think the attack on the toms if more useful on the PA than the overheads since the snare mic will pick up a certain amount of high hat anyway.

The question would be where to put the second tom mic to catch the floor tom and the third rack tom.

[strumminsix]

Simple logic: a drum set not well mic'd sounds funky in the mix.

Say the drummer does a roll from their snare to high tom to mid tom to floor tom and the levels to the board do not match what is actual it sounds funky.

Conversely, a percussionist, has a bit more forgiveness for levels since they are the secondary percussion instrument and if one of their levels isn't perfect it could sound "dynamic"!

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

Mixer input economy is a bitch sometimes. I feel pretty strongly about having the hat mic's for the Dead sound. Sometimes you can re-locate a snare mic to grab a bit more hat blended with the snare, but I don't love that approach. Then the overhead thing is another issue. I see the Dead's overhead miking not so much as an "overhead" image of the kit, but instead they were more like cymbal zone mic's. They were hi-passed very high to keep any drum fatness out of them, and were relatively close to the cymbals on each side of the kit. So in a way you could call them cymbal mic's instead of overheads since that's the perspective those mic's saw.

I wouldn't hesitate to let one tom mic grab a pair of toms, and if the tom 3 and floor are close enough to eachother, I'd do it there too.

Panning-wise, I vaguely recall that the Dead drum panning worked like this, and I could be wrong. Snares both fairly centered, maybe Bill a hair left of center, and Mick a hair right. Hats hard panned. Kicks hard panned. Bill's highest tom near center, and as the toms go lower, the pan out to the left with his floor pretty hard left. Mickey's highest tom near center, and as the toms go lower they pan out right with his floor pretty hard right. Bill's left cymbal mic (from the audience view) is hard left, and his right cymbal mic is near center. Mickey's left cymbal mic (aud view) is near center and his right cymbal mic is hard right.

It's kind of an unrealistic stereo lay of the drums, but the effect is really wide and powerful, helps keep Bill and Mickey distinctly left and right, and as the tom fills go from high to low, the image goes from center to wide and big. The nearly centered snares keep it all glued together on the backbeat. It's Healy's monster in that way. I could be wrong on a couple of those pannings, but I recall that's the basic deal.

To me, Billy's kick, snare, and hat are the most critical elements, and with your band politics, maybe you could compromise on "Bill's" toms and overheads a bit and give some of those resources over to the Mickey guy's toms and cymbals if scarcity rules.

Brad

[SarnoMusicSolutions]

Listening to some '89, and the snares sound fairly wide, not as wide as the kicks, but noticeably wide.

Brad

[Capt Rosebuddy]

This is turning into a good one, here is my two cents I played drums in a few bands over about a 10 year span and just getting good sound at a club was always a hassle, most sound guys could care less about what I thought or how I wanted the kit miked, let alone how the overall mix sounded. Anyway I digress, this is the 6/30/85. It's a matrix sbd from Merriweather Post Pavilion. A classic show and I'm sure everybody has listened to it, and if not, well dig in. So in addition to all of that its a pretty heavy drum show: Keep on Growing, Samson, The Other One, and a pretty hot Drums/Space.


http://www.archive.org/details/gd1985-0 ... sbeok.shnf

Panning-wise, I vaguely recall that the Dead drum panning worked like this, and I could be wrong. Snares both fairly centered, maybe Bill a hair left of center, and Mick a hair right. Hats hard panned. Kicks hard panned. Bill's highest tom near center, and as the toms go lower, the pan out to the left with his floor pretty hard left. Mickey's highest tom near center, and as the toms go lower they pan out right with his floor pretty hard right. Bill's left cymbal mic (from the audience view) is hard left, and his right cymbal mic is near center. Mickey's left cymbal mic (aud view) is near center and his right cymbal mic is hard right.

To my amateur ears Brad's pretty much spot on. Put on some headphones and listen to Drums basically as described above. so you know, do what he said

[RiverRat]

Mixer input economy is a bitch sometimes. I feel pretty strongly about having the hat mic's for the Dead sound. Sometimes you can re-locate a snare mic to grab a bit more hat blended with the snare, but I don't love that approach. Then the overhead thing is another issue. I see the Dead's overhead miking not so much as an "overhead" image of the kit, but instead they were more like cymbal zone mic's. They were hi-passed very high to keep any drum fatness out of them, and were relatively close to the cymbals on each side of the kit. So in a way you could call them cymbal mic's instead of overheads since that's the perspective those mic's saw.

+1 on this... put 2 overheads up X/Y right in between the kits and roll all the lows off them. Occasionally, I will put the overheads over each kit but angle them towards the opposing kit.

add Kicks, Snares, 1 mid to and 1 low tom per kit... that's 10 channels of percussion right there! so you may want to scale back and just use a single tom mic