Re: OT: Recording Drums - gear selection

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Andy G wrote:

"If the drummer plays open back or has a hole in the front
bass head, I like to put something smaller and dynamic
 (w/ a high SPL) inside near the front head aimed at the
beater, then something just inside or just outside the
front head hole (depending on the drummer)."

Nice advice, Andy.  I can also amplify on this one a bit.

If the drummer uses a small hole in his kick drum front head, here's a 
really nice trick for a good
kick drum sound:

*On a short boomstand,  put your microphone inside of the hole and place 
the microphone
decidedly off axis but point the sweet spot of the mic towards where the 
beater hits on the other side
of the kick drum batter head.  

*Frequently, a small stand will not have enough weight to
keep the mic balanced inside of the kick drum head (especially with a 
larger and heavier diaphragm microphone).
Here's a little trick to help you out.   Go buy a key ring that is about 
2" in diameter.
Next go to the fishing section of your local sports store and buy 3 or 4 
FOUR pound fishing weights.
These weights have a little hook on them that can be threaded onto the 
key ring.
Put all three or four weights on the key ring and then drape it around 
the base of your microphone
(or cymbal) stand.   This puppy will go nowhere anchored with this method.

This is very effective because  if you place the microphone dead on and 
pointed toward the center
of the kick drum head  there is a strong possibility that the two halves 
of the kick drum being struck
may be out of phase with each other.  In this way you defeat any phase 
coherency problems and
you also get a lot of the attack of the beater by pointing the 
microphone towards the beater 'spot'.

Additionally,  you can get a hugely different kick sound by how closely 
you place the microphone
to the batter head inside the drum.

Put it closer to the head and you'll get vastly more 'attack' and less 
of the resonance of the bass drum
(the 'boooooom' of the bass drum).................then experiment with 
placing it further away from the head.

for you drummers out there,  the deeper your kick drum shell, the 
greater the sub-sonic multiplication occurs.

This is why deeper tom toms sound 'boomier' or 'throatier' than shallow 
drums.

Most of my recording these days , even on heavy rock projects uses an 
18" X 18" kick drum, which is conventionally
not considered a big rock drum size.  The reason I can get a huge sound 
out of it is that the depth of the shell allows me
to get much more sub-sonic multiplication than a standard sized kick drum.

The irony of modern rock recordings is that modern live music venues are 
using incredibly powerful subsonics
in their mixes, allowing for very, very deep and loud fundamental tones 
on miced kick drums.

I think it's kind of humorous that hearing the current fashion of deeply 
subsonic kick drums at live venues,  kids are going out
and buying gigantic John Bonham sized kick drums (26" and 28" diameters) 
to simlulate what they're hearing live 
and not realizing that frequently,  it is the subsonics of the sound 
system that are creating these huge booming tones
and NOT the diameter of their kicks.

I've heard more shitty, indistinct kick drum sounds (that mask the hell 
out of electric and synth bass guitar sounds)
 in local smaller rock venues because this mistake keeps being made with 
the current fashion.

********
Another interesting trick in recording drums is the fact that if you use 
a 16" floor tom and tune it to the exact same
pitch as a 13" or 14" floor tom,  the recording of the smaller drum (and 
this works with all smaller sizes of tom toms , too)
sound larger.

the reason is that a smaller floor tom has to be tuned looser than a 
larger one.  This looseness means that a strong attack
will yield a transient sound where the velocity of the stick will 
actually tighten the head for a few milliseconds and then the
pitch will 'fall' as the head returns to it's originally tuning.

This causes a falling pitch to occur which won't occur in the ringier 
larger drum.

For some reason,  human beings associate a falling pitch with a larger 
drum.

for this reason,  I run two and sometimes three 10" tom toms on 
recording sessions and tune them deeply.
Using this and a 14" X `14"  kick drum (using Resonance Isolation 
Mounting Systems to allow for maximum resonance)
gives a gigantic sound that belies the relatively small sizes of my drum 
set.

The other approach for 'big drum's is the single mic in a huge 
reverberent recording space ala the way Jimmy Page recorded
Bonhams's drumset in a very large stairwell at the mansion they rented 
to record 'When The Leavy Breaks".

good luck with your drum tracking everyone if you are lucky enough to 
actually have access to real drums
for your recordings.

**********************************************************************************

and, for what it's worth,  if you have loop based material you are 
recording and want some real drum tracks
recorded as loops that are BPM specific,   give me a buzz.   I have the 
ability to create custom drum loops
for recordings at my own studio and I'm charging World Recession prices 
for studio recording.

I've got a huge collection of different styles, materials and sizes of 
kicks, snares, cymbals and toms for different styles of
music and charge very reasonable rates to create custom loops for your 
compositions.

You can send me an mp3 or midi file of a drum rhythm you'd like (or just 
ask me to determine what would be appropriate
for your track) and I can make a nice recording to send you back to add 
to your track.