old snare trick really works!

[Rodgre]

Years ago I tried the old trick of sending your snare track out through a speaker, placed on top of a snare drum and remiking the sound to blend with your taped snare sound.

Then I got better at recording drums and didn't need to do such things...

Until last week where I had a good drum sound going in a mix, but I was really missing a bit of "snare rattle."

I decided to try the old trick again. I bussed a snare track out to a small Radio Shack Optimus speaker and placed this speaker on the top head of a snare in it's stand. I loosened the snares just a bit so there would be a little more decay than usual. I mic'd the bottom head (with an Audix D-2 for no particular reason, into a Great River MP2-NV) and recorded it to a track. Then I didn it again to another track, and panned them hard left and right. I blended them with the kit, and not only did the slight sizzly rattle make the kit feel more alive, the stereo image was really cool, with the dry original snare track up the middle, and the hard panned "rattle" tracks in lieu of any reverb.

I also did not gate the snare track, so the sound of the kick drum made the "reamped" snare rattle a little bit too. This all worked perfectly for this track (which was a somewhat "wilco-y" tune)

Give it a try.

Next time, I may run the whole mix through a speaker and then mic the room for some fake "bleed"........ .isn't that what Martin Hannett did on those old Joy Division records?

Roger

[assfortress]

i hate you Rodgre. i am going to think about this all night at work, then waste tomorrow messing around with it. has anyone close miced the left right speaker and then miced the room?

[Al]

Good call!!...i work with a band sometimes in the Jayhawks/Wilco mould,i'll give this one a try..cool!!

Cheers

Al

[smog]

Speaking of miking the room: I made a stupid, retarded boo-boo once where I printed my overheads in mono because I was monitoring a different source. Upon starting the final mix, I discovered to my horror the mono problem. I had 1 night to fix this so I decided to run the drum mix as loud as possible into my family room and mic the results about 10 feet from the speakers with a spaced pair. It was the perfect fix. I mixed about 60-40 with the original mono overheads and it sounded fine.

[JES]

Hey All,

The snare thing really works nicely on big sounding rock recordings. Back in 1998, when my band went into a real pro studio, the engineer did it and it made a wonderful difference in the snare sound.

Best,
--JES

[elloweez]

Good idea. Know i am going to go steal it. HA!

[joel hamilton]

Your live room IS a chamber. You can effectively double the amount of air around a drum kit by sending the drum group back out to the live room, re miking in stereo, and you have a pair of room mics that sound great!

This is great in situations where the track count needs to be low as well, because you can simply return the mics way down to the right of actual tape tracks like an efx return. your own room as verb. this is also handy if you only have a pair of mics you would like to try as rooms, but cant spare them during the tracking...

[A.David.MacKinnon]

Also works very well on guitar solos or just about any other sound you want to fuck up.

[black mariah]

Is it good or bad that I know where Rodgre's sig comes from?

[Rodgre]

Is it good or bad that I know where Rodgre's sig comes from?

How could it be bad?

Are you saying that you know me (or I know you?)

Roger