anyone here ever record 2 full drumsets at the same time?

[C_R_J]

so my new band is a odd beast. 2 full drumsets. 2 guitars. bass. keyboards. 3 of the people sing. anyways. we are going to start recording ourselves soon. think sorta like my bloody valentine with more people in the band. that sorta vibe. anyways. i record some stuff, and one guy in the band does recordings, and another good friend of ours has a studio and records stuff. we all have a million ideas on ways to record both kits at the same time. i was just curious if anyone here has done this, and if they had any problems whatsoever, or if they have any ideas or anything. dos? donts? im not exactly sure exactly what im looking for. i think i just like washing myself in the ramblings of people here because i know that i get alot less BS than elsewhere.

so anyone here done this? ramble about it for me. please. ill keep you all posted as we do it 2.

[firesine]

Never done it, but it sounds like a fun experiment. I would approach it as one bit drum kit. With the mix in mind, I would keep each kit mono and try panning them L-R. Don't know if that would accomplish what you want, but thats were I would start.
Two kits in one room + room mics in the middle = sounds awesome

[C_R_J]

one of the ideas i had was that since we are playing alot of the same parts, was to mic the bass drums, and have 2 hard panned overheads above us. one over each kit.

we will see

[cgarges]

I've done it a couple of times under different circumstances. I've done it with two guys facing each other in the same room, I've done it with two guys in separate rooms, I've overdubbed one kit on top of another. One time I was one of the drummers and the other guy was blind!

I don't think it's really much different than recording anything else that's loud and often requires a bunch of microphones.

My favorite recorded examples of two drumkits is King Crimson's Thrak album. I think there's some really exciting stuff one there in terms of stereo placement and recording techniques.

Another good one with really minimal miking is Willie Nelson's Teatro. Daniel Lanois and Mark Howard did that record and there's a great film of the making of it showing both drummers playing side-by-side.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[DrummerMan]

Just a thought:

Try tuning the BD's differently. Like, one low and dead, the other higher and pitchy. Then, have the drummers face each other somewhat and use one figure 8 condenser between the two kicks. That way, you can keep the bottom centered and then pan the rest of the two kits accordingly.

[C_R_J]

Just a thought:

Try tuning the BD's differently. Like, one low and dead, the other higher and pitchy. Then, have the drummers face each other somewhat and use one figure 8 condenser between the two kicks. That way, you can keep the bottom centered and then pan the rest of the two kits accordingly.

i was already thinking the same thing. i really wanted to keep the low end dead center, and both our drums are very different in terms of timbre if that makes sense. i think a overhead over us both will work nicely. mine will be more towards the toms. her more towards the snare. thats respectively where we each spend more time in this band.

[nordberg]

for a nice minimal mic thing you could place them facing each other with that figure-8 between the kicks and an ortf setup right above it, with one mic facing each kit. i would actually like to try that myself sometime soon.

[snoopy23]

I am about to undertake another project with a similar set-up, two drummers and multiple other instruments. I would suggest approaching the drums with a minimalist perspective as far as mic'ing goes. Too many mics with that many drums is bound to frustrate you in the mixing process. One approach would be setting the drums as close to each other as possible and miking them as one kit. Or you could set them up as far apart as possible in the same room and flip the phase on one of the kits. Either way, I would go with miking kick, snare, and overheads and don't worry too much about close -miking each tom and such, you'll end up with more than you want to deal with or can use. using one figure 8 mic between the kits is an interesting idea, I think I will try that one as well! Let us know how it all goes and what works best for you!

[lysander]

I've double-tracked drums before, and do what firesine suggests with the panned mono drums.

Arrangement would be something to consider -- and of course listening to some Grateful Dead studio albums to see how some pretty serious people have approached two drum kits.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

all good ideas here, and check out the last two fugazi records for some nice double drumming.

[C_R_J]

i think that recording two drumsets would be a awesome article for a future tapeop. i would love to hear how a lot of people do this.

[cgarges]

The minimal miking thing can be cool, but don't throw out the possibility of doing a minimal mic thing on one kit and a more standard close miking thing on the other. I've done that a number of times, too and it can really help out in the mix if one kit needs to sound more upfront than the other.

And of course, the greater differences in the tuning of the kits, the easier it will be to hear both of them in the mix. Again, that mid-90s King Crimson stuff is a perfect example, with one kit more open and resonant and the other more thuddy and weighty.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[capnreverb]

Having recorded a lot of free jazz type stuff I have done some experimenting with this.
How the drummers are placed within the room will dictate entirely how they are mic'ed, especially if they are being recorded the same time with other musicians playing at the same time.
What I ended up doing in this live context was to mic both drummers with four mic's each. The drummers were placed next to eachother. I had two overheads, one kick, and one in the sweet spot by the snare and high hat.
I mixed them in correlatation to the overheads. Far right drummer OH to the right, far left drummers left OH to the left. I then panned the left drummers r OH a bit into the right channel, and the right drummers left OH a bit to the left channel. The other mics were mixed within the context of each drummers overhead pans. It takes a bit of tweaking in terms of making it gel at mixdown, but that's what worked best at the time.

[cleantone]

I've only done it in a live setting. From what I recall it had to be done pretty minimally. I'd like to be in your shows for this though for sure. Should be a fun challenge.

[DrummerMan]

don't throw out the possibility of doing a minimal mic thing on one kit and a more standard close miking thing on the othe

This can definitely work, granted that the music and timbre of each kit and what function each drummer plays lends itself to such an approach, and if, as I think you said, both drummers are doing pretty much the same thing, you'd probably be in good shape.


I did, though, have a negative experience with this approach once. I was playing on a somewhat free jazz album that was being recorded for a label, and the engineer was the label's engineer. There were two drummers: me, and a fairly well known free jazz drummer who was the featured guest on the record. We had rehearsed and done many gigs in this configuration before going into the studio so we had a pretty good idea what we were doing. I was mostly holding down the grooves, keeping the forms and laying the foundation, and the guest drummer was, while sometimes playing along with the grooves, mostly exploding into improvisation at worked out times. Live, we had gotten to sound really fucking cool. The sound of the two kits were tonally completely different, but were meshing together and complementing each other nicely, to the point where it was almost sounding like one very cool and crazy drummer.

When we went to record, though, the engineer mic'd up the guest's kit really nice and clear, with plenty of presence and body, while I was placed in the middle of a gigantic room (we're talking 50' ceilings, probably) and had a spaced pair about 5 or 6 feet above my head, and a kick mic. To say the least, the sound on my kit was extremely distant. The entire session had to be setup, tracked and broken down by 6pm when the doors opened, since this was being recorded in the main hall of a venue, so there was little time to argue about mic placement with an engineer whose directive was probably to focus on the band leader and the special guest.

Now, I know what you're thinking (perhaps): I just needed to get over my ego about being heard clearly (or "clearly enough" in my mind) and think about what's best for the sound of the group as a whole, right? Well, that's where I got eventually and let it go so I could just focus on making good music. Easy enough.

The problem is, the recording doesn't sound good, at least not as good as music was. I've tried to accept my problems with it as solely MY problems, but other people I play it for have commented on the same thing (without prompting) so I know I'm not completely off. You know how people say about being a good engineer, "just try not to get in the way of the music"? Well, that's what happen, IMO. Now instead of a unified sound, there's a consistent groove that's kind of distant and has no balls to it (that would be me as well as the piano player), with these explosions of clarity between the other drummer and the sax player. To me, the way it was recorded makes the grooves and form sound like a mistake. Unfortunately, I don't even think the engineer had heard us play as a group before recording us, so didn't even setup based on what would actually benefit the group's sound as a whole. It was (kind of) political I think.

Anyway, I'll end the rant. Like I said, I don't think this necessarily applies to your situation, but the thread got me thinking, and it's related, I guess...