Drums - how am I doing?

[Tadpui]

I could've sworn we had a drum tone thread going in this forum somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I did find some entertaining old threads though, so it was still time well spent.

Anyways, I set up the drums in my new room. It's a little cramped in here with the kit set up, but it's ok. I recorded this yesterday just for fun. I just wanted some opinions and guidance on where to go from here (other than to get better at playing drums, I'm working on that ).

This is 9 mics altogether. The usual spot mics on kick, snare, toms, plus a spaced pair of overheads, plus 2 XY room mics about 4 or 5 feet away at chest height. There is all sorts of compression and gating on the kit pieces and room. Probably way too much, but I was having fun now that my gear is finally all hooked up.

Just the drums:

20190606 drums.mp3

And with some nashville tuned guitar and banjolele of dodgy intonation (also illustrating my timing issues ):

20190606-002.mp3

You can kinda see where I've got mics placed in this photo (I moved the MD-421 off the floor tom to the bass amp before I took the photo...was tracking bass earlier in the day):

P1088432.JPG

[SweetDan]

Sounds good to me. (I'm learning to hack away at playing and recording live drums too, so take what I say with a grain of salt. )

At 0:56-1:03 in the drums-only track, it sounds like the snare was coming from across the room, but right before and after that it sounded up close and present. I also hear that change in sound in the mix. Was it a mixing/arrangement decision to cut the close mic at that point and get the snare only from the room mics?

The kick gets lost a little in the mix, most noticeably in the big/loud (chorus?) part of the tune. Mix-wise, perhaps scooping out a bit of the card-boardy frequencies in the middle and boosting the high clicky frequencies with EQ will help. However, if you re-track (or on future recordings), also consider mic placement; I don't know much, but I know if the kick mic is inside the shell, moving it closer to the batter head will increase the clickiness/attack (at the expense of lowering the amount of boomy lows).

I could've sworn we had a drum tone thread going in this forum somewhere...

Maybe we should start one up.


Nice set-up in your room, by the way. 9' ceilings?

[Tadpui]

[mention]SweetDan[/mention] Thanks for the input!

The distant snare is an artifact of the gate that I put on the snare mic. I was hitting the snare softer in that spot so it wasn't opening the gate, so only the overhead and room came through. Not an intentional thing There was just such an intense amount of bleed from the hihat that I gated it to keep it under control. Apparently I didn't dial it in quite right.

Agreed on the kick. I really struggle with the kick beater smack. I hate hearing too much of it, so I end up getting something like this where there's nothing above 100Hz or so to indicate when the kick hits. I'm using an Audix D6, which is extremely mid-scooped. So it picks up plenty of beater smack, I just need to work on positioning it and treating it in post to retain that attack. I've found that if I put it too far inside the kick, I get that "bouncing basketball" sound. And not far enough inside I get this sound, without enough smack.

[Farview]

Chances are, if the hat is bleeding too much into the snare mic, you aren't hitting the snare hard enough. (or your hitting the hats too hard)

The overheads are probably a little hot as well, the cymbals are overpowering the snare and kick in the mix.

If you don't like a lot of attack in the kick, try to add the attack at around 1-2k instead of higher, so you don't get the heavy metal kick sound.

[Tadpui]

[mention]Farview[/mention]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm sure that a LOT of my drum tracking issues are due to my own bad playing technique. I'll try to make a conscious effort to whack the snare a little harder. I also re-positioned the snare mic (SM57) where the hats are more in the null behind the mic. So hopefully between those 2 things, my next snare track will be better.

[Greg_L]

I agree with pretty much all that's been said. Some tweaks of technique, mic placement, and mixing of the drum pieces will improve everything. On the plus side, it seems like your individual pieces sound pretty good. Kick, toms, snare, all have pretty good tone.

You can minimize hat bleed by angling the snare mic's ass straight up at the underside of the hats. And of course, don't bash the hats and do bash the snare. You don't always have to bash the snare, but some tuning and technique work can get a more focused snappy sound even from lighter hits. I can tell where the gate sort of shafted you. Lol. I like gates on toms. Gates on snares are a real bitch.

I don't think the kick is so bad for a tune like this. It wouldn't work on a hard rock song, but a clicky metal kick wouldn't work on this either.

Just minor tweaks and I think you're good to go.

[Tadpui]

[mention]Greg_L[/mention]

Thanks man, appreciate the guidance. I've got a great opportunity tomorrow to jack around with the kit and mics tomorrow, so I'm gonna do more trial and error and see what I end up with after taking all of these point to mind.

[SweetDan]

...I've got a great opportunity tomorrow to jack around with the kit and mics tomorrow...

So, your house will be like mine tomorrow?

"Honey, what do you want for father's day?"

"I want a steak, and I want to play and record some tunes!"

[Tadpui]

So, your house will be like mine tomorrow?

"Honey, what do you want for father's day?"

"I want a steak, and I want to play and record some tunes!"

Sounds like it's gonna be a great day for both of us! And now that you mention it, I want a steak too

[JD01]

I think you sound pretty tidy, Tad. Just practice a bit more.
Like its already been said, your kick is lacking in attack a bit, but then that's probably 'cos I'd go for a more attacky, clicky kick anyway which wouldn't suit this.
Hats are too loud!

[WhiskeyJack]

non drummer diving in for his two cents:

This is just as awesome as SD's two mic drum thread to me. Having spent the last handful of years using nothing but fake drums all these real drums i am hearing today are exciting me.

I don't have much at all to offer you [mention]Tadpui[/mention] other than praise on a job well done. I think the gates are giving you grief on that snare though. Which brings me to a very newb question. I think i may understand why you used the gate, and i feel like it was to cut down on bleed from the rest of the kit/room/ other pieces etc when not being hit? What would have happened if you didn't use the gate? Could you have recorded all this with out any gates on anything and added a gate as a post production thing so you could tweak it a bit as needed so that the sounds aren't totally imprinted possibly forcing you to go back and rerecord something?

I have only had two experiences recording real drums and the first time i did was a hands on learning thing we did with a friend. After we got the drums recorded we took the vanilla tracks of the drums and cut out all the bits of bleed. i.e. cut kick and hihat artifacts out of the snare, cut everything out of the toms that wasn't toms? It sounds like a tremendous amount of work (and it was) so maybe we are both dumbos but that made sense and really cleaned up the drum tracks. Listening to what you have done here with gates and knowing much more now than i did back then, i feel like i want to say you could do a gate in post to do what you did here and also to make lighter work of the same job my buddy and i did back then. I may be way wrong but all this came to me while reading and listening my way through your thread.

New room looks really cool to dude. Nice little get away spot!

[Greg_L]

I think you better have really damn good overhead miking technique and room sound if you decide to gate your snare. Especially if you're a drummer that uses a lot of accents and ghost notes. Those little snare rattles and tippy taps will be blocked by a gate. It's virtually impossible in my experience to use a gate on a snare unless you just whack the shit out of the drum on every hit. Maybe if you split the track into gated and non-gated tracks it could work out? I don't know. It's probably less time consuming to just mic the snare better.

[Tadpui]

OK I went back to the drawing board and changed a few things:

- laid into the snare a bit more
- repositioned the snare mic
- ditched the gate on the snare
- repositioned the kick mic
- remixed the whole kit, too many tweaks to name

In this 2nd attempt, I have NO FREAKING CLUE what happened to the kick track here. It's hitting some compressor really hard, so it sounds weird to me. I'll have to go back thru the tracks and figure out what the heck is happening. And I got carried away with compression on the snare but oh well. I kinda like it. But I'd back off if I hadn't already rendered out that track to free up the compressors for other duties. It's pretty squished though.

Well, here's where I stand now:

20190606 drums-002.mp3

[Greg_L]

OK I went back to the drawing board and changed a few things:

- laid into the snare a bit more
- repositioned the snare mic
- ditched the gate on the snare
- repositioned the kick mic
- remixed the whole kit, too many tweaks to name

In this 2nd attempt, I have NO FREAKING CLUE what happened to the kick track here. It's hitting some compressor really hard, so it sounds weird to me. I'll have to go back thru the tracks and figure out what the heck is happening. And I got carried away with compression on the snare but oh well. I kinda like it. But I'd back off if I hadn't already rendered out that track to free up the compressors for other duties. It's pretty squished though.

Well, here's where I stand now:

20190606 drums-002.mp3

Yes you got some compression going on. Lol. I like it though. Definitely a pretty cool sound to me. Almost sounds like the kick is on a reverse gate or ducking compressor at times. Bring up the mix around this and see how it goes. Might be great.

Compression aside, it's hard to tell, but I think your improvements might be working.

[WhiskeyJack]

[mention]Tadpui[/mention] I think my ears like everything in the second track better! quick back and forth reference check the snare in the first track almost sounds like a rimshots to my dumb non drummer ears when A/B'd with the second track. Really good. Nice progression.

[Tadpui]

[mention]Greg_L[/mention] [mention]WhiskeyJack[/mention]

Thanks fellas! I cringe a little when I listen back to the 2nd attempt, just due to the over-compression. Those Distressors don't eff around if you set them too aggressively!

I think I figured out what's up with the kick. First, I accidentally left my room mics off to one side of the room...so while they're still stereo, they're lop-sided because one mic was facing the kit and the other was facing the wall. So the "whack" of the kick is a delayed bounce off of the front wall of the room on one side and a more natural delay due to distance on the other side. Then add the drum bus compression where I used the low cut on the detector so it ignored the kick and let it through so it hit the master bus limiter pretty hard. I think all that combined to create the resulting kick abomination. It's kind of a cool effect, if I had only done it on purpose and with some sort of vision

I might just give this one more attempt, and try to flesh out the idea of the song/structure a bit and add some vocals. This is way folksier than my usual stuff so I'm kinda excited to develop it a bit and see where it goes. That banjolele has awful intonation but it's so much fun to play, I've gotta adjust the bridge one more time and see if I can tame it a bit. I think it recorded pretty well...it sounds like it does in the room: like a ukulele on a banjo body

[Tadpui]

OK I've gone back and changed a few things:

- retuned the kit. Toms are a little higher, closer to their "natural" pitches for their small size. Snare is a little higher as well.
- repositioned the overheads so they're a little more symmetrical around the kick and snare. And the L overhead is farther from the hihat now.

Different song this time. I recorded this boring dirge today just as an excuse to make noise. Nothing added to the kit except a little 5K boost on the kick and some quick, rough mixing. No compression or gates this time. This is pretty much just straight off the mics and preamps.

Just the drums:

20190620 drums.mp3

And a few guitars and bass added in:

20190620.mp3

[SweetDan]

Sounds like an improvement to my ears. Nice balance of the levels between the snare and cymbals. I'd like to hear the kick a bit more clearly in the mix...it gets lost a bit. And I'm not sure exactly what to do to fix that, but things I'd check are: 1) is some/all of the low end rolled off the overheads? Excess bass frequencies there can muddy things up, I think. 2) You mentioned boosting a bit of 5k on the kick; have you also tried to cut out any boxiness/muddiness from it as well?

EDIT: overall mix-wise, the drums sound drier than the other instruments; you could stand to send more of the drum bus to your reverb (if that's how you've got it routed)

EDIT 2: is that high, soaring guitar part an e-bow? I like it!

[liv_rong]

The last example definitely sounds the best.

I have usually copy my snare track and add reverb to that track and have been experimenting with gating it, but it hasnt worked out at all haha.

Kick ass looking room too!

[Greg_L]

OK I've gone back and changed a few things:

- retuned the kit. Toms are a little higher, closer to their "natural" pitches for their small size. Snare is a little higher as well.
- repositioned the overheads so they're a little more symmetrical around the kick and snare. And the L overhead is farther from the hihat now.

Different song this time. I recorded this boring dirge today just as an excuse to make noise. Nothing added to the kit except a little 5K boost on the kick and some quick, rough mixing. No compression or gates this time. This is pretty much just straight off the mics and preamps.

Just the drums:

20190620 drums.mp3

And a few guitars and bass added in:

20190620.mp3

I think that is a huge improvement and you can definitely work with that. Well done. Your tweaks are paying off.

Two little things....the toms seem a little choked to me. They have decent tone, but they kind of sound like they're fighting themselves. This is a minor nitpick, but you're getting far enough along that these little things can start to matter. I think you can fine tune them via the bottom head if you like the way top head feels and rebounds. My tom tuning ears prefer lower pitched toms though, so it could just be all in my head.

The snare is a little splatty. It generally sounds good though, so I think this can be tamed in the DAW with EQ and compression.