Today I walk you through my initial setup for recording drums and how I get it going. Recently I rearranged my PDP Classic Concept Maple kit and moved it to the center of the drum room. Since I was able to finally do this I made some big changes that I have wanted to do in forever! Starting with rewiring up my kit with all new shorter correct length microphone wires and organizing my snake and all of the inputs correctly in order!

To start, I show you my snare wiring cheat sheet. I put all of my microphones in order from Bass drum to Cymbals. We then go into the program XAir Edit and I show you how I label all of my inputs and make all necessary adjustments. Things like flipping the polarity on the bottom snare drum mics and turning on all of the phantom power for the cymbal microphones. Once that is done I start setting the gains to where I think they should be. I base this off of previous setups.

Next we dive into Garage Band. Here I show you how I add all of my inputs in the same order as my XAir program and how it's written down on the cheat sheet. This helps keep everything nice and organized. Once they are in, I label each input and color coat them to make the visual depth perception. Once that is ready I setup to record and hit the drums several times to get a first run setting. From there we make all the necessary adjustments and do it again!

Once we get our first play in, we look at the wavelengths for all of the microphones. I'm basically just looking for the height of each wave. At this point I'm not worried about the mix, just making sure the microphones aren't too loud or too soft. So I make note of what changes need to be made and then go back into XAir and make the necessary adjustments. From there we'll record again and do it again!

In the second test run you can see what I wanted to do on the first attempt. All the drums I recorded in the same order as they are listed so it's nice and easy to read the wave lengths and compare them all. Then once I'm happy with that I begin to Phase Shift. And what this means is I make sure my over head mics are in line with each other and then I "shift" or physically move the wavelength of each drum to blend in with the over. Please note, that some drums are more left or more right so they should be aligned properly with the corresponding overhead. For example, my 14" Floor tom is on my left side, so I'm using the Left overhead wavelength for alignment. My snare drum is dead center and the overheads are set to equal distance of the snare so it should align to both overheads perfectly. The reason for phase shifting is because the microphones are different distances from one another and this helps clean up the mix.

After everything is aligned and phase shifted I will go in and start doing some EQ'ing. I downloaded a cheat sheet I got from an online class that has small notes on what to look for. What hertz to remove and what to add to pump up the mix. Now I am no professional in any way shape or form... I just go with what is pleasing to my ear. It can always be better! Also, I have no idea how to sample, so any mix done by me has no sampling. I have done a couple of videos where I've sent off my mix to be editing by a studio and those have samples. But for me, no sampling lol. I'll also make sure to turn on and adjust my noise gates. This will help with any bleed from the other drums. Some can be more extreme and some you almost can't even turn on but it's a great tool to use.

Finally at the end I go through my entire mix and play a sample of each channel!

DIY Drummer
Thanks for watching!!

PROUDLY ENDORSED BY: Sabian Cymbals
www.sabian.com
Kit: PDP Classic Concept Maple
Snare: AVA Snare Drum Step Stave
Hardware: DW 9000 Pedals, DW3000 Stands
Cymbals: 16",17",18",19",20" AAX XPlosion Crashes, 14",15" AAX Medium Hats, 24" AA Bash ride, 18" AAX China
Sticks: VicFirth 5A Extreme
Mics: Digital Reference and Sennheiser 602II
In Ears: KZ AS10
Interface: Behringer XR18
Edited: Garageband, iMovie, XAir Edit
Cameras: Nikon D3200

Spaz Approved
Instagram @ SpazDrums



0:14 XAir Edit Setup
2:15 Garage Band Setup
4:15 First Level Test Run and Adjustments
7:30 Second Level Test Run The better one!
8:00 Phase Shifting
11:55 EQ'ing
13:30 Adding Noise Gates
14:50 Snare and Tom quick EQ
18:13 Lets Hear My Final Mix!
20:18 Outro Summary