Tracking Drums and Monitoring Headphones

Today, drums were tracked in the studio. The four mics used were 1 SM57 on the snare, one Audix D112 for the kick, and 2 450's for the overheads. The patch panel inputs were Kick ch1, Snare ch2, OH R ch3, OHL ch4. A session was opened up in Protools and we started with 4 audio tracks. The sm57 was placed slightly off axis about 1.5 inches over the head from the rim of the snare drum. Spread Pair Miking was a technique we used for the overheads, which splits the kit in half, and a D112 was used to mic the kick drum inside. While a tech is playing the drums, watch signal levels and tweak the gain on the board mic pre to get the desired level of signal. Put 7 band EQ's on all 4 tracks, and solo the overheads and make sure they are not out of phase. To replicate a stereo sound for the kick drum, we then tried mid-side conversion miking. This requires 2 different cardioid patterns, cardioid (mid) and figure 8 (side). About 4 or 5 feet in front of the drums, place the figure 8 mic with one of the null points facing the kick. Place the cardioid pattern mic above and very close to the "side" mic, facing the kick. We need to get the stereo sound though! Double the side mic track. On the duplicate track, and an EQ and put it out of phase. Pan the original track hard left, and the duplicate track hard right. Now we need to get a headphones mix set up. Plug an XLR cable into chA on the patch panel and put the other into the out of the headphones box. Group the tracks together and create an aux track. Select all tracks, and in the sends area, send all tracks to BUS 1-2. On the AUX track input, select Bus 1-2 and on the output select interface B1-2. On the patch bay route B 1-2 into the samson. Also on the patch bay route headphones 1 out and plug into room 100A. You should now hear your mix. Listen for the difference in the mid-side conversion technique compared to miking inside the kick.