Hello all! My progressive metal band Konom released their debut album on the 26th of Feb, so I thought I’d take a minute to talk about the session and give you a quick rundown of the gear we used. Danny and I recorded drums over the course of 2 days at my parent’s house in May of 2018, and we handled all the engineering/production ourselves. Here are a few pictures and a breakdown of the gear we used on the session:

As you can see we managed to make it work with quite a minimal amount of mics/gear and get a sound we were happy with. I find that having fewer mics can force you to focus on placement and tuning more which is a bonus, however it would have been nice to have a few more room mic options and a second mic on the kick.

The only editing done on the drums was switching between takes, so there isn’t a single sample or timing edit on the whole album. This meant that we had to be even more careful when tracking to make sure everything was up to scratch in terms of performance and that none of the drums had slipped out of tune. A quick tip on that front – use tuning locks on your snares to make sure they don’t detune! I recommend the tama tuning locks if you can get hold of them.

If you have any questions about the recording process please drop me an email, and if you’d like a lesson either in person in Manchester or online on Skype/Zoom then please get in touch.

Thanks!

Tom