what to do with an SM57-recorded kick drum

[joelpatterson]

Maybe I don't hang out here enough to comment...

Are we talking about "measuring balls" again?

[TapeOpLarry]

Shit, who let Fletcher in the door...

Some things I've done with anemic kick drum recordings include the gated 40 Hz, Transient Designer, multing and different processing, cheap crossovers as a mult (hint), TransMod by Sony, etc. I've never used any beat replacer stuff, not because of some retarded "ethics" . but because it's never been in front of me to try!

[lobstman]

Try mixing a compressed mult of the kick with the original- playing around with attack/release times accentuates different parts of the sound, but if your kick is wussy sounding, you can rely on the original for "click" and get differing shades of "whump" out of the mult.

[leigh]

Make it work with all the other tracks on the song!

Maybe I don't hang out here enough to comment... but this seems like the best answer I've read so far.

How do you do shit like add oscillators, and gates, and parametric equalizers, and Pultecs, and whatever the fuck without having heard the damn thing in context with the music?

Easy there. Nobody here is doing anything to the track. None of us have heard the thing, and none of us are responsible for mixing it (except, presumably, whoever started this thread). So when answering the original question, what's wrong with throwing out some ideas that've worked in the past, to help someone who's stuck on this issue?

Answering "make it work with all the other tracks on the song" is a true but trivial answer. Good for a laugh, but not very helpful for someone who doesn't know how to get from point A to point B.

Leigh

[joel hamilton]

...discuss.

jim!

Make it work with all the other tracks on the song!

Maybe I don't hang out here enough to comment... but this seems like the best answer I've read so far.

How do you do shit like add oscillators, and gates, and parametric equalizers, and Pultecs, and whatever the fuck without having heard the damn thing in context with the music?

Did I miss the day they taught that you're supposed to preguess what every sound needs before ever hearing the song?

Seems a bit dumbass to me. I dunno... I'm old so maybe listening to the song and making the drum sound work in context to the song is something only old people do

Interesting that the answer that you reference as "good" requires HEARING THE SONG as well.

[soundguy]

gee, did someone get caught in a contradiction AGAIN? Good thing new users to the internet cant go and read a decade or more of that behaviour archived someplace.

How do you do shit like add oscillators, and gates, and parametric equalizers, and Pultecs, and whatever the fuck without having heard the damn thing in context with the music?

Did I miss the day they taught that you're supposed to preguess what every sound needs before ever hearing the song?

apparently you missed the day when flying spaghetti monster made it ok to be helpful to people on the internet.

dude posted a question about what to do with a kick drum recorded with a 57. He didnt say there was anything wrong with his particular track, merely wanted to spark a discussion on the issue. Sophisticated, I know.

Since you are this incredibly experienced recording engineer, it should be blindingly obvious that an unmodified SM-57 has a very sharp peak somewhere in the 1K-5K ish region. As any good salesman knows, this makes the mic good for vocals but as any good recording engineer knows, this also brings forward the midrange of the entire mic giving less of an appearance of a big bottom end.

If a bunch of recording engineers got together around a bar and talked about 57 on kick, like this has never fucking happened before, someone is bound to bring up the basketball "boingeyness" you can get with a 57 on a kick drum. One thing you CAN do if you are trying to get more of a "kick drum" sound and less of a "basketball" sound is take a parametric equilizer, crank the gain all the way then sweep the frequency until you find the resonant peak and then cut it until you have a "flatter" frequency response from the mic at which point you can make some judgements about how to make the kick work in the song. If you have some experience using the same mic over and over again (and I know the 57 might not be very common mic that people have so I'll forgive you if you've never had a chance to use one to make a relevant comment on this topic) once you learn EQ curve of the mic one can definitely do things to anticipate its performance on certain sources. This anticipation after all is why the 57 is such a popular choice on guitar cabs, right? Well if you know the peak works for you on a guitar or voice or other source that benefits from a mid bump, its not such a stretch of the imagination to remove that bump on a source which you know you may not want to have a lot of upper midrange information in, like, for instance, a kick drum. Of course you'd have to be thinking instead of just running your mouth but whatever.

dave

[sthslvrcnfsn]

a big "ouch" from that fletcher comment. in trying to make it work in the mix, i did indeed make the bass guitar take up all of the serious low end - hey, it was well recorded and sounds awesome - and then i tried to remove the "boing" that a 57 does give you on a kick (because of the well-known frequency responce, like dave said) - and then tried a little EQ surgery to make it sound a bit click-y. I needed SOMETHING to help it cut through the mix a little bit.

I played around with this, and it only kind of worked. i figured i could get some good ideas for experimenting by typing here. and of course i use my fucking EARS. i wouldn't just read about one of these things and go right ahead and use it without testing some others. unless, of course, it sounded perfect.

Holy Shit, did I just use my ears and my brain before typing on here to find out what "sound" is in vogue?! And was I looking for things to audition, instead of blindly picking one?! geez, tomb must not be the place for me.

I apologize, i'm very sick and cranky. puking all day has made me a bit restless and grumpy. i shouldn't take it out here, duh.

jim!

ps - i think i'll try the home-made sample idea first. i have a nice kick drum of my own (doesn't quite match the sound of the guy's kit, but i can mess with the sample), and i think i can borrow a sampler. i'll give the re-amping idea a shot after that. my apartment kind of winds around, so aside from close mic'ing stuff, i can get funky with other mics. i just think having two sounds is better than only having one. even if you don't use the second one, it's always there, and if it DOES sound good or can be mixed with the close mic, then shit will sound that much better.

[joelpatterson]

Fletcher is the new Jeff Robinson.

[JohnDavisNYC]

nah, jeff robinson made recordings.

john

[Cyan421]

Thank you dave for pointing out that there is some science to recording (frequency responses) and not just an art like using your ears.

[eeldip]

where IS jeff robinson?

i thought he might want to try out this:

http://www.altmann.haan.de/tubeolator/default.htm

[nacho459]

Isn't that just green C37?

[Fletcher]

gee, did someone get caught in a contradiction AGAIN? Good thing new users to the internet cant go and read a decade or more of that behaviour archived someplace.

How do you do shit like add oscillators, and gates, and parametric equalizers, and Pultecs, and whatever the fuck without having heard the damn thing in context with the music?

Did I miss the day they taught that you're supposed to preguess what every sound needs before ever hearing the song?

I'm obtuse, could you point out the contradiction for me?

apparently you missed the day when flying spaghetti monster made it ok to be helpful to people on the internet.

dude posted a question about what to do with a kick drum recorded with a 57. He didnt say there was anything wrong with his particular track, merely wanted to spark a discussion on the issue. Sophisticated, I know.

I dunno... I've recorded a bunch of kik drums with 57's and they worked out fine... so I'm having difficulty understanding why / how anyone could discuss something they haven't heard. I'm all for being helpful and discussing things... but sometimes the answer is "listen to it".

If the question had been posed like 'I have this kik drum sound that was recorded with a 57, and it's kinda peaky in the mids and I'm having a tough time separating it from the bass... any ideas on how to get it to work better?' then there could be the flurry of technique/tool responses. My problem with the question, and subsequent responses is the presupposition that there is something wrong with a kik drum track recorded with a 57.

Sometimes being helpful is just pointing out the basics... like "listen before you grab a knob"

Since you are this incredibly experienced recording engineer, it should be blindingly obvious that an unmodified SM-57 has a very sharp peak somewhere in the 1K-5K ish region. As any good salesman knows, this makes the mic good for vocals but as any good recording engineer knows, this also brings forward the midrange of the entire mic giving less of an appearance of a big bottom end.

That's cute.

There is a peak somewhere in a 2+ octave range.

Thanks for sharing.

Were they having a special on 'vague' at the "Faux Helpful" shop this week?

The speed limit on that road is somewhere between 30 and 50... watch out for cops!!

The applications in which the mic can be used are many. From vocals to guitars, snare drum to bass... and yes, believe it or not... kik drum too. You can use it flat if the drum tuning, the song arrangement, and the sonic arrangement dictate it's use in that manner. This is why the tool is a "utility mic"... because it will work in a myriad of applications.

So despite the preconceived wisdom that there is a 'presence peak' the fact of the matter is that where that 'presence peak' might fall within the context of the sonic arrangement is what I would call "application specific"... in other words, there is nothing saying that it can't be fine and dandy with no EQ, no gated oscillators, no preconceived mishegaas at all... in some applications you might have to resort to the weapons arsenal... but you ain't gonna know if you're going to need to apply tools until and unless you've heard the sound in context to the song.

Serve the music, not your ego.

If a bunch of recording engineers got together around a bar and talked about 57 on kick, like this has never fucking happened before, someone is bound to bring up the basketball "boingeyness" you can get with a 57 on a kick drum.

Interesting... having spent a bunch of time in bars with a bunch of recording engineers over the years I've never experienced this particular phenomenon. I have heard people refer to the D-12E; the RE-20; and even the D-112 as having the "basketball dropped at center court" quality... but there was never any discussion of how to process that kind of sound. I guess I've missed that treat.

One thing you CAN do if you are trying to get more of a "kick drum" sound and less of a "basketball" sound is take a parametric equilizer, crank the gain all the way then sweep the frequency until you find the resonant peak and then cut it until you have a "flatter" frequency response from the mic at which point you can make some judgements about how to make the kick work in the song. If you have some experience using the same mic over and over again (and I know the 57 might not be very common mic that people have so I'll forgive you if you've never had a chance to use one to make a relevant comment on this topic) once you learn EQ curve of the mic one can definitely do things to anticipate its performance on certain sources. This anticipation after all is why the 57 is such a popular choice on guitar cabs, right? Well if you know the peak works for you on a guitar or voice or other source that benefits from a mid bump, its not such a stretch of the imagination to remove that bump on a source which you know you may not want to have a lot of upper midrange information in, like, for instance, a kick drum. Of course you'd have to be thinking instead of just running your mouth but whatever.

Wow... your last sentence really does sum it up in a nutshell. "You'd have to be thinking instead of just running your mouth". I couldn't agree with you more.

The only place I see any form of disagreement is that you seem to feel that the microphone's characteristic presence peak is a bad thing, and I seem to feel that it's the character of the microphone and not necessarily a personality flaw. If you're looking for a different character, use a different mic? I know that's crazy talk but what the hell... maybe it's worth a shot.

I suppose there could be the argument that if you were using a 57 on kik it might be because all you had was a pack of 57's... and because you had only one kind of microphone you would get a buildup of the character of that kind of microphone when it was applied across multiple tracks of audio. Then I could see your thought of going after the presence peak on some of the tracks [though which tracks can only be determined when you hear all the tracks in context] in an attempt to gain distinction and separation of the sounds... but that wasn't the premise of the question.

The initial question was: "what to do with an SM57-recorded kick drum ...discuss." I would think that the best thing to do with a kik drum recorded with an SM-57 would be to get it to fit into the song... oh gee, how fucked up is that?

Funny... I noticed your not so subtle little backhand on my day gig... it was kinda cute actually... that's a good technique. When you run out of substance in a discussion get personal. I like that. So, just how fat is my momma; motherfucker?

Let's see... how did I get to the point of the day gig? I dunno... I thought it was after a few hundred thousand road miles and a couple decades in little rooms with big speakers and no windows... but I reckon I just walked in off the street and applied for a gig selling shit I know nothing about... which is why I would take the dumbass position that you can't process a got damn thing until you've heard it. Well fuck me... thanks for straighten this shit out.

My question to you is why is it that the one person in this thread that might have something to gain by suggesting hardware to cure the dreaded 57 on a kik drum affliction is the one [OK, second... "drumsound"; the forum's moderator was the first] who is saying "listen to the damn thing to determine what, if anything needs to be applied"? The "non-hardware" response... but I'm an asshole for saying that?

I don't get it... could you spell it out for me why it's bad to listen to the sound in context before reaching for hardware?

Do I have a couple of dozen stupid pet tricks to muscle a kik drum into being sonically appropriate for a song? Hell yeah. Shit that goes way beyond the resurrection of 1982 with a gate and an oscillator... but that wasn't the initial question was it?

So... with all that said... could you enlighten me where the "contradiction" might fall.

[Angie]

Did I miss the day they taught that you're supposed to preguess what every sound needs before ever hearing the song?

It was probably the same day they taught how to guess which mic to use on vocals without hearing the vocalist first.

In all seriousness, although we don't know what the music sounds like in this situation, Jim now has a handful of things to try. Maybe none of them will work, but who knows. Trying ideas out and making mistakes is how we learn.

[MikeCzech]

Not to ride the hijack, but how come someone always has to give the obvious pestemistic answer?

Is this a message board or did I miss something? Is there even a point to signing in here if we have to hear everything before we provide ideas or take advice?

Oh, BTW, (Kick>SM57) + DBX120 = 10