Drum recording

Recording drums in large rooms is fun and endangered, but easy to revive. There is not much sound from the room itself nowadays in recordings. What really makes the instrument is the acoustics of the room together with the instrument itself. Something that is forgotten today when recording acoustic instruments is the sound reference among todays artificial soundscape; how does in fact a drumset sound when your are standing in front of it? If the drummer is proficient with a functioning drumset in a proper room there are no worries. The only job that is left for the engineer is to put up mics and press record; easy!

This room on the picture is not dead, it is very live and alive. These days, engineers have made compromises in their choices of acoustic environments. 

8 mics, 5 close, stereo overhead and one room.

Female Drummer

Static drumming is often referred as girl-accompaniment and the majority of drummers are guys. Well, whatever. In 2004 Autolux released their debut album Future Perfect wich is great.. The drumming by Carla Azar is immutable, kittenish and very whimsical.

Read this interview with Carla Azar by Tom Tom magazine.

Autolux last gig in Stockholm was great. One vexatious thing however the ride cymbal was risky close to the floor tom.

Carla Azar in Autolux.

Recording electric guitar

Recording electric guitar using two amps and one room microphone can improve your recording. In the picture below there is a Fender Twin amp that delivers much mellow mid stomach with much dynamic and the little bad as Orange Tiny Terror which compress the signal into a classic rock sound. When using two mics its important to check the phase in mono. In this case it was necessary to phase reverse one of the mics but it ended with them being separated in the mix that is panned left right. The room mic was parallel with the wall to take advantage of the boundary effect. Usually the room mic is placed on the floor. Later delayed the room mic around 22 milliseconds in the mix to attain the room's grumble but still interesting tone.  

AKG D112 on the Twin and Sennheiser MD421for the Tiny Terror.

The delayed Swedish microphone SE Electronics X1 as room mic. To the right many RCA cables.

Beyerdynamic M160 looks like dynamic but ribbon?

Despite the fact that this microphone looks like a ordinary microphone with a dynamic construction, this is an unique double ribbon microphone with hypercardioid polar pattern. Usually ribbons are bidirectional meaning that they pick up sound equally well from both either side of the microphone. However, the M160 is worth mentioning. Works on acoustic string instruments, amplifiers, drum overheads and is brighter than most ribbon mics.

Beyerdynamic M160 with a hypercardiod pattern.

The standard pickup pattern of a bidirectional microphone (red dot) viewed from the side above.