snare micing depending on shell material

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punkrockdude
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snare micing depending on shell material

Post by punkrockdude » Mon May 22, 2006 3:35 pm

Hi TapeOPers!
I would like to ask you if you usually end up micing a snare differently to another snare because of the different materials they are made of which affect their timbre/sound and how they radiat from the snare?

I got a cheap Pearl Export EX Radical kit that is made out of 6 Ply 7.5mm Poplar shells and I have a hard time getting the sound i want in the close mics. I have bought a Puresound Vintage 20 strand wire for the snare which made a big difference. But if I mic it the common way it is way to bass heavy and the tone does not sound consistent...

I hope my question(s) are of any help to others that might wonder he same thing.

Best Regards
Last edited by punkrockdude on Thu Feb 13, 2014 5:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by joel hamilton » Mon May 22, 2006 7:37 pm

I find myself using a bottom snare mic more when the song calls for a wood snare.Or I will just try a metal snare at that point. It is up to you.

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Post by mjau » Mon May 22, 2006 7:47 pm

I had the good fortune of tracking a drummer tonight (our very own moderator drumsound) who used a couple of different snares (w/ varying materials), and I'm pretty sure we left the snare mic in the same spot the whole time. Came out sounding good, but the big part of that was the snare drums were tuned extremely well.
Anyway, that's cool that you're from Sk?ne. My wife's from ?stergotland, and we've travelled a bit through Sk?ne, which is absolutely beautiful. And the accent is nice, too. We're going to go to Gotland this summer, so I'm pretty stoked about that.
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Post by Dave Nutz » Mon May 22, 2006 8:59 pm

it is very important that the snare be tuned properly. You can usually get away with toms that are a little too flat or ringy or dead,etc... but a poorly tuned snare can quickly turn into a sloppy mess, espercially once compression, eq, fx,et al...


a well constructed drum is normally easy to tune, as the shell is in round, the edges are sharp and flat(IE..no dips or chunks missing), and the shell has excellent integrity(no dead spots caused by the ends of a ply not meeting, and therefore leaving a gap in the shell).

Try a few different snare heads as well...on an inexpensive wood shelled snare like the export/forum snares, you might want to consider aiming to capture a dry sound with as much body as possible, and adding some sort of ambience later(with verb or samples/whitenoise), because the type of tone you are going to achieve isnt going to have the most plesant sounding resonance.
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drumsound
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Post by drumsound » Mon May 22, 2006 11:27 pm

I was on a shell micing kick a while back (when I was still forced into using ADATs). I found that micing the shell of metal drums didn't sound too hot. I liked it with wood drums though.

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glagola1
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Post by glagola1 » Tue May 23, 2006 5:56 am

The bass and overtones that you describe sound a lot to me like the sound of almost any snare that has the mic positioned about and inch or two above the rim pointing at the center of the head.

To alleviate the proximity effect (bass) and the over tones, try pulling the mic 4-8" out from the edge of the drum and maybe making it paralell to the head.

The closer you put any mic to a drum head, the more the overtones will get picked up and the more proximity effect you'll get. Bleed can be a good thing.
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Post by cgarges » Tue May 23, 2006 7:59 am

Yes.

Any apsect of what makes up the sound of the snare drum is what determines which mic I'll use and where I'll put it. And by that, I mean that I determine all that when I listen to the drummer play. I don't always use a U87 on my 7x14 Noble & Cooley and an M201 on my Rogers Powertone.

Knowing what your mics do is such an important part of the job. If you can listen to the source and determine what mic you have that will likely flatter that source in the context in which you're working, you're less likely to be fighting your decision later on. If you put up the mic you think will work and you go into the control room and listen to it and it sounds bad (or less like you thought it would), you can use what you know about your mics and where to put them to get it sounding better.

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soundguy
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Post by soundguy » Tue May 23, 2006 10:17 am

you shoudl do your entire setup from the sticks you use, the heads you use, the mic you use, the amplification you use all based upon the sound that you want to come out of the speakers, its all in your control. I wouldnt necessarily just switch mics because so and so is better on a wood shell than a metal shell or so and so is better on a 13" shell compared to a 14" shell but do switch mics to find the best sound for the plan that you've made. Generally speaking, a) the rest of the drum micing setup and b)the source that will be your dominant sound for the kit in the mix will typically influence the type of mic that I use on the snare more than anything else.

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punkrockdude
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Thank you all so much!

Post by punkrockdude » Tue May 23, 2006 2:01 pm

Thank you all very much for your help/replies. You are definately the most serious people I have come across on message boards. I love it :D

I got one more question to ask you and that one is what is the furthest distance from the snare you been forced to put the/a mic to get the sound you were looking for? I got a problem with often thinking like "no, that must be too far away from the drum, it can't be the correct way to do it". I get hung up on stuff like that instead of just trying it out.

Mjau: S you have been to Sk?ne? It like it here but I think I would like to explore the upper parts of Sweden because the people seem more relaxed and not so self absorbed there.

About our accent... I guess our accent in Sweden is like the Texas accent in the USA if I have understood it correctly. One difference between our pronounciation of R and the Stockholmers, is that our one sounds like the German one :D

Well people, there you got some Swedish faq. Who knows, maybe a question about the pronounciation of Swedish R's will come up on Jeopardy in the future. I should stop talking now...

Once again, thank you all so much for your help!

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Post by Dave-H » Tue May 23, 2006 2:25 pm

What mic's are U using on the snare & at what angle are they & how far in frim the hoop. Lot's of things that can give you different sounds. :D
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punkrockdude
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audio sample

Post by punkrockdude » Tue May 23, 2006 2:33 pm

Here is an example of how it sounds with one snare (beyer m201tg) , one kick (b52) and one overhead (mxl 603s) mic into Studio Projects 828 preamps without any processing except flipping the phase (strangely) on the snare. Based on what you hear which is unmixed, does it sound decently recorded?
http://www.interfearingsounds.com/drums20060523ex.mp3

punkrockdude
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my mic positioning

Post by punkrockdude » Tue May 23, 2006 2:39 pm

Dave-H:
I have put the Beyer M201TG roughly vertically to the rim about one inch up and at a quite paralell angle. I have tried the common 45 degrees angle, one-two inches in from the rim and about two inches up but that just gives me alot of proximity and snare wires. I seem to want more... hm... the total body sound of the snare, which probably is more mid. I use a two ply, Evans HD Dry batter head. I hope I have given you an alright explaination of it.

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Post by BigWillieGreen » Thu May 25, 2006 7:06 pm

Been lurking a little bit, figured I'd chime in. In response to the distance from the drum, while miking toms I like to pull my close mics back, up to 6-8 inches from the batter head. I find it lets the drums speak more, and the low frequencies develop; resulting in fuller toms. It stands to reason this would work with a snare drum, but then you'll have a good deal of hi-hat bleed, limiting your control over either during the mix.
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