November 07th, 2012

Got probably one of my best recordings of drums tonight at Gallery Acoustics. We spent about 15 minutes trying out different cymbals to find the ones that were in key with the music. Then I spent almost an hour tuning the tops and bottom heads of the toms so they would be in key with the music, but also somewhere within their natural sweet spot. After a quick tuning of the resonant and beater heads of the kick drums we set up to record. I got a super clean recording and we didn't need to use any dampening materials on any drums or even inside the kick. Everything was really well controlled and sounded like one giant instrument instead of a bunch of parts that add up to a drum set... all thanks to a very thorough tuning. It worked tremendously well for the music and is definitely the "right way to do things" from a recording standpoint. I don't need to gate the toms or do any processing really because we didn't get much bleed on the close mics and the drummer (Nick) had impeccable control over his dynamics. Ribbon overheads, beta 57 snare, N/D868 on kick, Floor tom got a Beta 52, Rack tom had a Beyerdynamics MC930, used a Pearlman TM1 set in omni as a room mic. Lots of time was spent with mic placement.