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I have a couple questions for you. It is of course mainly a problem when recording drums. If I can't afford to put a gate on each mic what can I do to cut down on cross talk between drums when recording. My studio if you can call it that, is a very low budget project.

The second question for you is this, I only have a four track recorder and want to do stereo recording. I am the only musician and obviously can't play all the instruments at once. I realize more tracks is the easiest, but simply not an option at this time. I plan on maybe two guitars, drums, bass and vocals. I have done it by dubbing down to another tape and back, but the noise is terrible obviously.What tips might you have for this situation?

----------- Personally, I’m not a fan of gating drums even if I’m working a studio, which can afford them. Gates can be terribly offensive to the natural sound and general ambience, unless of course, you are trying to achieve a particular style, which typically utilises gated drum sounds – Nu metal for example or an older style such as 80’s rock. If you are, then there is pretty much no substitute for the complete closure and opening of a sound source at the response you dial in, so you do need gates. If on the other hand you are simply wanting to achieve “cleaner” sounds with each individual mic around a drum set, as a way toward more tonal control, then there are two options you could think about.

1. Try to select microphones with the polar response in mind. I’m presuming you know what a polar response is, (the way the mic captures sounds). You would generally use uni-directional mics for close miking a drum set, with careful thought to the off-axis rejection points. You position the mics so as to have the deadest spots in areas of “spill”. i.e. you would not want a uni-directional mic on the snare facing the snare and facing the hi-hats. On the contrary, you would have the dead spot of the mic facing the hi-hats. Of course this only goes some way to eliminating “spill”, though it can be very effective.

2. As you are limited in terms of available tracks I would suggest you take a more “overview” approach to your drums, much like the way Lenny Kravitz records drums. Put one in the kick drum and use a couple of good quality overhead mics, set as a stereo pair. Play with these three mics to obtain “the drum sound”. George Martin was (is) another exponent of this technique (used on numerous The Beatles albums), and it’s back in fashion with the likes of The Stereophonics and other British bands like Coldplay etc. The Decca tree is also a blast from the past with three used, one above the other, in front of the kit – feet height, waist height and head height, no stereo image though of course.

On to your second question, and I have to ask are the 4 tracks compact cassette based? If so, you will always be fighting, with noise produced, through a format which has a terrible signal to noise ratio. The only thing you can really do is make sure (make sure) that you always record at the optimum levels that the medium can take. This can be hard without limiters for clipping prevention but do try to get as much signal on tape. I regularly drive the meters into the red to get the best SNR. Bouncing down (ping-pong) will always be an accumulative noise situation in the analogue domain.