Happy Easter
If you’re like me, you spend most of your time out in the room where the action is. However, at our Friday night Easter service one of our volunteers documented what happens in video world. Behold our video director, Chip.
Happy Easter!
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That is amazing! Chip has always been one of those guys that brings a smile to my face!
wow. that is seriously amazing. once again proving the point that if you have no feel for music, you prolly shouldn’t be working in music production. I would argue easily that the reason he’s so good is because he “feels” it. lol, ammmazing
It’s actually really great to see what goes on behind the scenes from that perspective. I’d be interested in seeing more footage like this.
Incredible video. I watched the “monitor wall” portion of Delirious’ “Live at Willow Creek” dvd for the song “Fires Burn” and man does it get intense back there in the video department.
On another note, I have a question for you:
I am a drummer and I always get a little concerned when two things happen,
1. The drum shield comes out
2. The tom mics don’t come out
Typically, our sound guy uses a D6 on the kick, and a pair of Rode NT-5’s as overheads in a spaced pair configuration. In my mind, this presents two problems as far as tom clarity goes
1. Can people even hear the toms?
2. How can you eq the toms to sound good and cut through when all you have is overhead microphones 2 to 2 1/2 feet above them?
Elaboration on problem #1
Crash cymbals are typically louder than tom drums, and while they are often not hit at the same time, in a 180 seated/270 standing-sized venue where most of the crash cymbal sound will come from the stage, won’t the overheads be turned down and the toms not be picked up at all?
Elaboration on problem #2
If problem number 1 doesn’t exist, how would the toms and cymbals be eq’d simultaneously? From my little experience as a sound tech (I have run under 10 fairly small shows) I know that the top half of my eq for toms and cymbals looks fairly similar, but the bottom half looks pretty different. Would this boost in low frequencies that is needed for toms present any sort of feedback problems because of the cymbals coming into to that sort of eq structure at a much hotter volume than the toms?
I love reading your blog and look forward to many posts to come as it is extremely informative and very interesting. I’m sorry for not commenting directly based on your post, but thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope you have time to respond.
Good concerns, Zach. Here’s my take:
1.) Can people even hear the toms?
This really depends on who’s mixing, the room, and the drummer. If I’m mixing in a small-ish room, any mics on the drums are probably not going to get much use except maybe the kick.
If the drummer can play a proper kit mix and balance his playing, you can get a good drum sound off a pair of overheads; check out some old Zeppelin records to hear what this can sound like.
In your example of a ~200 seat room, I would close-mic as much of the kits as I could, but probably wouldn’t use much other than the kick if I’m mixing rock because I’m gonna get most of what I need right off the stage even with a shield up on 9 out of 10 drummers–the shield is going to muffle things a bit, but I don’t think it’s a big deal in that size room because I’m not going to get a CD sounding mix in there. The PA is going to reinforce what’s coming off the stage and will most likely be a lot of vocals and whatever is unamplified on stage–drums are naturally amplified.
When I mixed youth stuff at my last church, I never had a problem getting enough drums off the stage with just a kick mic and maybe a snare mic. The biggest problem was inexperienced drummers who can’t play a kit mix so that the cymbals blow everyone in the room away.
2.) If I’m going for a “kit” sound with overheads, I just EQ them so they sound “good” which probably means minimal EQ, and a more “natural” sound–the drums need to sound good to begin with for this to work, but I think that goes without saying in any situation. I don’t particularly get too concerned with cymbals unless they are just too harsh so I would lean more towards making sure that the drums sound good in the overheads and do what’s necessary to tame the high end if it’s particularly brutal trying not to lose the attack of the drums.
My present approach to drums is to use a Rode NT4 as an overhead. It’s a stereo mic that I like because I get phase coherency in it. It sits about ~3′ over the kit. Then I take my close mics on everything and delay them to the overhead.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, I have been trying to pay attention more than usual lately to how I play the drums to get them all even volume-wise. I would love to use an NT4 sometime, everything I have heard about them is great.
As far as delaying your microphones to get rid of phase problems, I read an old post either on this site or another audio site that had the formula for figuring out how many milliseconds to delay for every foot, do you know that formula?
Well, you can typically use 1 millisecond for every foot. It’s not exact, but it’s probably close enough for rock and roll.
That’s a great video! We love you, Chip!!
I dig Chip’s enthusiasm. Great video.