How many channels/mics does your drummer use?

[edro]

I find it funny at times going into a small club and see ridiculous sound equipment, mics from hell on anything and everything, the owner raising homey hell about volume and yet the band thinks they are "in concert"...and they wonder why they don't get the red carpet invitation to come back...

I remember seeing badass bands in my teenage days with systems like Shure Vocalmaster two column PAs, old A7s, tuck-n-roll 'sparkles', with vocals only through the PA system, and they sounded pretty damn good. I remember when the Peavey 'Big Knobs' were da cheeze with club bands.... The players controlled their own stage volume together. They could play clean as hell too. These weren't backyard players by a long shot. Some other old farts may remember the small town armory shows, gym shows, clubs shows, etc., by known bands and individuals. There were not that many venues to play way back... No big PA system and usually a small stage with house lights, sometimes on a flatbed trailer.... Back then, wanna see a circus, go to the circus. Bands relied on their music....

There are many old veteran players around the country playing weekends at local VFWs, AL halls, etc., though old ass early Hartley equipment that simply refuses to die, and yet they sound like a million dollars. They play clean, balanced, and don't blow anybody's head off. They are real deal veteran players. If they can sound that good with the plastic popsicles or even old short Peavey stubbies, they must know something younger folks don't...

Just some food for thought...

 

[4Mal]

The last drummer we worked with, bless her heart.

She showed up with her own mixer, plugged her conventional acoustic drums with transducers into the board, miked the cymbals and handed us 2 cables, left and right. She has her own monitor

No issues, I worship the ground she sets up on for being this way.

Don't know why more don't do this.

Beats having the drummer make a list of demands along with not being happy because we don't have a pair of XYZ mics to "capture the nuances".

We played bigger venues, normally a small cub wouldn't need this done.

As a sound guy - I would be unhappy with that arrangement on drums. I want access to individual gates, HPF, eq and I already have a drum sub-mix.

I dislike it on keys as well. My ears are out front. The drummers ears are on stage... sub mixed keyboards in the wrong hands are nothing but trouble you know the Leslie bottom rotor is boomy, the top rotor is a little weary, the Nord Electro Clavinet patch is patch is screaming loud and I'm busier than a one armed wall paper hanger trying to make it sound good. Eventually I just hi pass the rig at 160 and turn it down and ignore the keyboard player's significant other... /rant

There have been a few situations where the mold I described above has been broken. Those have been rare exceptions in my experience. Most times I get a sub-mix, it is an end to end cluster...

 

[4Mal]

Edro, you and I would get on fine...

 

[edro]

Thanks 4Mal. Probably would at that.

I am rather simplistic in that I am of the belief that if you kill the bad stuff, what you have left is gravy to be thickened if needs be.... You can't cover hog tiSh with boosted eq no matter how hard you try... Get rid of the hog tiSh. Don't add nuttin until you're through with the hog killing....

You might find this funny...kinda sorta after the fact...
I was hired to straighten out a big ass system in a [ ---> club <--- ] (indoors, not freaking outside and not a huge venue) a couple years back. The very first thing I did was to set every EQ knob on every strip flat and kill every smiley face on the banks of 31s (grrrrrrrr).... Next, was to take out ALL the drum kit mics OUT of the freaking monitor mix and start over with monitors. Every damn drum mic hot as a firecracker through the monitors bottom boosted like hell. I was pretty much fuming by that point. I also had to explain to the dweeb that was supposedly their guy that there were variable sensitivity knobs on amps for a reason and also asked why there were so many big paper drivers and only a couple of horns in that floor to ceiling mountain on each side. Geeze, I needed a beer the size of Delaware. I just shut some amps down. Band was deliriously happy at go time, they could hear each other and club was happy that I stopped the ear bleeds.... They said it sounded so much better, clean, and even 'seemed' louder but not to the point of uncomfortable... Blew their minds that I even had some of that big shitstorm turned off but it was much punchier where it needed to be... I wasn't running near the wattage that was initially spinning the little record like hell in the powerco meter outside... The club's dippoopie even left the building by go time... I slider munky'd the rest of the night as I was already paid, the hard stuff was already done, had a free tab and they even brought beer to me before I could ask for another....

Once I got the system back to 'knob' flat and some of those boomers shut down, the rest was easy....very easy.... i did have to loosen the batter head of the drummers kick... had it way too tight.... Did a full mid cut on it on the strip and it was perfect for that room.

I detest slider munkys that try to use the sub crutch... We all hear shows like that... Crank the subs until nobody can tell the mix sucks.... The balanced from top to bottom of spectrum concept seems to be alien to some... Mix shouldn't sound like it is accompanied by a battery of 155mm howitzers....

Just because you can move walls doesn't mean you should...

 

[Nephilymbass]

In my oldies band, it varies from a single mic on the bass drum (not "kick"...that's some lame soundtech term for the bass drum ) to a mic on every drum and two overheads.

For former band geeks like myself this is a bass drum.

Bass drums are played with hands and mallets, you play a "Kick drum" with your feet.

 

[slamsinger]

SIX in my old band.. as we mic everything so it's available in our IEM mix. Cymbals are NOT mic'ed.
That said.. I put kick, snare and hat in my IEM's.. no other drums.. I get the rest thru ambient bleed.

Same here
Kick snare rack floor hat and One overhead that's doesn't get put into the mains (strictly for IEM's)
I usually put kick snare hat in my ears

 

[s0c9]

The last drummer we worked with, bless her heart.

She showed up with her own mixer, plugged her conventional acoustic drums with transducers into the board, miked the cymbals and handed us 2 cables, left and right. She has her own monitor

No issues, I worship the ground she sets up on for being this way.

Don't know why more don't do this.

Beats having the drummer make a list of demands along with not being happy because we don't have a pair of XYZ mics to "capture the nuances".

We played bigger venues, normally a small cub wouldn't need this done.

To add to @4Mal 's comments..... the sound guy in me does the "home alone" screech when hearing this!! HORRENDOUS.. sorry.. NOT bringing their own mics, etc, but the L/R feed. Every drummer should have their own set of mics, stands, etc.
Giving FOH a L/R feed for drums is totally worthless as I can do nothing with it the, but EQ and pan....or compress the life out of it !
No adjusting levels between kick, snare, hat, toms, O/H to FIT the room and BLEND with the band!
I've got to rely on a drummer pounding an acoustic kit, mixing via phones (or IEM's) and giving me a stereo feed?
I lasted 2 gigs with the last band that did that.. the BL was the drummer.. and clueless.
I will never ever, ever, ever run FOH like that.. no point, 'cus it makes me look like I don't know what I'm doing..
Well, I may not [actually] know what I'm doing, but I fudge-it pretty darn well.. much like playing bass !! LOL

 

[JimmyM]

For former band geeks like myself this is a bass drum.
View attachment 2308991
Bass drums are played with hands and mallets, you play a "Kick drum" with your feet.

I don't get how the method of striking it has anything to do with what's it's called. You don't call the marching or classical bass drum the "mallet drum," do you? Plus you're not kicking the drum anyway. You're pushing down a pedal with your foot that causes an attached mallet to hit the drum.

The only reason anyone calls it a kick drum is because of sound techs. They'd have a whole bunch of drum mics grouped together, but they still couldn't tell the difference between the bass drum and the bass on the board, so they started writing "kick" on their channel labels. And I resent sound techs having enough power to change the name of someone's instrument.

 

[edro]

And I resent sound techs having enough power to change the name of someone's instrument.

You should probably never read what I sometimes write on the tape strip across the bottom of a mixer I'm running....

 

[Biggbass]

usually 4 sometimes 5
kick, snare, rack, floor and if the room needs it an overhead.

 

[4Mal]

You should probably never read what I sometimes write on the tape strip across the bottom of a mixer I'm running....

Mand Dob Banj. you have to get short with sharpie on stripe tape ... Rt1, Rt2, Ft1 begins to sound like Star Wars

 

[tfer]

Four.

Kick (bass drum...!), snare and 2 overheads for everything else.

 

[Stevorebob]

All of them.

Seriously, 8.

 

[kalle74]

The drummer in my band: kick, snare, rt, ft 1, ft2 + overheads, if the room requires it. We play small rooms at present.

The band I do FOH for (latest): kick, snare top, snare bottom, snare 2, hihat, rt, ft1, ft2, stereo overheads. Bigger clubs, arenas, festivals. It's all mic'd no matter how small a room or stage, because all in-ears.

 

[Lowfader]

I just read this thread & I gotta say edro, spoken like a true sound man. I liked the post about the line check. Some things never change.

 

[DWBass]

Between 2 and 4, depending on venues and channel availability.

 

[jad]

8 for my drummer, but that includes his vocal mic. Close miced toms x3, K, S, HH (SDC), pads. No OHs, and this particular snare drum sounds best when I mic the shell (I5) to get some snares in there. Certainly don't need more top head in the size rooms we play. And as an added bonus my snare mic stays out of the stick zone and doesn't need to be adjusted 5 times per set.

In my IEMs I like some kick, a touch of snare to brighten it up and a bit of hats. Oh, and lots of pads.

 

[SuperK]

Our drummer used to mic his kick (bass) drum and one overhead. He started to mic his snare and 2 toms but he just couldn't get the sound that he wanted. He ended up buying a Roland electronic kit. I was skeptical at first because I like to hear the natural sound of an acoustic set on stage, but we play 80s music which has a lot of electronic drums anyway. Plus I got an IEM system so I can mix the drums to my taste and my ears are much better off. No more ringing in my ears after listening to crash symbols for 3-4 hours a night! Plus we have full control over drum volume which is key in smaller venues.

 

[Jools4001]

I run sound for our band and we just use one mic on the bass drum to accentuate it a bit, but I’m just about to try putting a couple of overhead mics on the kit...but not for sound reinforcement because the places we play are small enough not the need any extra drum volume (except for a little punch on the kick drum).

But I do have an X32 mixer so I’ve just set up a scene where I’m sending the main L/R, the two (intended) drum overheads and a couple of cheap boundary mics out in the room to a matrix mix which, in turn, feeds the USB recorder so that we can, hopefully, get crisp high quality recordings of gigs and rehearsals.

 

[Ross W. Lovell]

I find it funny at times going into a small club and see ridiculous sound equipment, mics from hell on anything and everything, the owner raising homey hell about volume and yet the band thinks they are "in concert"...and they wonder why they don't get the red carpet invitation to come back...

I remember seeing badass bands in my teenage days with systems like Shure Vocalmaster two column PAs, old A7s, tuck-n-roll 'sparkles', with vocals only through the PA system, and they sounded pretty damn good. I remember when the Peavey 'Big Knobs' were da cheeze with club bands.... The players controlled their own stage volume together. They could play clean as hell too. These weren't backyard players by a long shot. Some other old farts may remember the small town armory shows, gym shows, clubs shows, etc., by known bands and individuals. There were not that many venues to play way back... No big PA system and usually a small stage with house lights, sometimes on a flatbed trailer.... Back then, wanna see a circus, go to the circus. Bands relied on their music....

There are many old veteran players around the country playing weekends at local VFWs, AL halls, etc., though old ass early Hartley equipment that simply refuses to die, and yet they sound like a million dollars. They play clean, balanced, and don't blow anybody's head off. They are real deal veteran players. If they can sound that good with the plastic popsicles or even old short Peavey stubbies, they must know something younger folks don't...

Just some food for thought...

Our drummer uses more than ten channels but...............they go to her mixer and she gives us a L/R from her that is already mixed and panned. She has transducers in drums but the cymbals are mic'd.

Her mixer was bigger in the 80's but now it's tiny.

I thank God, her brain is wired the way it is!