What is the REAL glyn johns setup?

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JoshT
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Post by JoshT » Sat Oct 21, 2006 10:48 pm

Is Ethan Johns undermicing the toms and snare in that pic from the Ray Lamontagne? Maybe its just a part of the drum hardware.

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Post by Auslander » Sun Oct 22, 2006 4:57 am

The mic is either an AKG D12 or a D25.

I worked on an album years ago with Glyn, and he used the 3 mic setup. As I recall, 2 U67s, one a few feet above the snare but a bit off to the drummer's left, and the other about 8 inches away from the floor tom, facing in towards the snare. The bass drum mic was most probably a D12 (not sure if we even had a D25 at the time) and was about 6-9" away from the bass drum's outer head.

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Post by WindowSills » Sun Oct 22, 2006 9:58 am

JoshT wrote:Is Ethan Johns undermicing the toms and snare in that pic from the Ray Lamontagne? Maybe its just a part of the drum hardware.
I think it's the hardware - looks like he uses the same kind of "claw" type stands for the rack tom and snare. Like this:
Image
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Dave Stanley
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Post by Dave Stanley » Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:51 am

Hey Brad347, I too like the higher mic positions with the MK-012s. The sound opened up, sounded a little more birght and airy. Very nice.

Kit sounds like old school jazz. Very authentic sounding. (whatever that means!)


Question? How did you pan the OH's? Hard left/right? My guess is you didnt hard pan the OH's. But curious....!

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Post by ??????? » Mon Oct 23, 2006 8:15 am

I panned them about 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock. Thanks for your comments.

I've been working on a recording of a song where I use this technique, more rock-oriented. I'll post my progress later. I think it's coming out okay.

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Post by dirk_v » Tue Oct 24, 2006 12:20 am

Hey Brad - Just wanted to encourage you to keep us posted on your progress. The MP3 samples you posted sounded great! I've got some rock stuff coming up in a few weeks, and I'd love to try a minimalistic drum-mic'ing setup if I can get away with it, considering that I think I ran a dozen mics last time out. Thanks for posting.

Best,
-dv
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Post by ??????? » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:28 am

Thanks. I'm mixing the tune as we speak. I'm on a tight schedule, in grad school, working, married, hired-gun gigs, a few bands, etc. Hopefully I can get at least a decent start on a mix done by this weekend. I'll surely post it up.

The rough mix sounds pretty good, drums anyhow. I went with the third setup above, except I switched the e609 to the bottom of the snare. Sounds better for the rock stuff to my ears.

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Post by ??????? » Wed Oct 25, 2006 7:50 am

OK, i've got something listen-able, mix isn't totally finished but it's mostly there I think. I used the glyn johns setup with a mic under the snare. Same mics as I used for my experiments above.

This is a more rock oriented thing. I am TOTALLY open to suggestions about this mix by the way.
Last edited by ??????? on Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

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nlmd311
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Post by nlmd311 » Wed Oct 25, 2006 8:38 am

Brad,
That's a really cool song. The drums sound great. I really like the way the drums and bass interact. The only thing I don't think I am hearing enough of is kick. I haven't really been able to listen to it at a decent level, but I can't pick out the kick.
The guitars sound great!
All your sounds here are good from what I've heard so far. I really like the ending. Once that second set of keys comes in it is just great.

Awesome job.

-Darrill
slowly panning across something kind of crappy...

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Post by ??????? » Wed Oct 25, 2006 9:41 am

Thanks, I feel the same way about the kick. Is there any good way to make it poke out more? I cut some 40-80 hz from the bass and boosted that same spot in the kick, I also boosted up around where the beater attack is, I forget exactly where (I set a parametric to a really narrow Q, boosted, and just swept around until I found it). I also tried switching the polarity with respect to the other drum tracks, it actually made very little or no difference and I wasn't even sure which was better so I left it as is. I'm not too enthused about just pushing it way up at the fader, because I tried that and when it became audible it sounded... well... like "too much." What else can I try?

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Post by Recycled_Brains » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:07 am

Cool song. sounds like something out of a Quentin Tarantino flick (i mean that as a compliment). very psychadelic. i really dig that swarm of bees sounding layer you have during the verses. is that a guitar, or the synth?

i agree with that the kick could be more audible. maybe if you boosted the level and then added a little verb to soften it up a bit it would help with the "too much" problem.

great mix.

-ryan
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Post by RoyMatthews » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:08 am

Well, I don't know if it would work in this case but what I've done when I need the kick to poke out a bit more is duplicate the kick and put a gate it. Actually to avoid latency issues I put the gate on both tracks and bypass the one one the normal kick. I then set the gate attack to be as fast as possible so it clips the start of the hit and clicks when it opens. I then sneak that click in with the regular kick to taste and it feels like you're hearing the beater. It sounds like complete ass on its own but when it works it can be cool, especially if you like the normal kick level and you just need a bit more definition.

Roy
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Post by ??????? » Wed Oct 25, 2006 10:20 am

Thanks for the tips! The 'bees swarming' sound is my old minimoog model D on a square wave patch, and I'm manually de-tuning and re-tuning two unison oscillators by twisting OSC2's frequency knob slightly back and forth. It also has a very slight pan automation that swirls it around just barely left-to-right of center relatively slowly. Inspired by the drone on "tomorrow never knows" off of revolver.

I might just try that gating trick. I also haven't tried compression on the kick yet. I really like to not compress kick and snare if possible. I did end up putting a limiter on the snare this time though, the transients were just a little too much without it.

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Post by ??????? » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:03 pm

Well, I tried a few things. I added another band to my parametric and found another spot where the kick beater had an overtone and boosted. Then I cut the corresponding frequency in the bass a little. Then I copied the track and did a pretty conservative version of the gate trick. It helped a little. I found that I could make the kick present, but it was always by boosting way down low, and I just didn't like the sound. Too "radio rock" or something, way to "subby."

So I sort of split the difference on all counts, and here is what I came up with. I have made a couple other slight adjustments to the mix as well, most probably unnoticable but they serve to satisfy my OCD.

Tell me if you can notice any improvement to the kick at all:

.

It seems subtly better to me but not 'all the way there.' Once I give my ears a rest I'll play around with it some more.
Last edited by ??????? on Mon Jan 08, 2018 4:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

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workshed
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Post by workshed » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:58 am

I have nothing particularly useful to contribute, other than I was able to try the Glynn Johns techique last weekend (thanks to this thread inspiring me), also using Oktava MK-012s as the overheads and I was pretty damn happy with the results. Previously, I had used the recorderman technique, which is a modified Johns technique, but would often have to resort to close-mic'ing the toms. With the Johns technique, I got some nice tom sounds without having to close-mic them. My set-up was:

Overheads: MK-012s -> Presonus MP20 -> MOTU 828 MKII
Snare: SM57 -> Hamptone JFET -> MOTU 828 MKII
Kick: Sennheiser e602 -> Hamptone JFET -> MOTU 828 MKII
Room: SE Electronics SE2200A -> EH 12AY7 -> smashed through a Symetrix CL-150 -> MOTU 828 MKII

I can post some sound files and photos if anyone is interested -- just don't pay any attention to my craptacular drumming.

Anyhow, I thought the sound was better balanced and fuller and more honest than the recorderman setup, and the room mic really helped to glue it all together. Makes me happy that I could get a better sound with 5 (or really even 4) mics than 7.

Slightly funny story: I wasn't totally happy with the kick sound, but I bought my e602 used and was wondering if it had some issues. It sounded really flappy when close to the beater, and too hollow when I backed it up enough to get rid of the flappy sound. Of course, when I was all done and broke down the kit, I noticed that one of my kids had put a post-it note on the inside of the reso head at some point in time, so that was probably the problem all along!

-Bret

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