Drum Thoughts

I spent some time in the Cat Box (the basement studio) this past sunday working on drum sound. I set up a AudioDesk project called Drum Tests and recorded several takes using various microphones and postisions.

I ended up taking the front drumhead off and going with a dynamic inside on a piece of foam. The snare is handled by a SM57. I tried two different mics on the snare and found that the sm57 had the punchiest sound.

The moved the overheads down low and placed the MXL990 on the lower right underthe ride and next to the floor tom and on the left i went the MXL991 low pointing up at the highhat and snare. the thinking is that I will get a bigger drum sound and still have plenty of cymbal sound as they are grouped pretty tight. Also it seems that the sound is better coming out from the bottom of the cymbals rather that the top.