Raw Drum Track... advice for making it better before tracking/mixing?
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Posted on Feb 02, 2012 09:48 am
keevhren
Member Since: Aug 05, 2004
So my band is gearing up to record our full length this weekend and we just got everything set up last night for tracking drums. Our drummer got all new heads, tuned them up and I have everything mic'd up as follows:
Kick In: Beta 52
Kick Out: NS10 Subkick
Snare Top: 57
Snare Bottom: Audix I5
Rack: 57
Floor: 57
Hi Hat: SM7B
Ride: MXL 990
Crash Cymbal Close Mics: Sony ECM-F56's
Overheads: AKG C451B
The Kick In and Snare top are going to a pair of Universal Audio 710 Twin Finity pres, everything else is going through my Alesis studio 32 mixer, everything then straight into pro tools.
I've got everything pretty dead on, phase wise, but think that they could still be improved sound wise. Here's a clip we did last night to listen through everything... note this is completely sans-plugins (other than a single trim plugin to get the snare bottom in phase):
http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/drum-bounce
One main issue that I've noticed is that whenever I bring the Hi Hat mic into the mix, it pulls the snare pretty hard to the L (Mixing/Micing in Drummers Perspective) as indicated by my master fader and by listening. If I mute the hi-hat mic while listening back my L-R Stereo meters are essentially hitting at the exact same level with every hit, but again, once the hat mic is unmuted, the L of the mix starts to jump up by about 3 or 4db it looks like.
I also feel like they could be punchier/stronger sounding as raw tracks, but am not sure if this has to do more so with my micing technique or if our drummer just isn't hitting as hard as he could.
Is the kick too 'whoofy' sounding?
I like the pop the snare has but again, it just doesn't feel strong enough to me.
We're going for a balance between a modern punk production but with still maintaining some rawness (think a blend of something like this: [url=thecopyrights.bandcamp.co...black-hole]Kids Of The Black Hole | The Copyrights[/url] but a bit more raw/ramones/vintage sounding).
I do typically bring samples up under my recorded tracks when it comes time to mix to beef things up but obviously would like to get as good a sound as possible from the get go!
Much appreciated for any/all help! And for those of you who'd like to check out the consolidated tracks on their own, you can download them here to have a listen to each individual mic:
dl.dropbox.com/u/32962372...nce%20Drums.zip
And you can hear our previous recordings/releases here: thehaverchucks.bandcamp.com if you're interested. I also recorded/mixed both of those releases.
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Feb 02, 2012 11:11 am Well, you have the up side of the kick having two mics, hopefully on two different tracks...you can always mix the tracks to taste after the fact and tighten them up a little in post-recording...have you listened to each mic individually?
I t kinda seems to me you might be going a bit overkill...perhaps I am somehat of a redneck in this regard, but I have often got a great sound by minimizing the mics involved...4 or five always worked for me.
Dematrixhttp://www.reverbnation.com/2ndgMember
Since: Nov 27, 2007
Feb 02, 2012 11:27 am i wrote out a big thing for you man but i lost the whole ****ing thing in one foul swoop on this ***tbox of a computer.
so ok now i gotta make it quick-ish.
i think theyre good mate, plenty to work with i recks.
ok quickly then,
if it were me, and im no expert mind you, i do metal tho so its not that far from what you might be looking for for your drums, pretty much the same punch just not the same eqing.
so grab your tracks and slightly compress o\h's and close mics.
Make the oh's more involved IMO, and get under control a bit the close mics.
Not sure but i might even reverse the status of oh's and close mics here vol wise, and bring up the oh's and back off the close mics depending on what the compression of the oh's does of course.
so once done you want there, a better cohesion of the lot is needed....make it sound more like a complete sounding kit.
For this i would now set up a group channel and send all the afore mentioned drums to it.
Then for this cohesion im on about... i would then insert a compressor on this channel with minimal comp and a long attack with a smidge of ratio,,oooh could be 1:40.
Sounds like ferk all!
But move the threshold till it registers slightly so as just to take off the top a "touchy touchy"..
Up to you on the release setting mate. I go stupid with metal drums and go...for this setting and app....long release like 600ms.
Alot of people by now reading are going wtf? hahhaha. ah well. You'll find with this setting you be taking off a smidge of dB on the metre and itll stay level no fluctuations.(long release) i like that. Might be why my mixes sound very very consistent, musicality tho.... well up for discussion maybe.
so now if you arent cursing my name going this dude is nuts, then we proceed.
set up for the parallelo compression. You seem to know you stuff mate so i gather you heard of this? If not....
Idea is to have a nice drum track setup, which hopefully we just did more so...then..... have an absolutley cooked... to,.... medium...., or medium rare compressed version of this track running along side it or at the same time if you will.
This gives the bigtime punch you want as well as youre able to hear your nice track also.
So, and however you may do this.....up to you...but basicly, "send" your angry compression to your nice drums (via send level/slider)... and give it a good dose of compression, make it pump hard and nice even over the top.
Get a feel for it get the settings of angry compression sounding good, then you can back it of vol wise or tweak it some more ...whatever it takes.
Parellel comp is a great way to deal with drums...whether my method is to out there or not for you i dunno but its an idea.
as for boomy kicks etc, deal with those after comporession. theyll go ballistic with comp and youll need to roll of bass freqs.
you have inside and outside kick mics. i usually dont belt the outsider to much with compression, let its natrural sound come out and give the inner a bit more. so one is more processed sounding and the other organic if you can call drums that.
Feb 02, 2012 12:06 pm Had a quick listen to the track. Drums sound pretty good to me. Its hard to tell without the other instruments in, but for this kind of song I would definitely throw up a room mic (pointing between the kick and snare?) and compress the **** out of it. If the drummer and the room are ok, this usually ends up being the majority of my sound.
That sub kick feels like its 'extending' the kick drum notes. I'm not sure what your bass guitar is doing, but for more 'punch' it might be cool to move it back a little in time/gate it to the beta 52 or take it out completely.
Modern pop punk (thinking motion city soundtrack) uses a lot of sample replacement blended with original tracks to get that hyper-realistic, super compressed drum sound. Think 3 kick/snare samples (weight, click, verb). Also, a big part of the sound is EDITING. Making every beat is bang on time (beat detective, or what ever you're using).
For more 'pop' on the snare, try a condenser (I like 414's) on the top snare as well as your 57.
BeerHunterwww.TheLondonProject.caMember
Since: Feb 07, 2005
Feb 02, 2012 01:24 pm I will leave the post-processing to the experts as you are getting lots of great tips already.
My suggestion is to deal with the issue you are having with the balance of your snare. Instead of placing your overheads to the left and right of the kit as usually done. Try placing them like this. Be sure to measure equal distance from the center of the kick to the overheads. You will find that this technique will help your snare from pulling to the right.
Feb 02, 2012 05:59 pm Man that's a lot of mics! I'm with db, you can capture a good drum sound with only a few mics. I've seen dudes only use one and get a reeally groovy sound.
Rather than try and guess what I "would do", I'll take advantage of you sharing those files and tell you what I "did do".
First of all, I took the sub kick out. No matter what I tried I just found no use for it. Killing it made the kick a lot more clear and there's plenty of thump to it anyway in the "cymbal" mics. I also took out the "ride" mic. It was a bit muddy and I thought the ride shone through fine from the other mics. Also you said you wanted the drum mix to be from the drummers perspective, but the "cymbal L" and "cymbal R" put the hats on the right pretty hard. So I just flipped the panning.
So as far as bussing, I sent the kick, shares, and toms to a bus called "kicksnaretoms" (lol) and compressed it a ratio of 10:1 and a thresh of -30. Fast attack, fast release so that the compression of either the kick or snare doesn't carry over too much into the next hit. It took a lot of the bite out of the snare and helped the kick and the snare have more of a smooth transient feel.
Then I sent the OH L and R to a bus and just eq'd a little. The whole kit sounds great from these mics, but the combination of the close-mic'd kick and snare and the OH kick and snare was a little boxy sounding. So I just dipped a bit at about 500hz.
I sent the cymbal tracks to a bus and COMPRESSED THE BALLS OUT OF THEM! Made the crash hits nice and juicy. Once it got it nice and squishy, I just adjusted the attack and release till I got the pumping pretty close to the tempo. BUT it was messing up the whole low end. So I ran it through a high pass and killed pretty much everything from the 700-1k range down. The result by itself sounds almost harsh, but mixed back in with the rest of everything it gave it the good explosive feel with none of the mud. I kept that bus pretty low in the mix, it can get out of hand pretty quick.
Oh, and I added about 3db of a high shelf to the snare top. And I scooped the boxy middle out of the floor tom mic, about -10db at 450hz.
Anyway, here's my mix. I tracked some guitars and bass to it so see how it would react to a mix and it sounded pretty good.
http://soundcloud.com/quickxkid/drums-mixed
Feb 02, 2012 09:32 pm So let me just preface this by saying thanks to everyone for the help...
First off, we ended up pulling down everything and pulling the drums more into the center of the room to give them more space to breathe and I widened all of the baffles/sound proofing that was around the kit.
Secondly, I decided to give the OH method discussed here with making the X over the kick/snare etc... and it has worked brilliantly. We just did another quick take after getting new levels and it sounds awesome compared to before:
http://soundcloud.com/nocontrolstudios/new-drum-bounce
Note that the clip above is just the two overheads (451B's) and my Kick in/Out and Snare Top/Bottom. 6 mics. Sounds miles better than the previous take! I also switched up my mic set up a bit and now have the following:
Kick In: Beta 52
Kick Out: SM7B
Snare Top: 57
Snare Bot: I5
Rack: 57
Floor: 57
OHs: C451Bs
Mono OH: MXL
Hat: Sony Ecm-F56
Ride: Sony Ecm-F56
I got much better positioning out of the other mics as well I feel, they sound much better solo'd and as was mentioned above... I can bring in the close mics and it simply adds a bit more depth to the OH tracks which is great. We also re-tuned the floor tom some and I feel as though it sounds better.
Any other advice? We're going to start tracking the songs Saturday, so tomorrow will be spent laying down scratch guitars to click and mapping out tempos for every song.
Thanks again!
Feb 03, 2012 03:03 pm I like that recording better. It sounds super clean. I bet they'll be easy to mix and they'll sound great.
