Recording - August 2015 - 22

If you get unwanted noise from the tom
mics when they are not in use, rather than
using a gate I would suggest manually muting the clips until you need them. A gate can
be inaccurate, and can be audible when it
cuts in and out. By automating the clips to
come in only when the toms are being used,
you can have more precise control in the
mix and won't have to rely on a gate.
Bass
Bass is quite a bit easier than drums (what
isn't?) when it comes to recording, especially if you don't need to mike a bass cabinet.
Recording bass DI leaves the sound out of
the drum mics, and only in the headphones.
It will allow the drummer and bass player to
be standing in clear sight of each other, without having to worry about any mic bleed.
DI boxes come in two different types-
active or passive. For bass, I would suggest
using an active DI. One thing to keep in
mind when choosing a DI box is that it's
best not to pair up an active DI with a bass
that has active electronics! If the bass guitar
has active electronics in it, switch to a passive DI. Active-with-active can get too bright
and thin sounding, while passive-with-passive can sound muddy and uninspiring.

There are many DIs on the market, but I
lean toward Radial Engineering, which is
noteworthy for its great DI boxes.
If the bass player insists that his/her tone
depends on the amp, try to find an isolated
room to put it in. On most bass amps, there
will be a direct out from the back of the head
(not the speaker out!), which should work fine
for recording. Failing that, an RE20 or AKG
D112 are great bass cab mics.
Using a tube compressor (or equivalent
plug-in) on a DI bass track evens out
dynamics and adds tube character to cut
through the mix with harmonic enhancement in the upper register. Set your compression to 1-3 dB of gain reduction. Also
consider a highpass filter at 50 Hz to clean
up excess boom/rumble, and maybe a rise
at 200 Hz and at 1 kHz to mesh well with
the kick drum in the mix.
Guitar
Recording guitars requires a different
approach than bass. This is especially
true if the guitar track is going to be playing live with drums and bass. Running a
guitar through a DI box leaves a lot to be
desired in terms of tone. However, if you
are short on mic preamps, you can run
the guitar DI and use it as a scratch track,
or use a hardware multieffects box or
amp modeling plug-in in an attempt to
bring more life to the direct signal.

Try to place an amp in a different
room, and run the 1/4" cables under the
door and into the live room with everyone
else to maintain a line of sight. If your
cables don't reach far enough, you can
try "daisy chaining" through a guitar
pedal to get some extra distance, or use
a purpose-built box like the Radial JDX.
Mic choices for guitar amps can vary.
The Shure SM57 won't let you down.
Position the microphone about 1" from the
amp, slightly off-axis from the center of the
cone. While there is nothing wrong with
dropping the microphone directly in front
of the cone, you may have better results by
experimenting with a position slightly offaxis, or just to the side of the center.
To have more flexibility, you can bring a
lot to the mix by blending two different
types of mics on the same amp. If you aim
for a warmer tone, the Royer R-121 works
very well on guitar amps. Condenser mics
can work well too, positioned slightly off
axis. A good rule of thumb is to blend two
different types of mics together, such as a
ribbon and a condenser. An M160 and a
U87, for example, would be a great combination, blending the warm timbre from
the M160 with the fullness of the U87.
Experiment with different combinations; just
make sure that you keep the two microphones the same distance from the amp so
that they will be in phase with each other.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - August 2015