cliff wrote:
With the occasional pleasant surprise, most things are worth about their cost to acquire.
. A case in point, here's one that simplifies the matter of bass drum mic placement - and tuning - to its essential components. I found this after several days spent experimenting, making all sorts of analytical errors but gaining hard knowledge at the same time.
After I got squared away and actually recorded what the mic was picking up (as opposed to listening through the headphones while playing), I was surprised to find that placing the mic at dead center on the reso most closely created the sound I was looking for; a combination of attack and sustained fundamental. Thinking I had to be wrong, I googled "mic placement bass drum" and this is what came up... for dummies, no less:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/m ... -drum.htmlJust ignoring the parts about adding pillows and mattresses - I have been ignoring that stuff since owning my first Sonor kick -it was reassuring that this very simple and brief treatise corresponded exactly with my hard won experience, both as to mic placement and the effect of tuning on what the mic hears. I am so headstrong that had I not gone through the process myself, I might not have understood the term "boom" (which is bad or good, depending) and have avoided the dead center mic position on the reso, mostly because I have an arbitrary bias against "the middle." But it makes sense, physically, that the middle is where the maximum combination of attack and fundamental tone are to be found, using one close mic and an unported head.