YamahaPlayer wrote:Do it! After I saw weckl (years ago) and talked to him about his drum sound, he told me having his own mics and dedicated mixer was the best thing ever. He would just send the board Left and Right basically.... so well, given he has insane drum sound. I had to do that too.
Best money ever spent. You might run into a few sound guys who balk about not controlling various things for the room, but my fix to that has always been "Just tell me what you want more of, and I'll give it to you." But it guarantee's my mix is at least a heck of a lot better then otherwise, and in some cases sound guys have been very thankful that they don't have to deal with mic'ing up my kit and so forth. That and I invested in drum mic's that are (in every case since) far better then the venue's.
I started doing my own sound back around 10 years ago out of necessity. The band was cutting back from a large 24 channel console to a small 8 ch powered, self contained mixer (our backs were getting too old to carry all that shit), so I started sub-mixing the drums from behind the kit. Taking a feed from the "house" I can get a very decent mix through the aux sends for my in-ears. I can give sound "guys" a choice...a mono out, stereo out, 4 subs (K-S-Toms-overheads) or I can route each channel individually, one-for-one to the house using the direct out feature of the channel inserts on my Mackie console. I also allow them to give me feedback and I'll make adjustments based on what they hear. Usually it's a small eq tweak for an unruly overtone or a volume balance issue. I will often run into those who don't usually use overheads live and I hear the most shit from them as I'm setting up, "I'll be asking you to turn those off before we're done, dude." By the end of the night they're commenting on how great the cymbals sounded and how well blended everything was. I follow Weclk's advice there...make it sound great with the kick and overheads, then use the close mic's for some additional tone if needed.
There are a couple guys in town that I still prefer to let do my sound though since they are real sound "engineers" who I trust that always give me a killer sound. Funny, one guy really is a drummer (a very good one) and one of the best engineers out there. He once mic'd my 18" kick with both heads (tuned lower of course) for a blues/funk gig in a high ceiling venue and made it work. He looked at it as a challenge that tested his ears and abilities as an engineer. I love working with cats like that.
. Thanks for posting these, hilarious!!