the olden days before triggering...

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Rodgre
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the olden days before triggering...

Post by Rodgre » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:29 am

Before I yell at you all to get off my lawn, I was just remembering the days when I wanted to get more "click" out of a rock kick drum. I'm sure many people did similar things.... I would gaff tape a penny to the beater head right where the beater would hit, and stick a thumb tack in the felt of the beater so every time the beater would strike, you guessed it... CLICK!

It would be a few years before I actually figured out how to get "good" drum sounds, and before I stopped recording metal bands, which were plentiful in my area, but not my forte at all, who wanted that Metallica clicky kick drum sound.

I also would do the snare reamp trick by putting a small speaker over a snare and run the audio of the snare track through that speaker, then mic up the new snare, usually just to add sizzle and resonance to a snare, which I wouldn't have needed had I recorded it well in the first place.

How quaint these techniques seem nowadays when we just layer a sample of whatever we like on top of the kick or snare (which we probably did a good job recording already and don't need the sample, but who has that kind of self-control anymore? Ha!).

Anyway, what other fun tricks did you all do back in the day?

Roger

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Rodgre
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by Rodgre » Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:32 am

Oh! Another fun one...

Take an acoustic guitar and tune all the strings to either roots or fifths of the key of the song you're recording. Plug in it's DI line and leave it in the middle of the drum tracking room while the drummer plays. The sound pressure and vibrations of the drums will resonate the guitar and cause the strings to vibrate and sustain. Blend that in (possibly heavily processed) underneath for an interesting mysterious ambience under the drums.

Roger

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losthighway
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by losthighway » Thu Mar 18, 2021 2:06 pm

Rodgre wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:29 am
I also would do the snare reamp trick by putting a small speaker over a snare and run the audio of the snare track through that speaker, then mic up the new snare, usually just to add sizzle and resonance to a snare, which I wouldn't have needed had I recorded it well in the first place.
I still do this about once a year for a batch of songs. Not better or worse, just different.

I still get satisfaction out of something happening and knowing nothing will sound exactly like that again, and fear of producing sounds that could be repeated precisely at any point.

No knock on people who like efficient, modern techniques! This is my hang-up/inspiration.

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vvv
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by vvv » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:19 pm

I don't have any drums to do that with.

But like losthighway I do like to change things up: I've posted before that I'll bring just the snare, or mebbe the drums two-mix with or without the kick, up in the monitors and re-record them in M/S, then use that in parallel on mixdown.
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vernier
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by vernier » Thu Mar 18, 2021 6:24 pm

Rodgre wrote:
Thu Mar 18, 2021 11:29 am
Before I yell at you all to get off my lawn, I was just remembering the days when I wanted to get more "click" out of a rock kick drum. I'm sure many people did similar things.... I would gaff tape a penny to the beater head right where the beater would hit, and stick a thumb tack in the felt of the beater so every time the beater would strike, you guessed it... CLICK!

It would be a few years before I actually figured out how to get "good" drum sounds, and before I stopped recording metal bands, which were plentiful in my area, but not my forte at all, who wanted that Metallica clicky kick drum sound.

I also would do the snare reamp trick by putting a small speaker over a snare and run the audio of the snare track through that speaker, then mic up the new snare, usually just to add sizzle and resonance to a snare, which I wouldn't have needed had I recorded it well in the first place.

How quaint these techniques seem nowadays when we just layer a sample of whatever we like on top of the kick or snare (which we probably did a good job recording already and don't need the sample, but who has that kind of self-control anymore? Ha!).

Anyway, what other fun tricks did you all do back in the day?

Roger
I used to stack several samples on each drum but these days use a wood beater for snap.

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:49 pm

As discussed in the toms thread, using the key in on a gate to "trigger" sounds in time with the kit can be a huge help. Sub bass sine wave keyed from the kick drum, white noise keyed from the snare. Somewhere in the bowels of Gearslutz is a thread about classic disco production that's a really good read. Someone talks about using a loop of applause and keying it from and mixing it under the snare to give it extra sizzle. That also talk about doing the speaker over the snare trick but playing a sine wave to excite the snare wires. They recorded a full reel of that on once channel of the two track, wound it back, turned off the snares and recorded the tone sans snares on the other track. Bring both up on the console, flip the phase on one and the tone cancels out leaving you with 33 minutes of snare wire buzz. Mix that to a single track and key it from the recorded snare. I keep meaning to try it but still haven't gotten around to it.

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A.David.MacKinnon
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Re: the olden days before triggering...

Post by A.David.MacKinnon » Thu Mar 18, 2021 7:55 pm

Also, along the lines of the guitar as drum resonator idea, patch the overhead mic or track into a vocoder and play the chords to the song. You get a (sometimes) cool bloopy keyboard part that's locked to the drums pattern.

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