?Aw, to hell with it!? Too much High Hat in room mics.

[Ryan Silva]

I love room mics; I have found so many uses for them, albeit nothing ground-braking.

Keyed gate set to open with snare. (Very 80?s sounding, but cool)

Fast attack, Slow Release with my Disstresor set to ?Nuke?, can make those cymbal crashes swell up and shimmer (with slow tempo songs)

BIG TOM FILLS!

You guys know the drill.

I think I have become a little too dependent on Room mics for making a mix interesting. All it takes is one High Hat smasher, and the room mics are pointless. I have run into this issue with recordings that I have done, and Tracks I was given to mix.

Does anyone have any advice on faking room mics with delayed Overheads, or something wack like that?

Thanks

[lysander]

Could playing back the tracks into a nice room a recording it with a couple mics do the trick?

[Ryan Silva]

Could playing back the tracks into a nice room a recording it with a couple mics do the trick?

That would be great!

You have a nice room?

That?s totally why my situation sucks right now. I mix in a Living Room, which sounds pretty good for mixing, but nothing near what I would need for that.

But yes good call, that would be the best solution.

Thanks

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Yeah, if the guy smashes the hat's there's not really much you can do except explain to him that he doesn't know how to play the drums. Politely of course :)

If that fails try putting a mic behind the drummer with the highhats in the drummers shadow so there's no direct hats getting at it. It can be a life saver. At least then you only have DARK hats bleeding through everything.

[ott0bot]

yeah...the over the right shoulder mic does quite well at getting a great room sound, but blocking out the hats. I've also had success with dynmic omni mics (635a) as a room mic placed in front of the kick on the opposite side of the hats. If you don't smash it too much, the hats don't overwhelm the mix.

I know in tapeOp a couple issues back the Kurt Ballou article showed this awesome pic of a pair of hats stuck half inside a gardening pail with pyramid foam coating the inside. That'd tame the tiger.

[joel hamilton]

Some ideas:

Chamber the close mics. Anywhere. Even the living room you use as a control room. make it sound good in there and record that sound with a couple of omni's. compress that a lot, or use a transient designer (that I know you have) to make some decent duration happen, just to put a little air around the edges.
A separate send from the close mics to the sidechain of an expander on the room mics. , into a limiter.

Lowpass the crap out of the room mics, and put a little verb on them, and dont use them so much.

Turn up the guitars.

send the close mics all to a short delay with some kind of verb on it in stereo. Use super sparingly.
Make a duplicate of the room mic tracks, put a compressor on both channels in software. Flip the phase of one of them so they are OFF. like completely cancelled.
Use an ITB bus to key the compressor on the ORIGINAL room mic track. set the attack and release appropriately. You are now using 180 degrees of negative feedback, and modulating that negative feedback to only let through what you want from the room mic channel based on what the close mics are doing. Put a little bit of real world compression on the output of this shennanigan and fuck with the release time until it starts to sound like somthing, but then probably mute it after wasting at least 28 minutes trying to get it to work.

all of the above would probably be what I would do first. then I would try other stuff.

[Andrew Schneider]

De-esser them room mics. helps alot sometimes ... Also if they are that loud in the rooms they are probably loud on the snare mics as well so be careful not to compress and eq in truckloads of hihat while pleasing your snare needs.

[Nick Sevilla]

Hi,

Put a room mic, and put it through a small delay amount into your recorder.

"Steve Albini Likes It"

Also, to tame the Hihat slugger, put the hihat mic REALLY LOUD in his cans, he'll end up playing them more softly. Or go deaf.

Cheers

[Brett Siler]

If you mic'd the hi hat you may try inverting the hi hat track and turn it up and see if it cancels out the hi hat in the room mic. Never tried it but worth a shot.

[lysander]

That would be great!

You have a nice room?

That?s totally why my situation sucks right now. I mix in a Living Room, which sounds pretty good for mixing, but nothing near what I would need for that.

But yes good call, that would be the best solution.

Thanks

Sorry, all I have is a basement!

[vvv]

Hi,


Also, to tame the Hihat slugger, put the hihat mic REALLY LOUD in his cans, he'll end up playing them more softly. Or go deaf.

Oh, boy, I'm a try this one, soon!

[Snarl 12/8]

Hi,


Also, to tame the Hihat slugger, put the hihat mic REALLY LOUD in his cans, he'll end up playing them more softly. Or go deaf.

Oh, boy, I'm a try this one, soon!

You're not gonna do that to me, are you?

[vvv]

No, me other drummer!

[drumsound]

Could playing back the tracks into a nice room a recording it with a couple mics do the trick?

That would be great!

You have a nice room?

That?s totally why my situation sucks right now. I mix in a Living Room, which sounds pretty good for mixing, but nothing near what I would need for that.

But yes good call, that would be the best solution.

Thanks

I do. And a small box PA. Send me the snare and tom mics...