drumsound wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 10:21 pm
losthighway wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 1:43 pm
Also as a side note, can everyone who's using the term "woofy" try and define it for me. I used to have a couple regular clients who used the term frequently when critiquing a mix, and I'm not sure I totally know what they mean. Just that we got it to go away.
For me, woofy is too much low and low mid that gets it the way of what's actually musically relevant. It can occur in BD, but also bass, bass guitar, guitar, organ, keys of all sorts.
Agree. To me, it's both a blurriness in the low-mids/lows and a lack of clarity in the high-mids/highs. It's a topic for another thread, but it's definitely worth discussing as it's a real tricky area to deal with. There is so much that happens in those frequencies that needs to sit just right and not get cluttered and our ears are sometimes less tuned to that area, compared to what we notice in "detail" in the high-mids/highs. Woof. Murk. Mud. It's all that frequency range in my eyes (ears).
Back to the OP, I have always done the traditional front mic setup (dynamic in the hole or on the front head if there is no hole, and a ribbon or condenser 15" inches in front). I have occasionally mic'd the rear head with a pencil condenser for more "slap" or "click", but pretty much only when I have a smaller, jazz-style kick with no front hole and I want a little more impact/definition to add clarity to the "boom" of the front head. I will sometimes put a condenser on the shell of the kick, facing the shell, positioned where the 2nd tom would be if this was the 80s. This mic tends to be my "glue" mic and picks up a pretty nice blend of everything in the kit, but more specifically, it adds a nice midrange punch and throatiness to the bass drum that kind of goes against the usual scooped-midrange of something like a Beta52/D112, both which instantly give you that smile-curve hard rock kick drum sound. Getting some midrange in there makes for a nice punch to the kick sometimes.
WAY back in the early 90's, my go-to kick drum mic technique was a Radio Shack/Crown PZM mic with a 9v battery instead of a AA (more headroom), sitting inside the kick on a pillow, run into the board with a Paia Parametric EQ inserted on it, to tape. The EQ was preset to a slight sharp boost in the the 60-80Hz range and somewhat of a lift up on the top end. The PZM was pretty great, to be honest. It picked up a nice "shell" tone inside the kick. I should try that again and see if it has aged well.
Roger