Jul 18, 2006 12:36 am I would use your room, it's easy to add ambiance, but you can't do much to get rid of it. :)
Dan
Recording Drums in Live Room
Posted on Jul 18, 2006 12:05 am
Josh Rose
JR Productions
Member Since: Mar 03, 2005
My band is about to record an EP that we want to do as professionaly as possible with the sources we have. The room that I usually record drums in sounds pretty good, its fairly dead and good for tight sounding drums.
The problem is that I dont really want tight sounding drums for this project. I want a big sounding kit. My friend has a basment with tiled floors and a fairly sparce large room. Should I go with recording it in my place and then adding reverb to it later, or record it in the big reflective room with close mics and a stereo pair of room mics (which would be rode nt1a's which he would let me use if it were done at his house?
[ Back to Top ]
Jul 18, 2006 12:36 am I would use your room, it's easy to add ambiance, but you can't do much to get rid of it. :)
Dan
Jul 18, 2006 12:44 am Same as olddog says, id just add the reverb and do some layering in the recording, not actually recoridng it in a live room. unless ur goin for tht kind of old school feel, i like to control my trax as much as possible, so i can add watever i want later.
Jul 18, 2006 07:32 am Ditto. It is best to add your room ambience after the tracking is done so you can really get all of the instruments including vocals dialed in to where it matches or at least works well together. Just last night I was playing around with guitar and a drum machine.. writing a new song. But I noticed that what I thought was a nice amount of reverb/delay on the guitar (by itself) sounded just okay against the reverb inherent to the drum machine. But after taking the guitar reverb down a few notches it really came together as a coherent sound.
I think it is pretty much "best case scenario", or maybe easiest, to not lock in your atmosphere until the very end.
Jul 18, 2006 10:29 am Hmmm, surely a few people around here have tips for 'big drums'.
I was listening to Arthur from The Kinks recently and they do something cool with the drums that yields a bigger-than-life sound. They put a mono mix of one drum performance panned hard left, and a whole other mono performance panned hard right. Then they vary the parts a bit so its not just the same thing happening in each ear. Its pretty interesting.
Another thing that I've heard of is to take a second mixdown of your drums, compress the crap out of them, then mix them in with the original drum tracks at somewhat low levels. Then you get the dynamics of the original drums, plus the body of the super squashed drums. I'm going to give this one a try soon myself to see if I can get anywhere with it.
Jul 18, 2006 11:22 am i got a friend whos gets work all the time for his drum sound...he tracks in his garrage and puts a room mic inside a small closet with the door shut.....i've tracked drums in small dead rooms all of my recording career and i'm starting to get bored with it....if ya got time, i'd A/B the two rooms and go from that....i bet you'll like the sound of the basement better...
my two cents
Jul 18, 2006 07:06 pm Tadpui has it spot on. Record the drums dry in your room. Then you can make a copy of the track, squash the living daylights out of them, add some reverb and mix that with the original track to taste. I have used that method for years with grand results.
It will take a little practice to get the reverb and compresion set proper and mix the tracks together good. Then you will be set.
Jul 18, 2006 11:35 pm OK, I'll be the one to go against the grain. In my book, big sound=big sound. If you find a room that sounds great, use it. Yeah, you're locked into the sound and can't get rid of it later, but that's why you like it, right? Seems like all those legendary drum sounds came from recording a great player with great drums in a room with a great sound. Reverbs are great if that's all you've got, but a great room is better.
There, I said it, and I'm stickin' to it!
Jul 19, 2006 02:02 am I agree.
You'll only know about the suitability of the room by taking the drums over there and trying it out. Set up the kit and listen to how it sounds, then mic accordingly and keep listening, it'll take a while but it's the only way you'll find the best sound in that room. Use your ears before you use mics, and take some blankets with you in case there are certain areas of the room that need dampening.
Good luck dude.
Jul 19, 2006 11:43 am Thanks for the replies. My only worry about recording them there was that it would be a little too live sounding. My plan was to use the room mics sort of as a reverb amount that I could mix in. I am hoping that the close mics won't pick up too much of the room sound. I might also try the led zep approach and compress the crap out of the room mic (which is kinda of like what you said tadpui) which should give me a pretty huge sound. And like you said Rigsby I plan on building a couple baffles that I can move around the place.
I will most likely end up recording drums at my place and at his and then deciding which one I like better. Maybe after its all done I could post a blind test and have you guys guess which one is which.
Jul 19, 2006 12:01 pm Another bit of advice that I've heard from a few places (including Bonham!) is to go easy on the cymbals when tracking the drums. Pound the hell out of the drums but back off on the brass a bit and the drums will sound bigger in comparison.
Hey I like the blind 'taste test' idea. Let the ears be the judge. Plus that'd give you the opportunity to hear the drums live and recorded in both settings, which would probably be enough for you to decide on your own!
Jul 19, 2006 08:16 pm Well I have found now with the new convolusion reverbs that finding that Perfect Space is so much easier now in DSP then it was years ago. I have more places in software then I care to try and find. So for me it is the ease of just recording the drums straight away, or any instrument for that matter. And then choosing my space carefully.
I use several differant Convolusion reverbs and the Perfect Space one from Cakewalk is right now one of the best I have used. I can create my own spaces or create my own impulse wavs of any space I choose and then simply add just what I need. And I can tweak it to were it needs to be.
Tadpui, I couldn't agree more on the brass part. I know so many drummers that beat the hell out of their brass and then you end up with sonic mush to try and get a good mix out of.
Jul 21, 2006 09:21 am As always, phase plays a VERY important role in getting larger than life drum sounds...this can't be stressed enough, comb filtering is another culprit responsible for "thin" drums. If you can nail down the phase of the mics together and eliminate any comb filtering then you will have huge drum sounds. Room mics also play a big role in the huge drum sounds that you hear on commercial CD's...you gotta have a sweet room and you gotta take the time to find it's sweet spots. Drum tuning is crucial as well. You can't polish a turd...I know that phrase is sooo over used but it is for a reason, it's TRUE! Crap in = crap out. Spen most of your time just making the kit sound the way you want it in the room before you even touch a mic, this is a must. I'll give you a great tip on tuning toms:
Tune the tom as you normally would,all lugs equal tension so the drum is "in tune"...bottom skins are normally an actave higher than the top but to each their own. Now comes the real magic...take one lug, (I use the one closest to me so it makes it easy to adjust) and slowly loosen it until the drum has a great decay. When all lugs are equal you will get a consistant tone with not much decay in most cases, but when you throw one lug out, you get the great initial tone of the drum...but then it throws you a curveball changing tone as it decays, this is definately one of the coolest tricks I have learned about toms, it gives them character and makes them much less sterile sounding. For example, when all lugs are equal, it will sound like "bonggg"...but use this trick and it will be like "bongggggrrronggg"....simply HUGE, seriously, give it a shot. And yes, I like bongs, so what.
CHEERZ
|
Related Forum Topics: |
If you would like to participate in the forum discussions, feel free to register for your free membership.