Brighter Drum Tracks

[wayne kerr]

Of course, the line about making better sounding records is in gest fellas...

No it's not. Not even a little bit.

SH

[djgout]

There is an article here on drum mixing that helped us out. Just run through the exercise and see if it helps.
http://www.recordingproject.com/features.php

hey beebe and everyone else-- this is an interesting article, though i suggest taking their advice with a huge ass grain of salt.
in reading the article some of the advice is alright, the specifics of the EQ-ing is odd though as it would change depending on your source, and the author suggests trying to cut the snare out of the overheads!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!??!

the biggest kicker to me though was the samples of gating the snare drum. first it plays the snare track unaffected, then with a gate, then gated with the rest of the drums. the first thing i noticed listening to the unaffected snare track was that the drummer was playing ghost notes between the backbeat, then the gated track comes in and the gate is cutting out the ghost notes, not all of them though. that definitly shows that the author didn't listen to the drums at all. gates and expanders are cool but if you actually remove parts of the performance inadvertantly like that it's gonna piss off the band. writing an article with advice like that is dangerous, there's impressionable minds out there!!!

and of course i mean no ill will towards the author or anyone who found his advice to be worthwhile, but take everything through the only filter that matters in recording, use your ears!!!!!

[pedrohead]

back on the main subject, actually the best thing i've done to brighten up my drum tracks (and i'm sorry if this is an equipment-type solution, trying not to fall into the "get an API" line) was the new aardsync II word clock i just got. the overheads definetly opened up a lot and the top end was a lot tighter and brighter.

that really did the trick for me at least.

[Al_Huero]

Yeah, I got a big jump out of synching the 002R to a Mini-Me. I think everything is pretty good now and will get better in the future. I found I didn't really need to do all that much eq'ing--a few dB cuts here and there made a big difference; as did taking the boost out of the kick I'd fallen in love with at one point.

My new setup will allow me to track 10-channels at 24-bit, 48 kHz with the Mini-me enhanced converters--so I'm optimistic.

A lot of it was just learning my room/monitoring environment. I've done alot more listening to reference CD's over the last couple of weeks which I absolutely should have done alot more of beforehand. I also figured out that my sub-setup on my home system was way out of whack. One of these days I'll figure it all out if I don't go insane first.

I have to say I got a sympathetic laugh at the quote in the recent TapeOp from the guy that said he couldn't sell his car because that was his best listening evironment.

[beebe]

WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!??!

djgout,
yeah i didn't really get the cutting the snare from the overheads part. we ended up using very little of that article... especially the gating, but we are just starting out and it got us moving forward. i guess i should have included the bit about "a grain of salt."

[Seej]

I've been recording at this studio in town www.lnlrecording.com and I didnt like the way the drums sounded, particulary with the snare and bass drum and the reverb he put on it. I always liked the way I taped the drums on my band's demos. Two overhead mics and it sounded perfect to my ears. But then of course I engineered our demos, so Im a bit biased. But I really wanted the drums to sound the same as it did on our demos. My guitarist didnt want that, but I dont like polished sounds and making it all perfect and shit. I wish I could post the different versions of our songs but I dont have a website for that. Ugh.

[dynomike]

Okay, two things.

Wood floors! Man this makes a difference.. and yeah it sounds like your room is too dead in the high end anyhow.

Maybe use some s/d mics on overheads?

But when I put in a wood floor I saw a world of difference.

Mike

[Seej]

Yea, that could make a difference but I dont think he wants to rip apart the whole studio just to put in a wood floor. I'll run that by him though.