Full drum kit recorded with only one shure sm57 overhead mic.

I recorded my drumkit with only one sm57 and with a lot of work I got it to sound like this: http://www.filefactory.com/file/70062e/n/drums_wav . Tell me what you think.

hey! nice effort :slight_smile: but my speakers don’t forgive very much, I can clearly hear a few issues.
You have a lot of noise to start with
You should balance things a bit more (eq, level, comp). The hihat is too present while the kick drum sounds a bit weak. Spatialize things a bit more if you can. Right now, you have no stereo image even though your wav file is stereo. I just made a snapshot of the wave form in audacity so you can judge :

And you could use some compression as well.

So you may want to acquire a second mic and experiment with stereo recording (watch out phase issues though). Room recording only is fine, it used to be a common thing decades ago (Led Zeppelin, etc) but you will need to boost the quality if you want to use it for something unless you are into lofi music styles, which is also fine. Happy drumming :slight_smile:

I do like lo-fi, but I don’t record lo-fi on purpose, I just don’t have any professional equipment. I may buy another mic later to experiment with stereo recording, what do you think about these http://www.jr.com/2-condenser-microphones/pe/BEH_C2MICS/ unless you know any other pair of mics with a better price. You mentioned that the kick drums sounds weak, I made another track with a low pass on it and boosted it for extra bass drum, although I didn’t make it too loud because I wanted the snare drum to be the loudest of anything. If i posted an ardour file of a drum track with no effects would you experiment with it and post your results. I’m very new to audio recording.

I think that this one turned out a lot better:
http://www.mediafire.com/?3li9m2gmtji

hey! I will give it a listen tonight, I am at work right now, just started after one year off devoted to music :slight_smile: Feel free to send me a link to the bare track so I can play around with it.

For the stereo micing, I was myself more thinking about acquiring those :

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/C414BXLS/ST

They just happen to be about 40 times more expensive!! … :frowning:
I need to save money for a while … I already own one AKG C 414 B-XL II for solo vocals and acoustic instruments. Amazing!

have a look at http://www.akg.com/site/product_tipps/powerslave,id,23,nodeid,2,_language,EN.html

Sounds great for what it is

A condenser mic would help acquire more of the high end of the cymbals and the low end of kick and toms. You can get them pretty cheap now. The Studio Projects and Rode mics are great values as they sound much better than most in the price range. Those Behringer mics may not be quite as good, but they’ll give you something to play with without much cash outlay. That sm57 is a great snare mic.

Also, I’m not sure that phase issues really matter in the world of DAWs. You can simply look at the waveforms and slide the recording in time to get phase alignment.

In another thread I posted my own attempt at ultra cheap drum recording. We spent ca. 100 Euros for a cheap drum mic set and ran them in to a mixer. I am really pleased with the outcome and so is my drummer.

It was a long process to get that sound with a lot of tweaking EQs and levels on the mixer. But it was worth it, I think.

I like the sound of your second recording - really good for some Kravitz style rock.