The Morning Rain

I played some more with the drum mic setup, and got a sound I’m happier with. Here’s better mix of Don’t Think I Don’t Miss You:

And here’s how the drums sound solo’d:

I miked the kit with a modified Recorderman setup, using 6 mics in total:
- 2 Apex205’s as overheads (marked in the picture below with green arrows.) This is the “recorderman” part of the setup. The other 4 mics just augment the OH signal.
- An SM58 on the snare drum rim (shown in the second picture below)
- An Apex 210 on the kick drum, about 2 feet in front.
- 2 Studio Projects C4’s as stereo room mics, about 15 feet in front of the kit, up high.

The overheads clearly aren’t “over head.” I have them on the same plane as the toms where they pick up a better balance of the toms and cymbals.

Note, too, that I have a red pillow between the high hat and the OH mic in front of the kit, to cut down the hi hat level in that mic. Listening to the drum track now, I realize the hats are almost too quiet. (If you’ve ever miked drums in a room with low ceilings, you’ll appreciate that’s a good problem to have!)

The new baffles around my drum kit completely changed the way my room sounds. So even though I’ve mic’d the drum kit dozens of times, we decided it made sense to start from scratch and get the right sound.

Here’s a short mix I sent to Rich for feedback.

(The song is Don’t Think I Don’t Miss You, and it’s the same bass, guitar, and vocals as the original, with a new drum track.) I was happy with it at the time, but as so often happens when I listened to the mix a few hours later, I realized it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. The snare drum is a little smeared in the stereo image, and the cymbals lack focus.

We’re recording a no-messing-around rock album. We don’t expect to have a lot of sonic experimentation, or production trickery in the final tracks. So once we get the drum sound we want, I can probably use the same mic setup for every track. It’s worth it to put the time in now and get it right!

Here’s the original demo of Don’t Think I Don’t Miss You (written by Rich for Songfight.) You can also read the lyrics.