A man and a musician

I’ve spent a little bit of tonight reading on ways to record drums at home – slightly counter-intuitive, seeing as I have been recording drums in my garage for a few weeks now. But it never hurts to dig in for the little extra bit of information. And just for that very reason I’m going to post what I’ve been doing in case any other reader on the internet happens to want to record in the comfort of their home.

First of all, I’d like to note that this is far from perfect, but for a (relatively) low budget approach this is awesome, at least in my opinion. My set sounds good and its pretty simple to set up.

For Overhead miking I use two large diaphragm  Studio Projects B1 mics. I position them on either end of the drumset, using the “recorderman” drum miking method. Basically, just take your two drumsticks, place them standing up, end to end, in the middle of your snare drum. That is the height of the overheads. Then use one of the sticks to postition the left mic one stick-length away to the left, and repeat for the right.

For Snare Drum I use a classic SM57 (Shure). Really nothing special here, I mic the top of the snare, and I point the mic down at the head about 3/4 of the way in from the center.

For Bass Drum I have two mics I switch off using. I never really invested in a bass-drum-only mic, so I started experimenting with my other large diaphragm mics: Audio Technica AT2020 and an MXL 990. I had the 990 mounted in front of the bass drum when I used it, and I think it was a bit boomy; when I tried it with the AT2020 I put a towel in my drum and put the AT2020 right inside, and I like the results much better, and I’ve been using that more recently.

I have those 4 mics running into my FireStudio, running into my Macbook, which has Logic Studio 8 running on it. If there is one thing I could change about my recording setup now its the room. I’m getting a lot of reverb I don’t want (its a little too much coming through the overheads), but I think I can alleviate that if I change the positions of my drums.

Of course, everything in this post (mics, positioning, recording software) is subject to change with your own setup, but it can’t hurt to put my setup out there, as it’s been working pretty well for me. Good luck.

I think I’ll keep this nice and short.

Bonnaroo, which I attended this year, was awesome because everyone is there for the same reason. This sounds pretty obvious, but if you think about it, anyone can just go to a concert. However, Bonnaroo is more than a concert, it’s an experience. Four days of camping out in the hot Tennessee sun (and the harsh Tennessee rain), getting close to no sleep, going to the bathroom in shitty (no pun intended) port-a-potties. I think there’s more of a community feeling there as opposed to at other concerts, if only because of the time factor. You also get more of a diversity, since many people come from great distances to attend.

My experience was pretty much sans-assholes who tried to ruin other peoples’ fun. There were a few people here and there (though I believe they were drunk or strung out on some kind of drug) who got in our faces about not “feeling” the music (I guess sitting and enjoying the music just isn’t acceptable when you’re tripping on acid or something), but overall people were nice. I mean, one day I was wearing one of my Woot.com T-shirts and someone commented that he had the same shirt at home and I was awesome for wearing it. That in itself is just plain awesome.

So for the last week I was either in Tennessee or in Virginia, on my way to Tennessee. I went to the most bitchin’ music festival of the year (well, in my opinion), Bonnaroo. And I got to see some awesome bands, including, but not limited to:

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Phish (2 shows), Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective, Beastie Boys, Ben Harper and the Relentless 7, The Mars Volta, Erykah Badu, Kaki King, Portugal. The Man, Bela Fleck, Girl Talk, and MGMT.

I have a good collection of pictures from the ordeal on my hard drive and on Facebook, and I’m considering finding my Photobucket/Flickr account credentials again and uploading them for the general public (though I’m fairly certain you can view them on my Facebook Profile here).

I just had an awesome two days with Fedex. Today and yesterday, a very nice Fedex gentleman dropped off a total of 4 packages at my house. What did these packages contain? Let’s see:

-1 Presonus Firestudio Project (an 8 channel Firewire recording interface)
-1 Shure SM57 mic
-2 Studio Projects B1 mics
-2 new boom mic stands
-1 new kick drum mic stand
-3 20′ Monster XLR cables

Thus, I now dub my garage Studio N, and I’ve cleared off some nice shelf space for all my new (and old) equipment. I haven’t really started digging in with the new stuff, just a quick trial run, but it’s going to be a fun summer.

They have developed flat speakers. What is this sorcery?

Going back to college after a short Easter break. One month left and I’m done with my first year. Looking forward to next semester even more, however.