Music College TV: Day 3: More Filming & Recording Drum Lessons!

By the end of day 3 we had successfully filmed and recorded twenty new drum lessons, a new drum intro as well as one new guitar lesson and three new bass lessons... productivity was certainly on the up.

Steve & drums in the TV studio

The principle reason for this high output is preparation and experience. Because we have been refining the techniques and technology over a period of months the benefits of that experience are now really starting to pay off.

Having a good camera monitor system makes all the difference (connected via HDMI)

And there was one new and major factor in the equation... we were using a dedicated TV studio which gave us instant access to the space and facilities that we need.

This Z5 was mounted on the lighting bars above the drum kit. It was connected to a HQ monitor via a HDMI cable and was operated using a remote control.

Recording the drums (audio)... the Glyn Johns technique:

We used just four microphones to record the drums:

1x Sennheiser 901 for the kick drum

1x Sennheiser 421 for the snare

2x Neumann KM184's for the overheads

Our intention was to capture a natural sound that the student could relate to in the videos and using four (high quality) microphones in preference to the more familiar technique of spot mic's on every part of the kit was a simple but effective solution.

The critical aspect to the 'Glyn Johns' approach (the engineer most associated with this technique) is firstly to use good microphones(!), record good source material and also; to set up the two overheads equidistant from the snare, one approximately 1 metre above the snare, the other (at the same distance) to the right of the drummer. These two mic's must be 'in phase', achieved by placing them equidistant to the source.

When mixing the four drum tracks; the two spot mic's, (kick & snare) should be panned to the centre. The o/h mic above the snare, halfway to the right and the other o/h, hard left, thus creating a sense of space and depth.