the case for mono drums once more

[Rodgre]

I was just listening to two of my favorite power-pop CDs in headphones: Jason Falkner's Presents Author Unknown, and Eric Matthews' The Lateness of the Hour.

Both of them are very well produced, but not as overblown as, say, a Jellyfish CD. I always thought they were very big and balanced sounding. In headphones, I suddenly noticed the real simplicity of the mixes.

Very dry, with little or no reverb. What reverb is almost there sounds like a subliminal slap on the vocal or a small spring reverb, but only on the vocal and more mono than anything. The drums are dry, close and meaty, like a 70's record, but with modern squishy compression. Mono. Drums up the middle. Maybe the close tom mics are panned, but the cymbals and kick and snare are up the middle with the bass and lead vocals. Two rhythm guitar tracks panned hard left and right, and the same with the backing vocals.

It's the simplest approach. It's the way anyone's first 4-track demo might be recorded. Somehow, it sounds much fuller and richer than you might automatically assume.

I find that, as an engineer, it seems like I'm taking a risk by doing drums with one or two mics, or if I close up the panning of my drum mix to a small stereo image, but I find more and more that I'm liking the sound and how it makes room in the mix. The outsides are less cluttered for wider imaging, though the center might get a little build up, depending on how busy the arragement is.

What started to sell me on having the confidence to do it more and more was that I started loving the sound of a single far room mic blended in, at the center, as my drum ambience. No additional reverb. It makes the drums sound like a huge kit in a huge room, but unlike any artificial reverb. It's part of the drum sound. Leaving it in the center really ties the drums together. I close up the overheads a little and it seems to make a lot of room for stereo guitars and such.

Anyway, just thinking aloud. I find it curious that one technique for wide stereo imaging involves more things being mono!

Roger
always looking to make the speakers sound that few feet wider.

[drumsound]

I've been thinking of mono room mics for a record I'm starting the weekend. I'm thinking of a ribbon maybe four feet from the drum-set. The'69 or the Meek to complete the vibe. Maybe I'll go for a mono OH too.

I do like to vary the OH panning from time to time. I need to think about it more often.

[Rodgre]

I really like the sound of blending the mono drum mic in to gel the rest of the kit (and this is typically a LDC either a few feet in front of the kit at chest-level, or often placed facing the kick shell where the 2nd tom would be on a 3-pc kit.

My ambient magic mic is probably 20' away, on the other side of a dividing wall in a pretty open barn. That's the mono "barn" mic that beats any reverb unit that I've tried.

Roger

[mjau]

My ambient magic mic is probably 20' away, on the other side of a dividing wall in a pretty open barn. That's the mono "barn" mic that beats any reverb unit that I've tried.

Roger

I hear you on that.
Tony (drumsound) and I did some drums in my house a few weeks back, and we moved one mic (BLUE dragonfly) around, anywhere from 30 feet away to up a staircase about 60 feet away. I'll take that over reverb any day. Great stuff.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i like stereo overheads and room mics, but lately i've been putting the m160 in front of the kit, snare height about a foot in front of the kick drum. it's fucking terrific. basically it just gives me more kick and snare, but it adds a nice depth to the snare and some high end slap on the kick. and does serve to mono up the drums a bit. i really like it. takes compression well too...

semi-related note, i think a lotta people mix the overheads way too loud. i mostly agree with the CW that a lot of your drum sound is in the overheads, but it drives me nuts to listen to a record and feel like i am on top of the drummer.

and i say that as a drummer.

[Harmony Head]

As someone who grew up always loving 'stereo drums' it's been quite a revelation over the last 2 years how much i'm now LOVING more mono sounds. As the original author said, i do like a bit of pannage on my toms and a reasonably natural overhead mix (which is never as wide as you imagine). But most of my drum sounds of late have consisted largely of a mono room mic anywhere from 5 to 20 feet away at about waist height (usually a LDC on omni), and our trusty 'fun mic' (usually a crappy Fostex ribbon either pointing at the kik and snare from behind or in front or the side of the kit.. in phase of course). Both panned in the centre. It just feels like the most solid of centres for a track and seems to make the hard panned rhythm guitars/keys/percussion/BVs seem wider.. which makes sense when you think about it.

Taking the mono drums even further, i've been very into one mic drums lately. I just completed a track on the weekend that i wanted to feel reasonably ambient. So rather than adjusting mic balances, i put one LDC where i knew it would sound good, then adjusted my kit and playing appropriately. What a concept!

Actually.. the whole recording was interesting, come to think of it. And for anyone interested in hearing a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York", and reading the recording blog, you can go to www.myspace.com/thesupahip

Mono drums.. in this modern world they are so unfashionable. Hard to believe, but that almost makes them more appealing..

HH[/url]

[mjau]

GREAT COVER! WOW...really well done.

[Harmony Head]

Thank you.. much appreciated. And all arranging, recording and mixing in about 6 hours!!

Without hijacking the thread... it does help when doing a cover to have an INCREDIBLE song. And the template for this was about as sublime as you can get.

On another note about mono drums.. one of the best ass kicking mono drums you'll hear is on Tom Petty's Wildflower on i think 'House IN The Woods'. They day i realised that massive drum sound was mono may have changed the course of my recording career...

HH

[greatmagnet]

I really like the sound of blending the mono drum mic in to gel the rest of the kit (and this is typically a LDC either a few feet in front of the kit at chest-level, or often placed facing the kick shell where the 2nd tom would be on a 3-pc kit.Roger

I do this/love this, too. My "chest-level-and-a-few-feet-away-mono-mic" is one of the Shiny Box (a.k.a. Nady etc) ribbons. As such, it's kind of my ROOM mic too because the proximity to the kit gives me one thing and then the figure-of-eight pattern also gives me the whole back of the room. So I'll usually compress that mic into a kind of a smashy thing and mix it in underneath to-taste depending on how much verb and ambience I want.

I do it with two of these ribbons as well...I'll kind of line 'em up so they're on the same plane as the overheads. That's for when a nice stereo ambience is wanted.

I haven't grown the balls yet to suggest mono drums to any of my clients yet, but I've heard 'em and loved 'em many times. At the TapeOp conference two years back Ross Hogarth did a one microphone mono thing with a Coles 4038 and Joe Chiccarelli did the same with that top-of-the-line Blue mic. This during the Potluck studio. Both sessions were really eye-openers on how just ONE REALLY NICE mic, placed just-so, could yiled pretty much a copletely ready-to-go drum sound!

[Mane1234]

So by mono drums do you all mean just one overhead or one room mic in addition to your close mic drum sounds or do you mean just one mic for the whole kit?

[Harmony Head]

So by mono drums do you all mean just one overhead or one room mic in addition to your close mic drum sounds or do you mean just one mic for the whole kit?

either. both. And any combination from one to 11 mics. The idea being having the drums come from one position rather than wide stereo.

In the Supahip's case above though, it was one mic..

HH

[Mane1234]

Thanks for clearing that up for me HH....Really liked your songs on MySpace.

[pantone247]

playing His Name is Alive's rather lovely Stars on ESP record

lots of hard panned drums coming in one speaker

it's a sound I really like, but I think takes a lot of guts to pull off

can sound very off balance otherwise

[Rodgre]

See, here's the thing.... the hard-panned, one mic, "let's be arty" drum sound is one thing. It's fun and has it's place.

What initially inspired me to write this post was listening to straight up poppy rock music. It may have been slightly less mainstream stuff, but nothing terribly "chancy" sounding.

The obvious way to convince yourself that it's cool is to remind yourself of how fantastic 60's pop and rock records sound in mono. Then even in 3-track stereo with drums in mono. It's nothing to fear.

So as I was initially saying, it seems that keeping a closer stereo image, if not mono, can really make room for other stereo stuff to be accented. I particularly noticed this song that I've loved for years and always thought it was so lush sounding, even though it's dry and close sounding, basically consists of double-tracked guitars in stereo and maybe the slightest ambience on a double-tracked, but not hard panned, lead vocal. The drums and bass and vocals are up the center. Those guitars, and just two of them, sound wide on their own.

My learning experience with the mono "barn" mic in lieu of a stereo reverb effect on the drums has really driven the concept home. Stereo (simultaneous right and left, not just panning a mono track) isn't the only way to create a full and lush sounding pop mix.

Roger

[the brill bedroom]

And Roger knows exactly what he's talking about. He tracked the drums for my album this way and I have gotten more compliments for how "real" the drums sound. Check out the MP3s at www.corinashley.com
The drums sound totally righteous- the songs and the singing are completely derivative, but the drums tracks sound like proper drum tracks. I've done plenty of recording with 46 mics on the drums and I've never felt as happy with a drum sound as I do with these. Plus, his studio has a totally class- A, all analog bathroom.