Drum Sounds

Samples of drum recordings to hear (i) the room qualities and (ii) the differences resulting from variations in mic placement. All recordings feature a Yamaha Rock Tour Custom with Premier snares and a mixture of Zildjian cymbals and hi-hats.

From progfusion sessions

Room about 13 square with a 10.5' high ceiling plus a small window bay.

All recorded dry in 4 channels onto a Delta 44 via a small Berhinger mixer, exported as 256kbps MP3. No EQ altered - this is to let you hear the raw sounds.

Kit turned to face out, and with rudimenary baffles made of blankets behind the kit at the walls. New heads, including Evans G2 clear heads on the toms. AKG D 112 inside bass drum about 4" from batter head, Beyerdynamic M201 on snare about 2" above rim pointing to centre. Overheads pair of AKG C1000S.

After listening to the recordings sampled below, I chose the higher ORTF configuration. Adding a single moongel to the snare to cut out excess ring, we get: grooves in 5 sample.mp3

Experimenal set (before snare damping applied). Please ignore the sloppy playing, the point was to hear the sounds.

  1. Overheads at either side pointing inwards. About 12" above cymbals. outside_in.mp3
  2. Overheads ORTF about 9" above cymbals. high_ortf.mp3
  3. Overheads ORTF sneaked in between symbals and toms. About 4" below cymbals. Stereo seperation is excellent and toms are exciting, but cymbals create a nasty sound.low_ortf.mp3
From mygrain sessions
This was in a different but similarly proportioned room in same building, a foot bigger. This room had several large broadband panels. By now the Berhinger is long gone and this was using an RME quadmic for preamps. Same mics, though D112 is further back, and M201 is 3" away. The snare was a Premier brass snare, whereas the previous recordings were probably a Premier wooden snare. Again no EQ or effects of any kind, just totally direct sounds. kit2012.mp3

Compared to the previous recordings I think this perhaps has more depth, power and control, but the snare is dull - should have tuned up! The rooms both had carpet, contributing to some relatively dull dry sounds.

Drumming in Berkeley II studio