AA2 wk 4

From walking around with the floor tom and banging it we discovered that right in front of the glass looking into studio 1 had a brilliant bass trap. We decided that this ‘boomier’ sound was much better than the higher treble sound more prevalent in the rest of the room.

We also decided on "enclosing" the kit in a circle of baffles to deaden the sound and take out the ‘live’ feel of the room. (We don't seem to like the live sound of the room at all)

Mic’ing the bass drum proved to be the most challenging aspect. I think I used the analogy of "trying to find the best ‘turd’ of the bunch" The sound was just flat and lifeless. The absence of a hole in the kick really makes a dramatic difference. We were forced to settle with the best sound out of a bunch of average sounds. We also tried turning the beater around so it was using the click instead of the padding but this made next to no difference.

Although rattle issues were minimal, we did however encounter and ring from the snare. We altered the distance of the mic to get the crispest sound with minimal ring. The ring made it evident to me that it is certainly necessary for the kit to be in-tune. To have those tones of the drum come through out of pitch would certainly "muddy" the sound.

Another interesting point on the snare was that we failed to perceive the difference of inverting the wave form on the bottom snare mic. Although having a mic on top and bottom increased the body of the snare dramatically, we could not pick any phasing issues. We still inverted the wave form just to be sure.

I think the two finger method within this weeks reading was especially useful when mic’ing the tom's. We also found that a HP filter on the toms prevented the ring coming through their mic's.

I think the part of the recording we excelled at was the hi-hat and cymbals. Angling the mic's towards the bell of the cymbals accentuate their tone.

We placed the room mic (neuman 87) above the baffles behind the kit. It didn't have a huge effect on the sound but it added some body to it.

The first major recording we did was using a spaced pair of mic's. This is one above the ride and one above the Crash. The Second we placed them in X-Y position at the centre of the kit. I prefer the spaced pair sound personally. If we had more cymbals then the X-Y would have had a greater use.

Recorded Examples

Spaced Pair

X-Y

And what did Jake think about it all? Warning recording may be used out of context

Jakes Opinion