weird drummer problem

[S&L]

I should explain that I work exclusively with live bands/groups of musicians of all flavours and in the main they are at the top of their game for the venues they play and most of them, like myself are now the wrong side of 30 (I'm the wrong side of 40 but who is counting?)

but occasionally I pick up a band to work with that is less than ideal - in this case a start up cover band of mixed ability 20 odd year olds. so far so good - straight ahead rock with female vocals, metallica, joan jett, bryan adams.

they called me the other day bout a last minute gig this weekend. still good so far - and they are a stupidly easy mix - even with every drum mic'ed they are still only 10 channels or so.

the problem is that the drummer of said rock band point blank refuses to provide a sound hole in his bass drum for me to get a decent mic position. they play small and medium sized bar gigs and there isn't a lot of physical separation of instruments as it is.

last time out I placed a convention cheapish bass drum mic in front of the front bass drum head. the sound was woolly and when at sufficient gain and level it started to light up pretty much every other mic on stage as well.

with any other band I would point said mic internally at the batter head and get a halfway decent sound in pretty much every case.

now while I tend to shrug my shoulders and play the 'if you don't care, why should I?' card, I still like to give the best sound I can in the circumstances allowed.

so I wondered while allowing said drummer the creative freedom to be a pain, if there was a lateral mic'ing solution to this that was inexpensive.

I did wonder about the merits of placing a standard instrument hyper cardioid in front of it in the expectation that it should pick up less bottom end and therefore be less woolly and should isolate itself from other mics (red5 rvd30 mics have a fairly high signal coming from them). or maybe a tom microphone clipped to the batter head side

suggestions short of shooting the drummer (don't tempt me) would be welcome.

[dbuckley]

Live drum replacement.

[Brian]

Standard mic used to trigger a sampler?

[johnny-t-goode]

SM58 or 57? Used this before with reasonable results depending on how close other instruments are. Failing that, offer to buy him a new skin with band name/his name printed on that has a hole pre-cut.....

[soundiesam]

Hi S&L trick I tried in this situation before was to use the kick drum mic in front of the skin without the hole but on the beater side I just put a 57 to give me a bit more ummf... you wont get the same sound as if you were micing how you want to but you will get a less wooly tighter sound with both combined....

sam

[laolu]

AKG suggested once to take off the front skin (not fore-skin :blink:) alltogether. But your "weird drummer" may not like that.

Or can you place a mic on the other side, where the pedal is? Just make sure he / she doesn't kick it with the foot. That might give you a nice phat smack instead of a "woolly" ummm... And, yes, a gate may also help.

 

Norbert

[Adam Hill]

Did some research on this a few years ago (AES paper available on my website). I found that the closer the mic gets to the center of the front head, the less stable it becomes (feedback issues, especially if you're using a drum sub). Also, when the mic is closer than about 2 cm to the head, the same instabilities can arise.

 

You definitely can get a good sound with no front hole, it's just all about placing the mic in the right position in regards to the modal pattern on the head, as well as properly tuning both the front and beater heads. I usually go for an M88 in these cases which gives me a similar sound to a B52 on a standard kit with a front hole.

 

I've also seen many engineers mic the beater side, giving fairly decent results. Just experiment with it and you'll find a workable solution. Good luck!

[astrojgmoore]

I've been faced with this problem a few times, and always got good responce from micing the beater side, on a short stand around 4-6 inches below from the beater, at a 45° angle facing up to the beater, this way you pick up some of the resonance of the drum as well as the click of the beater. Not sure if any of that made sense, only just having my morning coffee!

[S&L]

thanks guys - insightful replies - as ever

[themadhippy]

1) remove kick drum,leaving beater in place

2)place drummer were kick drum would normally sit,ensuring head is in line with beater.

3)Attempt to play drum intro to any song that has a heavy kick sound

4) remain playing until drummer relents

5)clean blood of drum riser and mic up kit as normal

[Tony Lake]

beta91/e901 inside? you can do it easily if he/she doesn't use the tom mount. there a great mic to invest in as well (if a little pricey but I think they're totally worth it!)

[RumbleO]

Interesting article here prosoundweb.com/diy_subkick_microphone

on using a speaker cone as a mic to get the kick sound.

 

Fun to try. I found it exciting during sound check, but nothing could compensate for the flaccid playing during the gig.

(The kick was serendipitously a useful distance from the bass cab and I found that it gave me a good alternative to mix with the bass DI.)

 

I didn't use the 20db attenuator suggested.

The signal was a wee bit hot for the mic input, but I had about enough control in the gain knob.

[Wilflet]

Take front skin off, e901 inside with cable sticking out. replace skin, tune as best you can without crushing the cable too much

[Young Johnstone]

From my view as a drummer of 12 years... If he doesn't understand kick ports, is he any good at playing? Or a little lame?

[J Pearce]

A mic on the beater side can work well. No point trying to argue with a muso about their instrument, work with them. Find out what tone he wants and recreate that, it might be the solid resonant head is there for a reason...