Damn loud hi-hats, and that washy cymbol effect.

[deadair]

these are the things i think about with my overheads:

hihats are 50% of the time too loud, 50% of the time just right, never too quiet. i've found tweeking attack/release times on overhead compression to help de-eccentuate the jangle of the hat, but it really bothers me sometimes. i'm thinking of trying different positions for my stereo pair, although i thought i had found some positions that were working better than others. its almost come to the point where i just hate hihats..... i think a lot of it is recording agressive, loud bands, where kids just slam on the hihat......

on some recordings the cymbols have a sound i cant describe well, but all the cybols volumes seem identical, they all have a similar tone, and they come across as a sort of wash, in a good way. its like this constant sound of cymbols. i understand a lot of this has to do with the player and cymbols but i think theres recording technique involved as well. anyone even know what i'm talking about? the closest i've come to getting this sound is putting the limited on my dbx 586 to always being hit by the overheads, but this can create some not so great sounds for the snare as its always being crushed.

any thoughts are welcome.

[Rodgre]

My first question is: How does it sound in the room? I always find that when I'm tracking a band and the cymbal balance sounds weird, I walk into the live room and sort of cover my ears a little and see what the balance is like in the room. I try to get the mics to pick up what the drums really sound like.

I find that when I've had issues with loud hi-hats, it's usually a problem with the room. I did this one record where that F***ing hihat was so loud on every track. It was really because the room was really loud and bright. It really accentuated the hats and made them reflect everywhere into all of my mics.

It's near impossible to tell a drummer, especially a heavy rock drummer, to not play their hats so loudly, but some are pretty cool about trying lighter hats if they have them.

Now I normally record in a room with a lower ceiling and not a lot of bright reflective surfaces (though not totally dead). I never seem to have the problem of "too much" hi hat here. I actually sometimes have too little, and decide to put a specific hat mic up (where normally the overheads and bleed in the snare mic are enough.)

This washy sound that you speak of, I hear it coming from the drummer, more than the gear. I will compress my overheads a bit, but not all the time. I'm thinking that the loud hats and the washy tone might be a product of the room. Is this possible?

Roger

[cassembler]

Yeah, Rodgre was right on when he made a comment about the actual type of cybmals they're using on the hi-hats. Smaller, cleaner ones seem to not be so damn loud.

Of course, the player is 80%. Make sure to maximize your off-axis resoponse of mics that are close the the hats: the snare mics & tom mics. I find moving the overheads farther away, usually higher, can help blend the hat in better as well.

[cassembler]

Oh yeah, lighter sticks can really help a lot too.

[bedbug]

I have the loud hi hat problem myself. I go through a four channel mixer into two tracks of an 8-track, and usually keep the overheads super low, and have the snare and kick mics almost all the way up, although this still doesn't help with hi hats bleeding into snare mic, etc.

Did you ever try putting a mic underneath the snare drum? Tends to pick up a bit of snare bead noise, but very little hi hat.

Or instead of two overheads, try maybe one overhead, and then a large diaphram condensor about tom level (maybe a little higher) facing the kit, about 2 feet away.

[d franko]

Will, what kind of overheads are you using, and what set-up currently? What are the dimensions of your room?

One thing that I can't figure out lately is why that weird cymbal sound sometimes shows up on the tom mics, even when they're soloed, so I don't see it being a phase problem, but it may be.

[Oliver Straus/Mission]

Hey,

Recently I've taken to placing the O/Hs to the front of, instead of over the drums - about 3' in front of and 2' higher than the cymbals at about 30 degrees down. It seems to be yielding a much more balanced picture in my room.

I'm either using Microtech&Geffel um70s or KM84s.

If I want really organic with lots of drums I use da ribbons in a spaced pair with the snare side higher than the ride side so they balance.

Of course drummers should all come equipped with volume nobs for high hat and cymbals.

[deadair]

sounds like maybe i should try some acoustic foam tiles aroudn the drum kit, probably not a bad idea...... cut down on reflections......

my current set up is a rode nt4 stereo mic that i usually put about where the center of the resonant head of the kick is, about 1.5-2.5 feet about the tallest cymbol. this way the mic is more lined up on top of the cymbols and the high hat is a little removed from it.

i don't have too much trouble with bleed onto other mics. there is always a little on the snare mic, but its not that much of a big deal. i do use two snare mics, and i use a light gate on the toms, all of which cuts down on unwanted cymbols creeping in.

the room is about 12' wide, and 16-18' long. the wall the drummer sits against is the 12 footer and the walls come in like this on the sides: \____/
the ceiling is maybe 9' tall and slopes up a bit as it moves away from the drums and then opens up to a bigger ceiling past the drummer.

all the surfaces showing are plywood, and there is a carpet floor.

i think treating the room is probably a good idea, but any one have other thoughts?

[d franko]

my current set up is a rode nt4 stereo mic that i usually put about where the center of the resonant head of the kick is, about 1.5-2.5 feet about the tallest cymbol. this way the mic is more lined up on top of the cymbols and the high hat is a little removed from it.

Do you have any control over how wide the stereo is with the rode? If you were to do an x-y pair you could bring the overheads to a smaller angle.

[@?,*???&?]

Where to begin with this one?

The hi/hat is THE item to be contained when recording a drum kit. Not all songs call for that much evidence of it.

Number one place that the hi/hat turns up is in the snare drum mike. The snare drum almost always gets compressed which aggravates it.
Be extremely aware of choosing the right pickup pattern for a mike when placing it on and around a drumkit. Be aware of what it is picking up and what it should not be picking up.

Remember dynamic mikes have a closer proximity pick up pattern than a condensor. You can save yourself some work if you think in those terms.

In the studio depending on how a drummer sets up, I've had to use a cone or a cardboard baffle. The cone gets place around the snare drum mic and is similar to those flea cones that dogs get when they forced not to bite themselves. The mini-baffle would get placed between snare mike and hi/hat in order to control the amount of hi/hat bleed.

Baffles around the kit can contain the kit too. I've seen too many engineers just go with an open room and the drums always end up with a ton of ambience and a ton of middle frequencies. The ambience can never be removed which can always suck for trying to dry up the verses of a song. Try and have some 'sonic' vision when miking the drumkit and don't stop getting sounds until you are satisfied. That extra 10 minutes work during set-up will yield tangible results.

Realize that using a minimum number of mikes on a drumkit doesn't allow for the same flexibility that using a larger number of microphones does. Individual miking can allow for better volume control and individual instrument balance of a kit.

While I have done the 4 mic drum miking, I usually end up with 11-13 tracks of drums on a 24-track (or more) recording.

Like anything else when you're recording, the more cymbals you have to begin with, the more choices you have in going for a 'sound'. If I started a tracking session with a drummer that only had one set of hi/hats- that turned out to sound awful when miked, we'd be making a trip to pick up some more cymbals from a nearby drum shop before we recorded a master take of anything. You can only record what you have in front of you.

Tolerating bad equipment will sacrifice what you are trying to accomplish very, very quickly.

Remember that 'When the levee breaks' is actually one of the smallest mono drum sounds ever recorded and listen to 'D'yer M'ker' instead for massive drumkit sounds to emulate.

[cassembler]

Try this: Set up a single mic, preferably a condenser with an omni pattern (cardioid will do) 5-10 feet away from the front of the kit, pointing at the center of the kit.

If you still have too much hi-hat there, then the issue is with the player and what' he's playing on, not the recording technique.

[deadair]

the rode is fixed at 90 degrees, sometimes i make it smaller on the board but usually i leave it as is. i usually have the hihat side down a little to try to keep it from anoyance level.

jeff, so many ideas to respond to:

snare mic, i actually always have a little cone around my snare mic to keep out hihat bleed, and usually the amount of hihat there is minimal. i always get that mic as far away from the hats as i can (usually by getting it as close to the rack tom as possible). the mics i go back and forth between are sm57 and mxl603s. i'm searching for something i like better, and maybe something more directional to take even more hat out of it (any suggestions? there's some beyer mic i've considered, i forget the #...).

i have put some baffles around the kit to help at times, but usually the pay off is minimal, which maybe suggests it is a problem with acoudtics that i need to tame.

an unfortunate reality in terms of time and repositioning etc etc is that most of the time i'm recording bands theyre trying to get everything done and finished in a single day and are a lot less particular than i am. so, on one hand theyre boss, so its not really fair of me to take too much time with a problem they don't hear, and also, a lot of these bands dont have time to round up extra cymbols elsewhere, etc. i have a pair of hihats that i lend out sometimes, but i'm not sure how much bettersubtler they really are. a lot of times i do think its the player, which again is looking to get done quickly in a lot of the instances i'm working with.

this also factors into moving the mics too far away off of the kit, which might help some with the hat problem, but often the whole band is recording live, so its dificult to move the O.H.'s back more because then i get mroe of everyone else in there, which usually is not a good thing.

[d franko]

the rode is fixed at 90 degrees, sometimes i make it smaller on the board but usually i leave it as is. i usually have the hihat side

Yeah, cause at 90 you're pretty much pointing right at the hi-hat. Hmmm...

[@?,*???&?]

Deadair, you said, "most of the time i'm recording bands theyre trying to get everything done and finished in a single day and are a lot less particular than I am. So, on one hand theyre boss, so its not really fair of me to take too much time with a problem they don't hear"

My suggestion is this-

If your name is going on it, you are doing yourself a disservice to be rushed because of the band. Politically, let the band know that the sound of 'their recording' can directly influence how someone feels about them. It is in their best interest to let you do your best work. You too are an artist.

[deadair]

jeff-

yes it is true that it does not help for me to feel rushed by the band, and while i agree that recording is an art that i'm involved in that they are paying me to do my best in, i often think of the letters section in tapeop a few issues back where the engineer is sort of liek the short order cook, i always let my opinion on how things sound be known, but if they are ok with it then its not my place to tell them otherwise. of course on some projects where the band has more of an ear, or its a bigger project, or friends who know more about recording, these things do get tweeked with, but sometimes i think its a really tough judgement call.

and yes d franko, the rode is pointed towards the hihat, which is why i try to pull it back off that area, also i've thought about twisting the mic, to de-emphasize, such that one mic is turned a bit more towards the floor tom and the snare/hihat is turned a bit away from that area. but i have yet to try that out.