I Too Want An Monstrous Kick Drum... And Hat

[Suntower]

I saw the thread about 'Awesome Kick Drum' and that's exactly what I'm looking for on a particular song. Or rather, I want the whole kit to sound 'explosive' for the intro. (Yeah, adjectives to describe sound is pretty ridiculous, sorry.)

I took my crappy drum kit, ran it through Toontrack drum trigger and replaced everything with 'Superior' samples. And we're getting there.

But it doesn't have the bone crushing effect I want... especially the hi-hat. The pedal crashes should sound like the door on a '71 Eldorado being slammed shut. On a giant piece of sheet metal. And the snare has a nice crack, but doesn't have the -bottom-.

http://jchmusic.com/downloads/ns-opening.mp3

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

TIA,

---JC

[MoreSpaceEcho]

yeah that is not exactly bone crushing. i would suggest adding tons of distortion and/or putting everything through a heavy handed expander/envelope mod and get some backwards explody business happening.

but really, is closed hihat what you want? i never open them myself, but for bone crushing i'd think 1/4 note open hat would be the way to go.

[dfuruta]

The pedal crashes should sound like the door on a '71 Eldorado being slammed shut. On a giant piece of sheet metal.

do it?

[Nick Sevilla]

I am doing the February RPM challenge.

Nowhere will there ever be explosive drums anywhere near anything I am submitting.

Those 1980's hair band atomic kicks need to be left behind, IMHO.

[lefthanddoes]

More compression? Parallel smash bus? Large room impulse?

Pitch the hihat down?

[Marc Alan Goodman]

It's tough to get a kit made out of samples to react correctly. As soon as you start to compress any attempt at imaging goes away fast.

I know it's anathema to say, but the answer is the right drummer playing the right kit in the right room with the right mics, then compressed to hell :)

One thing I can tell you is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get explosive sounds out of fewer mics. As soon as you start pushing up the close mics things get displaced and potentially flaccid very quickly.

[Suntower]

No it's not anathema. It's an abomination! Or armageddon! ...or some other biblical deal.

I agree. The original 3 mic recording of my crappy Ludwig kit has a certain 'bigness' because of all the bleed. But the basic tone is weak. I was hoping that using better samples would help, but what I find is that, because there's no 'room', when I compress the whole thing, it sounds TINY... or 'New York' if that makes sense.

Ya know what are the -tiniest- sounding drums to me? Heavy metal drums. And that's what the samples sound like squished or with added distortion.

I was hoping there was a 'trick' to get the samples to 'glue' together into a cohesive sound that I could -then- slam.

Sorry for sounding so stupid. I'm a noob when it comes to drum replacement... but there's gotta be a way to do this since so many people use Drumagog and so on.


---JC

It's tough to get a kit made out of samples to react correctly. As soon as you start to compress any attempt at imaging goes away fast.

I know it's anathema to say, but the answer is the right drummer playing the right kit in the right room with the right mics, then compressed to hell

One thing I can tell you is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get explosive sounds out of fewer mics. As soon as you start pushing up the close mics things get displaced and potentially flaccid very quickly.

[vvv]

One think might work is to re-amp 'em.

Crank the track out your monitors, or even a P.A., record that from the room, the hall, the bath, etc., blend in.

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Ditch the samples. Go back to the 3 mic real drums and then add a heavy dose of parallel compression (the Alesis Micro Limiter is great here but anything dirty and pumpy will do).
Put a fuzz pedal on an aux feed and send it some kick and snare.
Play with the phase of the compression and distortion until things sound good but keep in mind that because of latency and phase issues this stuff usually works better as a real analog board mix than it does in the box.
Re-amp the clean drum mix into a real room and add that to the equation. Try re-amping with and without the kick mic, and with or without the parallel compression and distortion.

[Magnetic Services]

The pedal crashes should sound like the door on a '71 Eldorado being slammed shut. On a giant piece of sheet metal.

Maybe procure a '71 Eldorado door, rig it up on a stand in place of your hi-hat and record the track again.

...For real though, physically replacing the hats with a piece (or several pieces) of sheet metal, dampened to taste, might be the right thing. Two crash cymbals mounted on a hat stand is another idea. Maybe crack them first. A spot mic wouldn't hurt either, if you have enough inputs.

here's a library of abused cymbal sounds. Probably pricey but you could find just one technique and duplicate it yourself. please post results.

http://hissandaroar.com/sd011-tortured-cymbals/

[Marc Alan Goodman]

Ya know what are the -tiniest- sounding drums to me? Heavy metal drums. And that's what the samples sound like squished or with added distortion.

Nailed it

Yeah, I use drumagog, but only when I need more of a close sound (read: tiny). It will never help you get a good room sound. For that you've just got to manipulate the mics you've got and hope for the best.

Also good hats go a long way to getting the balance right in the room. Obviously if the player is a basher there's nothing you can do, but having a good pair on hand may be a worthy investment. Right now we mostly use a set of 60's A prototypes, but I'm lusting after a pair of current production Paiste Formula 602 mediums.

[digitaldrummer]

with drumagog you can also adjust the mix and phase (I think that is what it is called-not looking at it right now...) settings to add a little of the sample to real drums. that way you don't completely cut off the natural ambience but you can give a little boost if its needed. and of course use the phase to adjust the sample with the recorded sound to where they sound good together.

I also love the Devil-Loc plugin (yeah the one that Soundtoys gave away a couple years ago at the Tapeop SXSW party!). I eventually upgraded to the full version. Put it on a parallel bus (but make sure you have delay compensation-as with all parallel bus tricks...) and it can really fatten up the drums. push up the "crunch" and that extra grit will make them pop through.

Mike

[Suntower]

Wow. Thanks for all the replies. Dunno why I didn't get a notice that anyone wrote.

This is probably not constructive, but when I sit @ my throne and wail away (and I do mean -wail-... when I do the hat sucks, the stand almost falls over.) it sounds vaguely like what I want. It's big and chaotic. The issue is that the drums just are... well... they're cheap-o Ludwigs.

But the thing is, the 3 mic technique doesn't get me what I hear from behind the throne. No micing gets you what you -hear- with your ears/brain. Unfortunately, the mics hear the crappy drums.

In lieu of getting that $3,000 Nashville set I dream of... I was hoping to get some sort of idea of how to impart some '3-d' quality to these sounds.
My sense is that I'm not gonna get very far processing each drum individually. Or at least, -I- haven't had any luck.

Again, thanks,

---JC

[Nick Sevilla]

Ok, since you are still wanting the drums of doom:

1.- The Kick.
You will need:
One dynamic mic for inside the kick. Use anything that can handle the spl. I usually use a Shure sm57 or 58 for this torture job. This mic needs to be fed into a decent mic preamp, and make SURE it does not distort. This will be your Attack mic. As such it does not need compression.

One LDC condenser outside the kick. You absolutely will need one that can handle the spl. Typically 130 dB. You will need to ALIGN the signal of this mic to the dynamic above, so that they are in phase. This mic is your BOOM mic, the one that captures the length of the decay of the kick, and will need a fast attack, slooow release compressor. My favorite compressor for this is a Urei (Teletronix) 1176. Once you have FIRST aligned the phase of the two microphones, and ONLY THEN, do you start messing with the compressor. Set the 1176 to 8:1 compression, and set the attack to max speed (7) and the release to the sound of the kick length that you desire for your particular song tempo.

As to EQ, You need to reduce the low end of the dynamic mic some, and reduce the top end of the LDC somewhat, so that they complement each other.

For recording this sound, you will preferably combine these two mics into one output buss on your console, so they combine into one channel.

Now, as to the other mics of the kit, you absolutely will have to place them so they also align with the kick mics you already set up. TAKE YOUR TIME DOING THIS so you get a good representation of the whole kit, and that it all aligns with that kick.

Typically I would take from 6 to 12 hours setting up a "hard rock/prog rock" type kit like this. So don't take 5 minutes and wonder why it doesn't work. Because in 5 minutes you will not get it. Every microphone will need it's own EQ so you can shape each mic sound closer to a final sound. Throwing mics haphazardly and recording them totally unprocessed, as most eveyone does today, is for pussies.
Oh, and if you have a multitrack tape machine, us that to record on. It will smear things nicely.

You want a real man drum sound, man up and spend the time doing it right.

Cheers

[MoreSpaceEcho]

half a day to set up a kit? hmm. i guess if you're recording terry bozzio.

i would say spend some money on new heads, spend some time tuning your drums really well, and you will find those cheap ludwigs sound just fine.

fwiw i get perfectly good (to me) drum sounds with one kick mic, one overhead, and a couple room mics. maybe a floor tom mic. i also record them with no processing, which i guess makes me a pussy. but putting compression on in the mix is not a very difficult thing to do, and i rarely need any eq, so....