Mono Overhead & Kick - Can they ever be in phase together ??

I thought he was calling me a newb.

I hate the sound of high-passed overheads, and of drums built around the close mics, instead of using them for reinforcement where needed.

It's like an orchestra with no basses.

I think aligning the overheads to the snare mic can work, but often doesn't sound any better than simply flipping the phase on the preamp, assuming the overheads are in phase with each other, which isn't hard to get right.

Aligning anything else sounds weird a lot of the time, and using an expander like jazznoise said on the room mic tends to work better anyway to bring punch to the snare without too much mud.

Also the whole point of a FOK mic is to get the bloom and size from the kick and shells, not to impact exactly where an inside kick or beater mic does.


Agree, best to sort out these problems in the tracking stage, or lose mics that are not working with those that sound good with no processing.

There usually is no extra work, unless there's trucks outside. If I want less bass, as a mix decision, I probably need to do a cut wherever the buildup is making me feel the mix is too bassy or I need to do some shelving. HPF's are usually where I'm trying to keep out low bass bleed from other instruments. I like it on floor tom for this, make it resonant and it'll give the fundamental a good boost too. If the bottom snare mic has a lot of fundamental from the kick then again using a HPF can be an option too - but since I use an EV635a there quite often I don't usually have much sub buildup down there.

That's exactly what I've been hearing for 40+ years! It was even worse on tape because of gap-scatter. Each additional mike is also an insult to the drummer. I always set up so I have the choice of mono drums in addition to the usual 1980s approach.

I don't like steven slate super punchy drums, or the blown out phasey low end sound that you get with over-eqing really close mics, I like the perception of size and space around the drums for rock, or finesse and mostly mono for other genres. I also don't like the obligatory 1176 20:1 room mic sound and decapitator/sans amp on everything for rock music either, which is boring now.

Shock mounts can make a big difference.

Actually I do high pass the kick drum around 30hz on occasion, but only to tighten things up and help with any drum bus compression. I just don't high-pass the overheads or snare because then the elements of the kit sound disconnected and not like real drums to me at all. Fuck that.

I prefer to use a Glyn Johns style arrangement but with the overhead angled to capture the rack tom, and a FOK to glue everything together in the center and bring the size, and close but not too close mics on kick and snare. Sometimes I add a room mic. Similar to the weedywet approach. The best drummers will sound good most of the time with just the FOK mic.

thewombforums.com/showthread.php?23682-The-weedywet-4-5-mic-drum-technique

I also use thin cymbals, like Zildjian K and Paiste 602. These help a ton. I agree with Bob, it's an insult to the drummer to use lots of mics. And if a drummer can't balance their playing, then sorry they probably need to practice more before they record. They need to understand the difference between playing live and playing in the studio.

Even Dave Grohl and Dale Crover, two of the hardest hitting drummers ever, play more lightly on smaller kits in the studio.

Likewise, a band with a lot of crashing and ratty guitars, maybe that's part of their sound anyway.

Also ever since I read thethrillfactor's posts, I stopped high-passing my vocals too when I can help it. It's a myth that there is no useful info below 100hz on a lot of instruments, and you have to deal with the resonance of the filter which can sound unnatural. I'd rather uses gentle shelves.

I'll agree there's no value in using a HPF if you don't know how to set it, paying attention to lowest fundamentals of the instruments in question, setting enough below that.

I think fully variable multi-slope HPF's are the single greatest contribution of DAW's to recording, hands down. I rarely set one as high as 100Hz, usually under 80, many under 40. I wish I had one that I could set lower than 20 (I do in hardware).

Cars going by. Talent stomping around, even with a shock mount on the mic. Plosives. Wind, natural or talent generated. DI'd bass guitar; that's almost always full of giant spikes down to near-DC when the instrument is played hard. Some mic techniques exaggerate subsonic mud, and you don't get those sounds without it, and then you high pass. Etc. I'm not at all afraid of using a HPF while tracking, just don't do it while remotely guessing at the outcome.

Take a listen to a bunch of your work on something like a Meyer line array with plenty of their subs, in a nice big room like a 400+ seater. It'd be rare if you didn't find some nasty surprises that are not at all obvious on the average small studio monitor.

Fucking love The Breeders. You are now pretty cool.

Ha, I love them too. Because their songwriting is very broad strokes and not trying too hard. Female in the sense that they are not trying to control the flow at all times and assert their personality. They just let it come out naturally. Also the humor comes across in most likable way, and I hate bands that take themselves too seriously.

For this reason, to me in some ways they are better than any other band, including the Beatles. 

I would kill to be able to write music like them. So every time I work on a new song I try to keep their naturalness in mind. Slowly I am getting better at faking this.

low level, ultra low freq grunge is a part of life in recorded music, it comes from and happens for a lot of different reasons, the more time your speakers spend trying to reproduce that useless shit, the less time they're spending accurately representing the good stuff, it's really just common sense, and every serious AE in the world totally gets the importance of proper filtering, including Steve Albini. Bruce Swedien stuck with the Harrison 32 console for the entire 2nd half of his career based on the fact that he loved! and couldn't go on without the 32's filtering sections.