Mono Room Mic Placement

16th november 2006 3.

Mono room mic placement. In an ideal world we d always be able to record drums in a great sounding room one of a decent size that with just a little knowledge of mic technique makes it almost effortless to capture the sound of a live drum kit enhanced with nice room ambience. What do you want to hear. But if you ve got two mics to spare for a room setup combining a far away mid side configured pair with a mono overhead also makes for some very. Working at the legendary sam phillips recording studio in memphis tn matt discusses the mono overhead mic he s using on the drums one of only three mics he s got on the kit.

Place two mics in an xy mid side or blumlein pattern far from the kit. Use your ear to taste. Place two or more mics around the room as spaced pairs. If your aim is simply to provide your entire mix with a bit more depth a mono room mic squashed through a fet compressor will do the job.

Any distant stereo image i need can be achieved with pzm mics on the floor or walls or by using a figure 8 ribbon for overheads or a combination of all of that. Of course this can be avoided with careful placement and measurement. Matt ross spang episode 1 setting up the live room getting sounds. I enjoy a mono room mic anywhere from 6 20 feet back 4 10 feet high dead center on the drums.

Any time you have microphones covering the same sound source from different distances you re likely to run into some phase problems as the offset in distance causes the sound to reach the microphones at different times. When in doubt use your ears reevaluate your mic placement and make adjustments to get the results you want. If i m going stereo for drum overheads i ll likely stay mono for my room mic so that the overheads and room mic sounds don t step on one another s toes aurally too much in the mix. Ambient miking can really make your drum sound even when you re not blessed with the greatest of spaces.

Sometimes the simplest setup is the best one as you ll see in this excerpt from start to finish. Start the same rough distance from the snare but with the mic facing the space just above the kick. Experiment by moving the mic farther away from and then closer to the kit. He acheived a little more of a wide modern sound that way.

By moving our room mic closer to the floor we accentuate the proximity effect resulting in boosted lows. A great way to start is the recorderman method or the glyn johns technique. Joesi on july 3 2013 at 1 58 pm. To emphasize one part of the kit or another raise and lower the mic accordingly.

This placement offers a different kind of natural representation of the kit this time favoring the kick over the snare. In fact i just tracked a song for our duelingmixes members with mono overhead and mono room mic.