Plenty of drummers hate electronic drums, but that is the best way to fix the problem with money, imho. Otherwise it becomes a stage volume thing, like others have said. Dont even get me started on singing drummers.
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Drums bleeding into vocal mic live...
- Thread starter dirtychinchilla
- Start date
Condenser mic could help the situation. I am big fan of the Shure Beta 87. You could also just mute the drums more or have him or her use thunder or lightnign rods to take down the attack and percussiveness. Of course the drummer will probably resist the second option.
FullumMusic
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Open mics bleed. There's no way around it. Mic patterns reject some directional audio, but but not all of it because loud drums are loud and bouncing around the space and coming from many directions. And if the drummer is behind the vocalist, aka the direction the cardioid picks up, it'll be getting audio from the drums.
- The vocalist could sing louder or the band could play softer. (If the band is based around a soft vocalist, the band should probably turn down, much to the chagrin of the band. As much as we all think we're the most important, and really as bassists we are most important, the audience wants to hear words first, band second.)
- If the vocalist is singing softly they should be right up on the mic. Singing softly far away from the mic is bad mic control and will let a lot more bleed in. They shouldn't have to sing louder if that's not how they sing. But they do have to get really close to the mic to sing softly into it. If they're afraid of the mic they need to work on that. And i mean like, 1 inch away at most.
- In conjunction with the vocalist getting the appropriate distance from the mic, set the vocal mic's gain stages properly. When doing sound check, the fader should be put at Unity and then the gain can be brought up to the right level. If the gain is too high, the mic will pick up more of everything else, like the drums. If there's a house sound engineer you gotta hope they know what they're doing. Don't start telling the sound engineer how to set gain stages unless you want to insult their ability to do their job and get a spiteful of bad sound the rest of your set. The decent ones already know. Hehehe. Otherwise you can do sound yourselves or hire a sound tech for your sets.
- The drums could put up a Plexiglass Drum Shield. It'll help reduce drums being picked up by the mic but not remove it. Of course, if it's a situation where the drums aren't mic'd, it'll reduce the amount the audience can hear the drums too.
- The drummer can set up somewhere other than directly behind the vocalist if possible so it's not a direct shot into the vocal mic's pickup pattern. Again, might reduce slightly but won't remove bleed.
- A noise gate on the vocal mic could help, but if it's not set up properly it could cause a lot of issues. First, the threshold has to be low enough to let the soft vocals through. If the drums have as much level as the vocals, it'll get through the gate. Second, if the threshold, attack, and release aren't set up just right, it could have weird abrupt on/off chops reacting to the vocals or feel like there's a delay between a vocal input and when the audio starts coming through. And last, even if the first two issues are accounted for, once the vocalist starts singing and opens up the gate, any drums/bleed the mic is picking up will be let through the gate too.
- The optogate was mentioned. Never used it myself. Could be helpful when vocalist is not singing, but again, once the gate is open, it lets the vocals through and also the bleed through.
- Electronic drum kit (not the most useful suggestions for a lot of bands or music styles)
- Electronic drum kit + in ear monitors
- A desperate and convoluted method that probably won't work that great and takes a lot of setup: Set up a single drum overhead. It should be as far away from the drums as the vocal mic is. Instead of sending the vocals to the mains, send the vocals to a bus. Send the single drum overhead to the same bus and not out the mains. The only place this overhead should go is to the vocal bus. Invert the phase of the drum overhead to cancel itself out of the vocal track. Send the bus to the mains.
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Like mentioned earlier, you need to meet each other halfway. Lighter sticks, cympads. Singer needs to sing louder. The OM7 helps a bit, but your singer needs to eat the mic.
As others have said, there may not be much that can be done. A few possibilities:
Make sure she is “eating the mic”, as the saying goes. Meaning, is she right up on the mic, or hanging back, off it? In a situation like this, a singer should be right up on it to get max volume. If she's holding it 4-5 inches from her face, and singing quietly, that will reduce volume and presence a lot.
Does your board have a high pass filter on the vocal channel? That won’t help snare or cymbal bleed, but it can lop off the low junk, which can help.
Can the band turn down a bit? If the drummer is playing loud to be heard over loud guitars/bass/keys, turning the amplified band members down a few clicks can really help.
Those plexiglass drum shields are used pretty commonly. They don’t look great, imo, but they are designed in part to reduce drums bleeding into vocal mics.
In any case, best of luck!
If the drums are right behind the singer, a more directional (hyper cardioid) mic won't help. The traditional formation of drums in the center-back, guitar and bass to the sides and singer center-front is kind of the worst possible distribution on a small stage.
Is the drummer acquainted with the concept of dynamics, as in adjusting his volume to the circumstances in which the band is playing?
This. And actually if you switched to a condenser mic, things would probably be worse.
Try to position the singer so that her mic isn't pointing toward the drum set or a wall that is reflecting the drums. Get her to eat the mic if she doesn't already. Consider putting up some drum shields to control drum bleed.
Things that are (virtually) free:
Rearrange stage. Drums on the right, singer far left., away from snare.
Play with "quiet" drum sticks.
Try the Grateful Dead dual mic setup, if you have two identical mics. See picture in the link. With adjustment it can suppress a lot of drum bleed.
Grateful Dead mic question.
Rearrange stage. Drums on the right, singer far left., away from snare.
Play with "quiet" drum sticks.
Try the Grateful Dead dual mic setup, if you have two identical mics. See picture in the link. With adjustment it can suppress a lot of drum bleed.
Grateful Dead mic question.
e-drums would fix this. You'd sound better out front and in your ears. Odds are the drummer would say "no", however. I've played both acoustic and electronic drums and I like both but even with my pro-e-drum opinion I admit they are not the same playing experience.
I've not seen this before but it seems brilliant. Use 2 mics, swap phase on the 2nd and sing only into the first. Sound Tech can adjust the level of the 2nd mic to null out the ambient bleed.
Plexiglass cage or electronic kit. Or have the drummer play appropriately
I have seen more than a few live setups with a plexiglass baffle around the drum kit. I I recall correctly, they looked to be about 3 ft high. Of course, that presupposes that the drums are fully miked and running into the PA.
a condenser mic would be considerably worse.
Yeah... the differences in mic patterns probably won't be enough to have an impact on your situation.
If you're gonna throw money at it, have you thought about putting the drummer behind a shield?
Tell the drummer to buy the shield or play more quietly. If he won't do either, we have a a generic solution here to solve the problem.
A Beta 58 is a little hotter and less prone to feedback than a SM58, but it will pick up the drums just as much, so I don’t see that as a solution. E-drums might help, but your drummer might not go along with that. Or you could ask him/her to play softer. Or you could fire the drummer and find an E-drummer who plays softer.
You have mostly a drummer problem and less of a stage and even less of a singer problem.
She has to eat that microphone, sing LOUD, and NOT stand in front of the kit. You have to do your best to lower your stage volume. SM58 is a fine mic for live performances.
A mic might help but won't fix. Hot Rods will help but not fix. You need a drum shield or an electronic kit.
Honestly, I think our drummer would rather use his electric kit than haul and set up mics and a drum shield.
We have a female singer that belts it and we still use and electronic kit. I go DI. Keys are DI. Guitar is DI. Drummer can hit as hard as he wants. FOH has complete control and it sounds fantastic. IEM's for everyone obviously. You have to have a decent controller and pads for it to sound good but I believe it is the best solution. Once you get the technique down to play an electric kit (it's not the same as an acoustic kit) it's a great solution.
Honestly, I think our drummer would rather use his electric kit than haul and set up mics and a drum shield.
We have a female singer that belts it and we still use and electronic kit. I go DI. Keys are DI. Guitar is DI. Drummer can hit as hard as he wants. FOH has complete control and it sounds fantastic. IEM's for everyone obviously. You have to have a decent controller and pads for it to sound good but I believe it is the best solution. Once you get the technique down to play an electric kit (it's not the same as an acoustic kit) it's a great solution.
