Music Lesson: Finalizing Drum Setup and Preparing to Record

Overview
All right, we're back! Let's have a look at the waveforms. I'm just going to try and make this a bit smaller so we can see all of them at the same time.

• Waveforms Visibility
  Yeah, we've got all of the mics nearly there. There we go.

Analyzing the Kick Drum

As you can see, the kick drum sound looks pretty healthy now.

• Key Points:
  • No overloading.
  • Plenty of headroom here , this is good!

Let's have a quick listen. That sounds good.

Snare Drum Check

The next one is the snare drum. I'm going to take a look at that now.

• Adjusting Interface:
  Just going to make this so we can see how the mics interface with each other. That's all good.

Overall Setup Review

Everything looks pretty good here!

• Mic Gain:
  We gained the whole mic up quite a bit. I might have gained it up a little too much, but it actually looks fine.

  I don't think it's going to overload. I was bashing as hard as I could almost, so I usually do that when I double-check the gain. I hit a little bit harder than I'm actually going to do when I start recording, just to be on the safe side.

Let's have a listen to that. Just mute the kick.

Ready to Record

That's sounding good , a nice and healthy signal.

All right, guys! We've set everything up now, and we're ready to record. I think Blair, who let us use his track, is going to be really happy with the sound.

• Sound Quality:
  It sounds truly good, and we've got a nice full sound. You can listen to the stems as well! That will be downloadable, and you can check out the individual tracks and see how they sound for yourself.

Wrap-Up

To wrap up:

• We set up the drum kit.
• We set up the mics and chose the right ones for the right drum.
• Connected them to the individual preamps.
• Set the gain for a nice healthy signal and tweaked it a bit.

No overloading or phase issues, and after that, we can basically start recording.

Additional Notes on Production

There's a bit more to it than just recording the drums and having a clean sound. Most productions today involve a fair bit of processing on the drums.

In the next course, we'll take a look at:

• How I process the drums.
• Using compression and EQ.
• Parallel compression to create a sound that will fit into a track.

This way, you can learn how to mix the drums into a track. Most of the time, simply putting a clean drum kit without any processing will not blend in , unless you're doing more jazzy, natural sounding music or folk. But even in that case, I would say there's a fair bit of stuff going on under the hood.

Closing

Thanks for tuning into the course! I hope you enjoyed it and can use some of the tricks and techniques I shared.

Now, go ahead and record some drums , have fun with it!