Cellar Dweller

It took most of Saturday to get my drums hauled down, set up, miked up, tuned up, and muffled up. When I heard the first test take back, I felt like all that work was not at all worth it. But I soldiered on, made some muffling adjustments, and after a lot of creative work with separate gate, EQ, and compressor tweaks on each of the 9 tracks, I think I got something I can live with. I really wish we didn't have gigs the next 2 weekends so I could leave everything set up and perfect it. The snare was over–muffled on the first song (Middle of the Road), but it took me many takes to get a good one that I didn't want to try to fix it. The toms just sound weird. I'm thinking I had the mics way too close, but when they were further away the gates on neighboring drums would open, so the drum would be heard in multiple tracks. At least the overheads picked up the cymbals nicely. I used my headset mics for those, the only condensers I have, hung from the ceiling joists by spring clamps. And at least the kick was easy; that was just a MIDI track with a canned sample, cuz that's what I use instead of an acoustic. I'll spend some time trying different things to see what I can get out of the tracks. Hopefully it is something I won't hate.