The Drum Thread

[blue]

of course!

man i was all googling this and that thinking i was missing the boat on some rad drum mic technique.

[HeuristicsInc]

but... blue knows all the rad drum micing techniques... doesn't he???
-bill

[Reist]

I wish I knew rad drum techniques.

[furrypedro]

Are those drums programmed? Because if so, I want lessons from you.

So these examples are gonna be about as useful as a condom machine in the vatican; but I'll be happy to answer any specific questions.

[a bebop a rebop]

About that condom machine... Do you control volume individually on each instance of each sample? And how much looping do you do, or do you program it all straight through, or what?

[furrypedro]

Reason has velocity controls for each individual hit. you see in the top left of the sequencer window 2 of the red squares are a lighter shade, that's where I've made the velocity lower (the 'velocity' window is just below the sequencer window on the screen but i didn't show it cos i'm a dummy, it's basically a load of red bars of varying heights corresponding to each hit). The velocity feature tends to work best with MIDI, so where the sample is audio I have to automate the level to get the same effect.

I do a fair bit of looping, but there's also quite a few different sections. Wherever you hear anything repeated it has been copied and pasted, but i go through the whole track to move the odd kick drum, alternate sections and add crashes and things for variety, so it doesn't sound as much like a loop job.

Sometimes I'll copy and paste a whole section and then (for the pasted bit) drag all the hi-hats to the ride channel (or something) so it sounds different but is basically the same pattern.

[Tonamel]

When I used Reason, one of my favorite tricks was to hook up ten Matrixes (Matrices?) to the ReDrum, one per channel. The gate control triggers the drum, with the added bonus of 127 levels of velocity instead of the three ReDrum comes with. And you can hook up the Curve to pitch/pan/whatev, and do further mad things.

Then you can write different patterns for each drum pretty easily. And then Ctrl+T becomes really handy. It's a fun setup.

Now, if only I had a copy of Reason I could call my own...

[Reist]

So I decided that I'd get some drum mics and stuff, and I did. I'm just wondering - if your snare sounds horrible and echoey, what should I do to correct that?

[deshead]

So I decided that I'd get some drum mics and stuff, and I did. I'm just wondering - if your snare sounds horrible and echoey, what should I do to correct that?

The most obvious culprit is phasing. How many mics are there, and how do you have them set up? If your setup allows it, try flipping the polarity on the snare mic (or recorded track) and see if that makes a difference.

If the snare track sounds horrible by itself, without the OHs in the mix, then you've got 3 things to consider:
1) Tuning: If you don't know how to tune your snare, find someone who does. A poorly tuned drum is hard to record.
2) Dampening: If your snare has a damper, engage it for recording. If not, use duct tape or one of those dampening rings to tame the top skin.
3) Mic position: For the snare, you want the mic almost touching the drum. As the mic gets further away from the drum head, it picks up more ambience, and that's what the overhead mics are for. Also try mic'ing the snare from below. For some, this captures a more natural sound.

One last thing to consider is the room you're recording in. If it sounds like ass, then you'll want to get the overhead mics as close to the kit as possible. It's hard to go wrong with Glyn Johns's drum mic setup.

[boltoph]

It's hard to go wrong with Glyn Johns's drum mic setup.

Coincidentally, this is almost the exact setup that we use in Corn on the Cob, the only difference being that we have two regular mics (shure SM48s) on 1. the floor tom and 2. the rack tom; because, our drummer is a "light" tom-hitter and we needed the extra snap of the directly-mic'd toms, in addition to the two overheads.

Tom mic notes: I cut a ton of medium to low midrange and boosted some low end to get the toms to boom a bit more, on the individual tom mics. I also compress the toms, snare and bass drum a fair amount, but don't compress the overheads at all.

We gate the tom mics, so that only the tom hits come thru.

We also gate the snare and bass drum mics.

Also, we move the bass drum mic about half way into the drum head and mic the beater hitting the head from the inside (as blue was saying, earlier in the thread).

I love having the kit perma-mic'd up at Jima's place. I just go over there, we fire up some sauces, some bbq, then I plug directly in, add the Guitar Rig, and we jam.

[Paco Del Stinko]

Hi - I am going to change the heads on my cheap drum set. I bought coated heads, and have never done it. Although I am not concerned about doing it properly, I read an article maybe a year ago where the author flipped the heads inside out, cracking a seal as it were, prior to putting them on. He would then return them to their normal position and attach. He stated that it lessened stretching. Is anyone familiar with this practice? I am hesitant to try it although if recommended by any real drummers here, I will do it. Thanks a bunch, Paco

[deshead]

It's the same principle as stretching guitar strings before tuning. Drum heads, like strings, stretch and go out of tune over time. The more you stretch them at first, the less they'll slip later. Unlike a guitar string, though, a drum skin can take a LOT of pressure, maybe even more than you think possible, so you're not going to hurt them.

Here's a good series of videos on how to put new heads on your drums and tune them: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?u ... m16lessons. He recommends a two-handed "CPR" style press on the head, until you hear it crack. Probably similar to the article you read.

[Paco Del Stinko]

Those are very excellent - thanks and much appreciaton! I stretch the hell out of my guitar strings but wasn't as aware of all the prep work to do on the heads. If I bump into that article where the guy popped them in and back out I'll post it here, but I'm ready to go.

Also: there's a lot of helpful info in this thread both confirming things I already practice, and shedding light on new things. Thanks to all for the good info.