Help with multi track recording on Logic...

[Dtorre]

so i had another thread that was asking if i could record multiple tracks at a time, and people told me i needed something similar to- http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/product/PreSonus-FP10-10x10-FireWire-Interface?sku=242036

Now my question is how to record arm more than one live instrument while in logic...

my goal is to have 8 drum tracks record simultaneously
an example would be
track 1- snare
track 2- kick
track 3- high hat
track 4- crash 1
track 5- crash 2
track 6- ride
track 7- tom 1
track 8- tom 2
because as you know if i can mix each individual drum, it sounds close to 10x better.

so can someone please explain how this works?

 

[deej999]

You need 8 microphones. The presonus interface you linked to and eight cables to connect from the Presonus to the microphones. You need to carefully position the microphone too.

After plugging in the Presonus to your Mac

In Logic 8 create 8 audio tracks.
Set the device in Logic's Preferences to the Presonus.
Set each channel strip (for each track) to a different input.
Click on the little R button for each track to ready it to record.
Click 'Record' to begin recording.

 

[Big Boss Man]

In your other thread you said your budget is $1000. I don't think you will be able to get an audio interface and 8 mics and cables for $1000. You might want to consider fewer mics. You can effectively record drums with four mics: two over heads, one on the kick, and then one somewhere around the center of the kit to pick up everything else. You will need to work with the position of the mics to get a good balance between all of the pieces of the kit. Another thing to consider is the acoustics of the room. You may want to experiment with setting up the drum kit in different positions within the room or try out completely different rooms.

 

[Comma]

Everyone above has their points.

You don't need a Mic for -every- instrument, it just helps with mixing. What you can do.

3 Mics: Pair of Small Diaphragm Condensers for Overhead, Kick Drum
4 Mics: Pair of Small Diaphragm Condensers for Overhead, Kick Drum, Snare Drum

Adding further Microphones for each ones depending on budget.

I'd suggest any number of the Kick Drum Microphones, I'm a fan of the Audix D6, however a lot of people use the flat Kick Mics now. Then Rode NT2A as a matched pair, rounding out everything else with an SM57 with a relevant EQ.

But then again there are thousands of ways of doing it, these are just the ones I use and have seen used quite often.

 

[newuser2310]

with 8 mics aren't you going to get some noise bleeding in from the other parts of the drum kit?

IE in the mic next to the toms is going to pick up noise from the symbols?

the only way to avoid that would be to record your drums separately thus making the 8 mic interface a bit overkill?

 

[ChrisA]

Learning to place eight mics will take a long time. Lots of experimenting and moving each mic a few inches at a time. There must be a million combinations to try.

A better way is to start out with two mics, say overhead and get that to work as best you can. This might mean moving the drums and the mics and doing stuff to the room. Then after you like this result add one more mic, maybe to the kick drum. Then try out some mixing ideas. The add another mic. and so on.....

Simply setting up eight microphones will basically make a big mess. You need weeks and months to learn. And also you need time to shop for mics andlearn about how each works and what each one sounds like and then buy the next mic, one at a time.

 

[ImpostorOak]

with 8 mics aren't you going to get some noise bleeding in from the other parts of the drum kit?

IE in the mic next to the toms is going to pick up noise from the symbols?

the only way to avoid that would be to record your drums separately thus making the 8 mic interface a bit overkill?

No professional on Earth records all drums in a kit separately. Yeah, there's bleed, but you can deal with it. Gates can be placed on the kick, snare and tom mics to significantly reduce bleed.

 

[newuser2310]

No professional on Earth records all drums in a kit separately. Yeah, there's bleed, but you can deal with it. Gates can be placed on the kick, snare and tom mics to significantly reduce bleed.

I thought as much, but would a professional studio have 8 mics for the drums? Would they fiddle with each part(using noise gates and eq) or record a few of them together(hi hat, hat etc) and have less mics?

 

[ImpostorOak]

Professional studios often have more than 8 mics at a time on a drum kit. You could have any of the following:

Kick in (ie inside the kick drum)
kick out
snare top
snare bottom (bottom mics are only used in conjunction with top mics... nobody uses them by themselves)
toms top and bottom (however many toms you have)
hi-hat
left overhead, right overhead
maybe room mics (stereo pair)
if it's jazz, maybe a spot mic on the ride for a little extra definition

With three toms, doing top and bottom for all the drums and in/out for the snare, and a stereo pair as room mics, that comes out to like 15 mics. It just depends on the engineer and how many channels are available. I heard of a guy I know use 20 mics in a session sometime last week. I think that's a little excessive, but whatever.

If you have nice overheads (and the key is having NICE overheads, not some condenser mic that's like $100), you can get a really great drum sound from that (and maybe a kick mic). I did a session last week with 11 mics. But the overheads (Neumann TLM 103s) sounded so good that I almost didn't want to use the rest of the kit at all (including the kick! they really blew me away!). Of course, when it comes time to mix, and you're putting all the other instruments on top of it, you never know when you're going to want a little more of one particular part of the kit.

Another thing you can do instead of using a gate is to go into the track in a DAW and delete all the space in the track where the drum isn't making noise. This can take a little time with something like kick and snare (and needs to be done carefully or you can make your drums really sound like crap), but it generally doesn't take too much time for toms and generally has a better result that using a gate (which also needs to be done carefully or you'll screw up your sound).

But you can also just be careful with how you set up your mics. The biggest bleed is between snare and hi-hat. You'll most likely be using cardioid mics for that (like, 100% of the time unless you're feeling really experimental for some reason), so you can position the snare mic so that it rejects sound from the hi-hat and vice versa.

 

[newuser2310]

thanks