57's on snare

[peddlebreaker]

Hey,

So I am trying to perfect my drum sound at the mo, which I realise can be a tricky thing to get right..

I have a good choice of mic's but I usually go for an sm57 on the snare.. and I just don't like the sound I am getting from it.. it seems to pick up a lot of hat even when I angle it with is back to the hats and the sound is thin and un-snare like.. when I am hearing other recordings (commercial) there is always such a lovely sound.. is this because they know how to place the overheads better? I understand that the 57 is an "industry standard" but are there any REALLY good mics around for recording snare? What are the some of the high end options?/

Thanks for your help!

Benny
xx

[molecular]

isn't a 57 hypercardioid? - so it will get a fair bit of hats if they are right at the back of the mic.

The best snare sound I have got is from mainly using OHs or a stereo pair out front of the kit, and then added a bit of 57 *under* the snare.

When it comes to miking drums, though, you have opened a can of worms, as I'm sure you're about to find out...

[molecular]

oh, and just in case:

tune the drum to the way you want it to sound in real life before recording.

If you haven't done that, you're f**ked. If you have done that, then your life will be easy!

[Mowens800]

isn't a 57 hypercardioid?

no it isn't, just plain cardioid

[James Percival]

High-end small-diaphragm condensers. Although I suspect that if a 57 is picking up so much of the hat, a SDC with potentially greater high-end sensitivity will not be much help. Most of the hi-hat sound will be several octaves above the snare fundamentals, so you can roll off a good few kHz from the high-end of the snare without colouring the sound greatly (a 57 tails off steeply above 16kHz anyway).

It's completely counter-intuitive to the drummer, but ask them to play the cymbals and hat as quietly as possible. You can then achieve beefier compression across the entire kit and overheads without tons of energy leaking into close-mics.

If you can't get a great snare sound with a 57, spend money on your drumkit, not another mic.

[Jack Ruston]

Things to consider:

1. The snare itself. It needs to be tuned appropriately and if it's quite a ringy sound you're after, it needs to be tuned sympathetically to the track. It can be tough. Some snares just wont do the sound you want. I tracked a band this weekend with a 6.5 black beauty and it just wouldn't tune down. It was nothing at all, or bright and too short. It didn't matter what we did with the snares or the heads...tuning, changing heads etc. In the end we used an old supraphonic which needed retuning after every take and was usually a tone flatter at the end than at the beginning but it had length and body and crack all in one. Sounded great.

2. I dont love 57s on snare either. I prefer beta 57's generally. I MUCH prefer things like RE20's but they have a nasty habit of picking up just as much kick . Beyer 201's are good. Sm7's are good. But to be honest I think it'll be the snare itself that's giving you grief.

3. The sound of the snare in the overheads and the relationship phase wise between the close mic and the overheads is really important. They must be positively reinforcing. The sound of the overheads depends on the mics and the rooms and will generally be dictated by what sort of project it is, what the cymbals sound like and how the drummer plays.

4. A lot of the length of the snare comes from the room mics. If they're boxy or comb filtery you're in trouble because you'll end up pulling them out and ending up with a short snare again.

You should probably rent a couple of other mics for a day just to try and see if they correct what it is you dont like. I'm willing to bet that they wont from my own experiences but I must admit I dont like 57's all that much either.

J

[Jack Ruston]

Oh AND...re the hats...you need to:

1. Get the snare mic away from the hats.

2. Get the drummer to hit the hats reasonably gently, and

3. If at all possibly get a screen in between the two. It works wonders. I'll try and post some clips at some point but I dont have a before and after I'm afraid.

Jack

[molecular]

isn't a 57 hypercardioid?

no it isn't, just plain cardioid

sorry - beta57 I was thinking of!

OP - maybe you could give some examples of a snare sound you really like?

[Pentaren]

For sure, I had exactly the same problems a few years back, and came looking for an answer to the same question, thinking 'how can a cheapo old 57 be THE mic for snare', however - it is - generally, but it's not so much about the mic...

Following general advice repeated here, I then got right into tuning my snare, more so than ever before, and am still experimenting with different brands of snares (the snares themselves, not different drums) - I love Puresound snares personally, but this again was not an immense difference.

What made the most difference was when I took the snare out into my new live room, on completion, slapped a brand new head on it, (the bottom head was ok, not as critical), tuned it to perfection and WHAM! I don't think I've ever been so happy!

THAT was the sound I was looking for, it's in the playing, the snare, the tuning and the room first and foremost, no substitute for that ultimately.

I would personally recommend always putting a new head on a snare at least before critical recording, either the day before and running it in a touch, or on the day, depending, personally I put it on before the session, then warm up on the kit and the head's perfect. Nothing worse than a dead head.

Since getting my room, it's like a new world.

The other big thing I notice, in terms of crack, is technique on the snare. I see a lot of guys with sloppy technique basically, I have really worked hard on getting a really nice, powerful but graceful clean stroke in my playing technique, and it works wonders, it may seem overly basic, but I come across it quite regularly, and people are often amazed at the difference, same with most instruments, a positive, clean technique really has it's own rewards in many ways. Works for me anyway )

Oh yeah, and with regard to ring, I have a really nice Tama cadnium/nickel shell snare, which rings like a biatch, although it's a very nice ring, for some tracks it's too much as Jack says (Jack - perhaps that's why I don't like the Beta57 on this snare), and I often use some moongel at the 12 and/or 9 points (clockface), to suit, which just helps give me different sounds from the snare, depending on what I'm doing. Again a controversial issue sometimes, but it has it's uses.

After which, all the other tracking/mixing advice comes into play, but it's all so much easier when the snare's really sounding right to start with, more importantly, I find generally that I'm tweaking for effect and enhancement, rather than correcting or trying to sculpt a good sound which when you solo it wasn't there in the first place, which used to drive me absolutely nuts, till I realised all of the above.

J

[Jack Ruston]

I use gels all the time. I always have piles of them at every session because I find that the drummers tend to sneak off with them!

I'm sure that a really great drum tech could tune a snare in such a way that the amount of ring would be perfect but quite frankly its just not that simple a lot of the time particularly when the drums you're faced with are less than perfect. I love the gels.

J

[Pentaren]

There's no getting away from the ring in my experience, it's inherent in the shell. I do find that the ring can be sympathetic if the tuning's spot on, but it's a given really, and I find it suits certain things and will use it for that, whereas for other things it's crap, unless you can tame it to suit with the gel, but too much and you kill the crack. This is a nice snare as well.

If you listen carefully to recordings you can hear the difference quite clearly between wood and metal snare shells, and it's always the ring that first gives it away on the metals. Wood shells are obviously less susceptible to it.

The other thing that works for me is that I put the 57 between the two toms in front of the snare, rather than coming from the Hi-hat side, using a small boom from below. I find I get much better positioning on the snare itself, it's less in the way of my left hand for grace notes and drags etc, I'm not afraid of hitting it when doing stuff between hat and snare, and it picks up less bleed from the floor toms on the right.

Jack, you ever come across anything better than Moogel? I've tried most damping solutions, Evans, E-rings etc, Moongel best by far, I use it on the whole kit as necessary.

J

[jtcoops]

I've found the best snare sound by:

1. NEW SKINS! Ambassador skins sound quite nice. Makes a world of difference and really is the first place to start.

2. TUNE - just like everyone else says. A good tuned snare gets you half the way there.

3. I got an Auralex 1' square tile, and cut out a 4" x 4" share, and then cut a hole in the middle, and pushed a Beta 57 through it. then positioned the beta 57 so it was pointing at the snare, and separated from the hi-hats using the 4x4 tile. Really helps spill, and makes the snare more gateable.

4. SM57 on the underside of the snare, if you can directly opposit the top mic, pointing up at the same angle the top mic is pointing down, almost as if you are drawing a diagonal line through the snare, with the snare chains inbetween the mics. Reverse the phase of this mic.

Blend the two mics and you get to control ring, thwack and crack to your hearts content. Gate the top mic, let the bottom mic have freedom.

[Pentaren]

+1 on the Ambassador! I've tried all sorts on my snare, powerdots/ebonies/pintstripes - just for the hell of it, and always come back to the Ambassador, it's what all the big boys tend to use from what I can gather, and consequently what you're most likely listening to on a commercial recording - generally.

I've had varying results with the bottom head, don't process it either, but I've not tried the diagonal line before.

I've never done the separation trick - will give that a go myself.

[Ian Savage]

Whenever I've recorded my kit I've just found slapping an O-ring on every drum for close mic-ing works a treat, nothing more than that. Out of my (admittedly limited) mic collection for some reason we found that a T-Bone 400 large-diaphragm condenser worked best on the top of the snare mixed with a little bit of a 57 underneath; horses for courses though, with different snare, room and player it might have sounded totally different.

[Steve Hill]

I like to say it's pretty much all been said, but that would only be asking for trouble.

The positioning of both the snare and hi hat mics is critical, and not always logical! Moving one just a fraction can make all the difference. I usually do a couple or three test recordings of a couple of bars of snare and hats just t fine tune the amount of spill on each track.

Lately I'm not using an under-snare mic, but I like a small diaphragm condenser on the top (currently I like a KM84, if I can trust the drummer not to hit it), and a side mic jut off-axis to the air hole. This mic varies a lot but the last version was an AKG C414. I rotate the snare on its stand so that the side mic at least gets good rejection of the hi hat, whilst not getting in the drummer's way.

Hi hat might well be another KM84, pointing away from the snare as much as possible. If you can get the drummer to play with the hat cymbals physically a bit higher than the rim of the snare, every extra inch helps.

Finally, all three of these mics will probably have some Auralex foam baffling to further reduce spill -

like these.

[Jack Ruston]

I've got some new Gels...They're round ones rather than the rectangular moongels. Cant remember who makes them but they're half the price and twice as sticky. Only disadvantage is that they're harder to tear in half.

I find the O rings rattle too much for studio use.

Snare bottom mics are a love hate thing for me. I sometimes love them but more often than not they just cause problems phase wise...not so much with the snare but with the kick. I'm liking one mic closer to the top than anywhere else but a bit lower so that you add in some snares. It's really a rim micing.

On that note I've also come to the conclusion that a single inside kick mic is the way to go. If you get the drum right, you can get just the right amount of click and boom or whatever and it's dry and just cuts through the track. It also has so little spill which is useful later. I'm finding myself moving the 47 up away from the outside kick position to a sort of front of drum kit position that's the same distance as the overheads from the snare, and then obliterating it with a listen back compressor or a distressor. It makes it into the room mic collection at mix. Really cool for rock stuff...which is the angle from which all my suggestions are coming.

I've been getting a reflection filter between snare and hats. If you imagine that from the drummers perspective the filter sits snugly around the back of the hats (luckily it's just over 14 inches diameter) in such a way that their stick has enough room if they play hat to rack tom. You then tuck the KM84 (which of course is the only mic one should consider on hats ) into the deepest part of the filter, and have the snare mic on the other side coming in from the side of the snare pretty much opposite the drummer.

It gets a little trickier when a drummer has lots of toms. The producer I work for most of the time has a one hanging, one floor tom rule which he ruthlessly enforces! That makes for better fills and easier snare mic placement because the rack tom is usually 'straight ahead' rather than close to the snare...not to mention that it tends to remove all those smaller toms that so rarely sound good unless they're part of a Bob Gatzen video, and even then. We did let a drummer have two floor toms this weekend, but with a blanket threat that if he played badly at any point we'd take one away. He played great! I quite like the second floor tom but then I always like the lower pitched toms a lot more than the higher ones.

[The Elf]

The producer I work for most of the time has a one hanging, one floor tom rule which he ruthlessly enforces! That makes for better fills and easier snare mic placement because the rack tom is usually 'straight ahead' rather than close to the snare...not to mention that it tends to remove all those smaller toms that so rarely sound good unless they're part of a Bob Gatzen video

Ouch! Your producer doesn't do much prog-rock work then?!

I'm always disappointed when a drummer arrives with less than 6 toms!! Those high toms can sound stunning if you have a drummer that knows how to use them.

[Pentaren]

Ouch! Your producer doesn't do much prog-rock work then?!

I'm always disappointed when a drummer arrives with less than 6 toms!! Those high toms can sound stunning if you have a drummer that knows how to use them.

Errrm that'll be me then...

6 + gong, grew up on prog!

Oh and some splashes, not to mention chinas

I have a pet hate, which is drumkits with only 2 toms!!! Not to say that I can't see the reasoning from a recording point of view certainly, but I am SO bored of drummers playing time on 3 piece kits, not to say that you necessarily need a big kit to be imaginative, but for me it's like playing a guitar with 3 strings! I will strip the kit back for some work, I try to play to the material, but it's all part of the range of the instrument, and I use them a lot.

Plus, one of the drum recordings that blows me away most in terms of quality of sound, separation etc etc, is Rush's Power Windows album, which proves that it can be done, if you look at the size of Peart's kit, which makes mine look like a toy. Or Phil Collins, or Simon Phillips, or Mel Gaynor, or many more - all big kit players.

Hence some of my positioning problems from my other thread on that subject...

I'll get my coat, and my bags, and check out now...

J

[Pentaren]

I've got some new Gels...They're round ones rather than the rectangular moongels. Cant remember who makes them but they're half the price and twice as sticky. Only disadvantage is that they're harder to tear in half.

What make pray tell?

I find the O rings rattle too much for studio use.

+1 And I find they damp the drum too much, whereas the gels are more versatile.

I've been getting a reflection filter between snare and hats. If you imagine that from the drummers perspective the filter sits snugly around the back of the hats (luckily it's just over 14 inches diameter) in such a way that their stick has enough room if they play hat to rack tom. You then tuck the KM84 (which of course is the only mic one should consider on hats ) into the deepest part of the filter, and have the snare mic on the other side coming in from the side of the snare pretty much opposite the drummer.

This sounds like a great idea! You mean an SE Reflexion Filter presumably? Not quite following you though, you mean put around the back of the hats under the toms? Then bring the snare mic through opposite the drummer (so from between the rack toms like I posted earlier is where I have my snare mic?), on the other side of the filter, then the bit I didn't get, where you put the hat mic exactly, oriented how?

J

[Steve Hill]

I'm always disappointed when a drummer arrives with less than 6 toms!! Those high toms can sound stunning if you have a drummer that knows how to use them.

Nahh, just one or two toms, then use Melodyne to pitch shift the fills so it sounds like he's using 12 of the b*****s

[The Elf]

[Plus, one of the drum recordings that blows me away most in terms of quality of sound, separation etc etc, is Rush's Power Windows album, which proves that it can be done, if you look at the size of Peart's kit, which makes mine look like a toy. Or Phil Collins, or …

Dude, do you do sessions!?!?

Power Windows – respect. You know your drum sounds!!

[_ Six _]

Lately I'm not using an under-snare mic, but I like a small diaphragm condenser on the top (currently I like a KM84, if I can trust the drummer not to hit it), and a side mic jut off-axis to the air hole. This mic varies a lot but the last version was an AKG C414. I rotate the snare on its stand so that the side mic at least gets good rejection of the hi hat, whilst not getting in the drummer's way.

like these.

Do you still need to invert the phase of the signal using this method Steve?

[Pentaren]

[Plus, one of the drum recordings that blows me away most in terms of quality of sound, separation etc etc, is Rush's Power Windows album, which proves that it can be done, if you look at the size of Peart's kit, which makes mine look like a toy. Or Phil Collins, or …

Dude, do you do sessions!?!?

Power Windows – respect. You know your drum sounds!!

Wow - I didn't get incinerated!

I'm not alone...

Sessions, not yet, but I'm in the process of upgrading my mic/pre rig, then plan to offer session services via online, as I live in the middle of darkest Cornwall, and will be looking to get involved in whatever I can get involved in...

Yeah Power Windows, discovered that when I were a nipper, talk about upper toms...

The following album 'Hold Your Fire' is actually better sounding if you ask me, and the playing's immense, but I think the songs have the edge on Power Windows.

Anwyway...

[Jack Ruston]

This sounds like a great idea! You mean an SE Reflexion Filter presumably? Not quite following you though, you mean put around the back of the hats under the toms? Then bring the snare mic through opposite the drummer (so from between the rack toms like I posted earlier is where I have my snare mic?), on the other side of the filter, then the bit I didn't get, where you put the hat mic exactly, oriented how?

Sorry...I didn't explain very well....Yes SE reflection filter. You sit the drummer at the kit with the hats slightly to their left and the snare in front of them. Get a small stand with the RF on it directly the otherside of the hats so that the curve of the RF comes around the hats. So now if the drummer looks at the hats they are looking into the reflection filter with the hats in the middle. It comes about half way round the hats. Now, if it was up to you, you'd rotate the RF around the hats so that it was directly between the hats and the snare for maximum shielding between the two but the drummer would not be able to hit the hats with their right hand so you find the point where they can comfortably hit the hats, and when playing off the hat onto the rack tom, they dont collide with the RF. If you have a silly number of rack toms (more than one) and you like to line them up behind the hats or something, then you're screwed. So then you put the snare the other side of the RF making sure that it's protected from the hats and vice versa.

Jack

[Steve Hill]

Has anyone any experience of the SE Instrument Reflexion Filter?

See here .

They seem to be tailor made for the job, but at £119 per mic I'd want to hear some glowing reports before I bought say five of them!

(You can get a flightcased set of five for £499)

SixStrings... phase seems to be luck of the draw when you use a top+side mic on snare, probably depending on exactly when the waveforms hit each mics. Having tracked, I solo both, then reverse phase on one or the other to see if it sounds any better. Generally it doesn't, but maybe I'm just lucky, or innately stupid, or both?