ey mika.danke für den link hierher.
Recording Percussion
My definition of percussion is anything that shakes, rattles, bangs or booms. (This study excludes a drum kit which presents a whole different set of rules and challenges.) I mean, shakers, timbales, bongos, triangle, congas, gogo bells, tambourine and other instruments of this type. In the mix, they usually sit in different points of the stereo or 5.1 field providing interesting ear-candy. Because of their transient nature, they can be a challenge to record. Some questions that might come up are: What kind of mic do I use? Stereo or Mono recording? or Where should I set my level in reference to my meter reading? These are all valid questions that will be addressed here.
The Best Mic for the Job
You have some microphone choices to make when recording percussion. If you have access to a nice condenser microphone, it's a much better choice as opposed to an SM57 or another moving coil dynamic mic. The reason being is that there is a lot of important information that can be lost by a straight dynamic moving coil microphone. A good condenser such as the Neumann TLM-103 will give you all the dynamics inherent in a percussion instrument plus all the upper frequencies that can be evident in something like a tambourine, triangle or bell. Good choices in three price ranges would be:
* First Class: DPA 3541 $6000
* Business Class: Shure KSM32 $1029
* Economy: Audio Technica 4041 $395
Another microphone that is a good choice for percussion is a ribbon mic. Ribbon mics tend to tastefully round off the percussive edge of transients, and for this reason they are an excellent choice for this job. Some examples of great ribbon mics are the RCA knock-offs from AEA, the Royer R-121 and the UK-made Coles line of mics. The Coles mics are a favorite of engineer Steve Albini and are well-made, great sounding mics. Keep in mind that a ribbon mic has low output so you must have a clean mic preamp to give it enough gain. Even if you don't have a ribbon, a clean mic preamp will be needed because percussion can have a wide dynamic range. What that means is there could be spots of silence between the hits, a noisy mic preamp will stick out like a sore thumb in those spots.
The Best Technique
Is stereo or mono best for recording percussion? I feel if you have the tracks, that stereo is a great way to go. Let me give you two scenarios where stereo works great. Percussionists often have a bag full of goodies that they'll lay out on a padded table and play in different spots in a song as the music inspires them. What I do is to set up a stereo pair of mics in front of this table and let the percussionist play the stereo field as it were. For instance at the end of a section, he/she could pick up a shaker and shake it while dragging it across the stereo field. This is great because when you mix, you just need to bring up the pair, pan them and you have instant ear-candy recorded on tape. Another great stereo technique is to use a pair of mics on bongos, congas or timbales. You can use an ORTF or spaced pair, each mic pointing at one of the two drums in the group. This sounds great in the mix even if you pan it at 11 and 2 or 9 and 11 or wider. This isn't to say that you can't record them in mono. Whatever works for your needs and production plans.
The Best Level for Recording
Levels for percussion can be tricky. I'll guarantee you if you tell the player to play so you can get levels, that they'll play louder during the performance. This goes for any instrument really, the heat of the moment always makes the player dig in a bit more. So, conservative is better when setting levels. If, on the first take there's a flub and you get to take it over, adjust your levels as you see fit. I recently had a session where the drummer was playing with sticks but decided to just use a cross stick instead of open snare. So I adjusted the level accordingly. Sure enough, when the song was played he got inspired and went to full snare and overloaded my level. The take was brilliant for the rest of the players and I let it go. (it's always a good idea NOT to stop a take for levels, especially if it's just one mic or player that's causing the problem) I assessed on playback that the drums were unusable and told the drummer we had to take it again. He had a click to play to so it was no problem and the take was successful, we were able to keep all the other player's performances.
Percussion can spice up a track. Follow the steps above and you can record great tracks.
...vielleicht bringt dich das ja ein wenig weiter.man sieht sich dann wohl am samstag.
