so.. got a upcoming gig with a collective of DJ’s and at least two live percussionists… Although I’ve DJ’d with drummers in the past I’ve never mic’d them up. I’m looking for you guys to shoot holes in my approach and/or suggest other / better options… here’s the plan:
The venue is inside / outside… DJ crew inside on stage, drummers at the threshold of a 12 foot wide roll-up garage door with the lead drummer about 20 feet away from and facing the DJ with a direct sight line for hand signalling. Drummers will have a floor monitor (mains) for accurate timing.
Lead drummer will be playing 1 djembe w/ one mic in the resonance chamber and one mic near the head. The second drummer will be playing two congas with one mic positioned centrally near the heads.
Mics go into the house mixing board and will get mixed down into one stereo pair to be sent to my Audio 8 Sound card though the live input of the third deck (goes through Traktor for FX)… I’m planning on routing the live input directly out of outputs 5/6 on the sound card and into our analog 4 channel DJ mixer.
There are two ‘modes’ for playing with the drummers as follows…Amplified and un-amplified. The exterior of the venue will not have any sound reinforcement, there will be spillage of sound from the sound system inside the venue and direct sound from the drummers since they are essentially outside. The drummers can / will play continuously throughout the night, however the DJ’s may not always have them mixed into their sets. At appropriate moments DJs will hand signal the lead drummers with open and closed fists (open start, closed stop) to introduce and remove them from the mix.
You could someone get them a set of headphones with a midi clock going to there ear and they could play on time with what your doing and have some wicked fun!
yep - timing could be an issue. i’ve been playing drums a lot longer than i’ve been dj’ing for. when i used to play with a band that used sequencers i used to have a drum machine just playing a cowbell on the first beat of each bar into my headphones - which used to cut through any ambient noise quite nicely. not sure i’d want to only rely on what’s coming out of a PA system for my timing.
monitors are ok - but not even 10% as effective as a sound source cutting thru everything else that lets u know where that first beat is. there again i used to play a full acoustic drumkit and liked to hit it hard… not so much of an issue when i moved to an electronic kit - as i had more control over what i heard etc. you can’t beat a click track tho…
very nice i never had any decent accoustic kit of my own back then, my first ever kit was a 4 piece red pearl kit - but not the export series. with stands that felt like they’d fall over at any minute then got interested in electronic music and so bought an old (even for back then) pearl drx-1 kit, used an old alesis d4 just as a trigger to midi device, bought a decent hihat stand and new cymbols and then added in a mishmash of extra accoustic drums to that as well the last kit i had was based on a cheap set of pads from thomann - which actually weren’t too bad. never gigged with it tho - work had become way more important than music sadly…
the pearl drx-1 came before their drum-x i think. doesn’t get more 80’s retro than this i bought it about 20 years ago tho - so it seemed cool at the time
would love to get a decent acoustic kit one day and add midi triggers to it or something.
Gents… thanks much for your responses… should probably have mentioned that we are playing a combination of Serato, Traktor, and old fashioned vinyl… midi clock isn’t gonna be possible, unfortunately… that said, even when we filter (filter 92 low shelf) out the DJ mix and the drummers go solo - we’re using loops and will leave just enough in the mix to keep the time… headphones would be nice, but the drummers have requested the monitors instead?
Good luck! Im a 8 year drummer myself and i played with my brother who is the best drummer under 18 in Denmark and if they are good drummer it will all go well. A drummer can quickly go into a new tempo in just 2 beats but if you mix to a new song with new tempo just let them mix them self in when they fell like it. its going to go fine!
They are great drummers… I’ve drummed with them b4, and DJ’d with them, but never mic’d up and never in a larger venue where they are further away which is why I’m putting the plan out there… thanks for the response.. Cheers!
i never had any decent accoustic kit of my own back then, my first ever kit was a 4 piece red pearl kit - but not the export series. with stands that felt like they’d fall over at any minute 
then got interested in electronic music and so bought an old (even for back then) pearl drx-1 kit, used an old alesis d4 just as a trigger to midi device, bought a decent hihat stand and new cymbols and then added in a mishmash of extra accoustic drums to that as well 
i bought it about 20 years ago tho - so it seemed cool at the time