If you are about to record drums, there are many elements to consider.
Sure, just turn up and whack drums, it’ll work! But what can you improve easily?
1. Get new skins. If you can’t afford them for the whole kit, then just get the top (batter) heads, or snare drum at very least.
2. Tune the drums, make sure they have no excessive overtones, get each drum to it’s desired pitch. Don’t know how? Check this, it’s a great video on tuning drums! Watch here..
3. Ensure there are no rattle, vibrations from stands and other things.
4. If you can, mount your toms on separate stands, it will reduce the vibrations from the kick drum through the toms.
5. Keep checking the tuning between takes. The snare drum especially will drop tuning throughout the recording, and if you do multiply takes and compile from those takes, the snare will sound different throughout the song.
More coming soon..