Limiting Bass Leakage / Improving Separation

[Drone]

Let me start this by clarifying this is for personal usage only, I'm not running a studio for others, and I'm not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars on acoustic panels.

I've gotten great drum sounds using the GJ technique, but this requires me to record instruments separately. My 'rig / sound' for guitar/bass involves folded horn cabinets and lots of noise.

Conversely this spurs the drummer and myself onto greater heights, such that we find whilst our 'proper' recordings sound good in terms of sounds, our 'live' recordings sound better in terms of energy and emotion and they sort of gel better.

Given we're in an unfinished basement, with concrete floors and no ceiling (rafters only) but most of the wall is broken up with stuff, what would be a good compromise in terms of mic / speaker positioning? We've got 8 channels to play with, I normally use 4 on the drums, two mics on the guitar/bass amps and two DI lines from guitar/bass.

Would I benefit from putting a small 'wall' around the bass drum to keep other sounds out the kick mic? Anything else I can do to keep some separation, whilst maintaining eye and audio contact?

[JWL]

First thing I suggest is to use the null points of the mics to your advantage, by pointing the null points toward the unwanted instruments. I find figure 8 mics great for this. Getting leakage to a minimum and the proximity effect dialed in can make for really cool recordings.

From there, yes a Gobo will help a lot. If you don't want to use a real acoustic panel then do the best you can. The more mass it has the better, and making it absorptive on the sides (like with thick blankets) the better. You don't need to block eye contact, just the path from the amps/speakers to the drum microphones. If the gobo is too small then low frequencies will diffract around it, so make it as big as you can.

Of course, to preserve eye contact, commercial gobos are available with glass tops, as shown here:

[Drone]

Well I've moved the cabs to the wrong side of the kit, pointing away, towards some furniture, but even at low volumes the bass seems to be everywhere. The drum mics are going to pick it up.

Normally once we've done drums, I pull the kick mic and put it about 3 feet back from the cabs, blend that, the overhead mic on the drums and the DI signals.

I could throw something over the cabs and mic, but then I wouldn't get the interaction with the strings.

[kslight]

You might just pull your amp volumes down for the "live in the room" take and use your DI takes to reamp back into your amps at your preferred volume?maybe even record a pass of the ambient drum mics during the reamp period as well if you have extra recording tracks to spare.

[Drone]

Yes, but I'll miss the string interaction from the amp, if I could contain the sound, but still get the physical interaction with the guitar, or maybe I need some kind of transducer on the guitar to simulate / stimulate. The speakers kind of act like a giant ebow.

Maybe I should just say screw it, and hope everything goes good in one take, no edits.

[kslight]

Then just embrace the bleed, don't fight it. Or use a better room.

[Drone]

I have two spaces, but only one is useable in the winter months. My other space is fairly small but has high ceiling, and it yields some good drums sounds too.

After a hell of a lot of moving stuff around, I got the drum kit up against one wall, and the cabs pulled into an almost alcove like area behind the furnace, so they are at 90 degrees to the kit shielded by the furnace, and this seems to have helped, I moved a sofa over beside the furnace to block the floor area, and I think I'll get some blankets and hang one behind the sofa, to fully wall that area, and drape another round the desk to shield the bottom area of that.

At low-ish volume, the drum mics shouldn't pick up too much, and I can always gate them in the box.

Plus I seem to have made more space for myself, probably a combination of tidying and pushing crap further up against the walls further. Thanks to the new 11Paranoias album for making the job seem far more pleasant, I was careful and only had to turn off the sounds for a couple of minutes whilst I rerouted some power

[JWL]

Sounds like you have a vibe going on in the room with the sound.... I love that, often times you can start to hear what sound like overtones that no one is playing. Some well placed room mics will probably be useful.

[drumsound]

Yes, but I'll miss the string interaction from the amp, if I could contain the sound, but still get the physical interaction with the guitar, or maybe I need some kind of transducer on the guitar to simulate / stimulate. The speakers kind of act like a giant ebow.

Maybe I should just say screw it, and hope everything goes good in one take, no edits.

There are 2 things that come to mind based on this.

1) If you can't be in a separate room with your and not the drummer, you're just gonna have to deal with the bleed and make it part of the sound.

2) Edits will need to be old school, cutting the WHOLE BAND as if you were cutting tape. Edits like that, often (to me) sound more natural than micro editing everything many people do.

I have two spaces, but only one is useable in the winter months. My other space is fairly small but has high ceiling, and it yields some good drums sounds too.

After a hell of a lot of moving stuff around, I got the drum kit up against one wall, and the cabs pulled into an almost alcove like area behind the furnace, so they are at 90 degrees to the kit shielded by the furnace, and this seems to have helped, I moved a sofa over beside the furnace to block the floor area, and I think I'll get some blankets and hang one behind the sofa, to fully wall that area, and drape another round the desk to shield the bottom area of that.

At low-ish volume, the drum mics shouldn't pick up too much, and I can always gate them in the box.

Plus I seem to have made more space for myself, probably a combination of tidying and pushing crap further up against the walls further. Thanks to the new 11Paranoias album for making the job seem far more pleasant, I was careful and only had to turn off the sounds for a couple of minutes whilst I rerouted some power

Add a Figure 8 mic on the bass with the drums in the null.

[Drone]

I don't have a fig 8 mic, is it makeable like the omni trick, or is there a reasonably priced one out there?

I should add, my problem is more keeping the bass/guitar out the drum mics than the other way around.

[JWL]

There are some inexpensive ribbons out there, the vast majority of which are fig-8. I love ribbons as overheads too, and you can use the null trick for that.

[Drone]

Doesn't the null imply there's some place where you can't hear the instrument your trying to null? If it's pretty omnipresent, does the use of a fig 8 become moot? Just because I don't have a fig 8, but if it was going to benefit me, I'd go find one, but if it's not I'll not.

This is what I'm miking, not shown is the kick mic, 3 feet back, not shown because it's in the kick right now. That's my usual method of mic'ing this sucker, with a dynamic 2-3 feet back and a PZM overhead for the room.



It's only using the 100W tube head, the Ashdown rig is 3200W and would be silly loud for a recording, what's not see is there's a bunch of pedals run into a small mixer feeding that amp direct into it's power section. I also take line outs from the mixer, and a DI from the distorted guitar.

[drumsound]

If the bass is everywhere, the bass is everywhere!

See my above post.

[losthighway]

Yeah, bass frequencies are the least directional if I remember my physics correctly. They just kind of envelope everything around them.

It sounds like you like your rig, but maybe this is a time to experiment with low-wattage bass amps, or a hot plate to soak up some of your db, while keeping your gain structure. Or you could look at a smaller cabinet, 2x10, or 1x15.

I always find most bass rigs put out more volume in more directions than is ever needed for recording. All I care about are what the tubes are doing (if it's that kind of rig) and the speaker I'm mic'ing. I've been amazed what can happen with a small tube combo for guitar coupled with a DI for clearer lows.

[Drone]

Well, I've read the stories of Cream @ Atlantic with Tom Dowd, and first time out it was Marshall Stacks, second time out it was a Fender Champ, but I'm no Clapton (or Bruce) though the drummer definitely has a bit of a Baker thing going on, sulky git

Seriously though, I've done the low wattage thing, I've played with a little Dano 15 or 30W thing, and close mic'd it, with a DI, and it sounds good, but there's an extra tone comes from putting it thru a horn, I mean I'm not cranking it, it's barely ticking over. When we play live, I ditch the tube head, and use a 60W solid state head, and it sounds massive (not just my word, some of the audience have been impressed), there just is a special something comes with horns. It's not the tubes, it's the horns

Oh and that is 2 1x15's your looking at, 10's are a dirty word round here, I finally got rid of all of mine

That said, synchronicity, or synergy, or the universe or something, my aunt just sent me a transducer (even 40-somethings have aunts) because she knows I like gadgets, it's designed for a Walkman, but pulling a lineout from the mixer I use as a preamp is yielding some pretty interesting results, I think I can make it work, I just need to be able to dial it back a bit (it's taking a split feed from my headphones, but it has a booster amp that can't bypass), I'm thinking I can put the horns as far away as I can get them, stick a mic in there, and muffle it in a blanket fort, maybe I don't need to have the horn cab / string interaction anymore.

Course now the drummer will sulk because he has to wear headphones again, but that is the nature of drummers.