Snare Drum Recording Tips
Recording The Snare Drum: First, make definite your snare drums tuning pegs are tuned befittingly. Its for the most part the drummers call. He will know when it sounds and feels precise. Your snare drum also has dissimilar sounds to it, depending on the location being hit by the drum stick. If your drummer is awkward, take it into concern and hit the snare head in all the unlike locations to audit its sound. You dont want to repair it in the mix or in the audio mastering
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As far as mic’s go, there are many to chose from, but for this discussion, I’m implying the good ole SM57 for the top of the snare head. Place it form a few centimeters to an inch above the edge of the snare head. You can get away with using just one mic, but why settle for good sound when you can have great sound! So the bottom of the snare head must be mic’ed. Chose a mic that is good at picking up the mid-high to high frequencies, like an AKG 451B small diaphragm mic. Due to the small size of this mic, its an out of this world fit under your snare drum. When using 2 mics for the snare drum or any other instrument, you need to test the phase. If the mic’s are out of phase, you can try moving the position of one of the microphones to get both microphones in phase with each other.
You may need to reverse the phase of one of the mic’s if you cannot get both mic’s in phase with each other. These two mic’s side by side are a great match because the SM-57 is great for the low-mids to mid range and the AKG is great for picking up the mid-high to high frequencies. Its a match made in “snare drum heaven”. EQ’ing The Snare Drum: (Note: These are just suggestions and guidelines, as nothing is written in stone. You must use your ears, as each song will need different EQ settings. Put oneself out using a high-pass filter set at 120Hz and under. 120Hz is a great starting point and then just slide the filter earthward for desired cut. Boost between 150 – 300Hz. This will fatten the snare drum up for you. Try cutting around 400 – 900Hz to eliminate some boxiness low end Boost between 5 – 7kHz for a crispness A boost between 9 – 15kHz will add some nice brightness to the snare. Just make sure it doesn’t interfere with the vocals in that range.
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