Recorderman Drum Recording This post has been viewed 4387 times.

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I've been hearing buzz about the Recorderman method of recording drums, but it always seemed kinda strange, so I never tried it. I've really been missing out. Here's the basic idea:

• Put one overhead mic directly above the snare, looking down, at a distance of two drumsticks.
• Tape a piece of string where the beater hits the kick drum, run it to the mic, and down to the snare.
• Pinch the string where it touches the mic, and move it behind your right shoulder. Set up another mic there, pointing at the snare. Check that the second mic is two drumsticks away as well (it should be).

This makes both mics perfectly equidistant from the bass and snare drums, aimed right at 'em. Here's the A/B comparison with a song I've been working on. It starts off with the Recorderman method, and then goes to the way I had it before, then back and forth.

It really has a beautifully clean sound. The best part is that the snare drum is so much more present, and in some songs, wouldn't even need a direct mic. I added a little bit of gated direct mic with heavy compression and a medium attack time, just to give it a nice "crack". The phase coherency is truly noticable, and the stereo image is much better. I'm totally sold (as soon as I stop giving "love taps" to the the shoulder mic). Thanks Des and Recorderman!

EDIT: Link to the sample audio fixed - sorry!

Discussion: Recorderman Drum Recording

Chris on May 23 2007 @ 00:53 (anonymous)
Missing link

The "A/B comparison" link does not work.

Jamie Dull on May 23 2007 @ 16:30 (anonymous)
[No Subject]

The only concern I have is:

How present do the cymbals come out? Are the two mics that you mentioned picking up the overheads for the cymbals too?

I guess it just depends on how much "tinkering" you'll be doing and whatnot. Sounds like a lot of fun too! Maybe you should throw in a floor tom! ;-)

Stephen Underwood on Jul 29 2007 @ 16:17 (anonymous)
Recorderman Method

I set this up in our studio and got a good clean sound. However it usualy used for no more than 4 drums and a couple of cymbals and the hats.

I have a 6 piece 1977 Rogers kit, so what we did, is we placed the one mic facing the snare and we took the other mic that was over the right sholder and turned in towards the floortom and ride cymbal. Then we put a SM57 on the Snare and a Bass Drum Mic on the Kick, this only gave us 4 Tracks for the Drums, but in cases like me where I play 6 drums and 9 cymbals, it all came out clear as a bell.

So the method works, but like anything you can tweek it a little

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