Faux live drum sound tricks/tips

raven46

raven46

New member
Ok so some are probably cringing at the thread title. I know the answer here is go to a great sounding live room but lets not forget this is home recording and we work with what we got. Anyway heres the thing.

My drums are set up in my living room where I mix. Its not a very big room with standard 8/9ft?? ceiling. I have alot ot treatment(Gobos, cloud, bass traps etc) in the room and carpet. Its very dead, possibly the worst kind of room to record drums in, unless your living in the 70's then it don't sound too bad at all. But thats not the sound I'm after.
I mic each drum, two on snare and sometimes two on kick. Spaced OH. A mono room and sometimes a bathroom mic which is down the hall.

The two things I know of to liven up a drum sound: Adding a room verb to the room mic(dont really like that, depends can be hit and miss). Crushing the room and or bathroom mic(Can be very nice but sometimes not very natural). The bathroom mic can be really nice but sometimes the cymbals come out a bit too harsh and I cut out a lot of it.

Their the two things I know of. Anyone got any other suggestions?

I plan to get another interface maybe next year. Then travel down the road. I got a nice location picked out and record in Auria on the pad, bring back home to mix. But till then is my dead room.
 
Send all the drum mics to a buss. Not the cymbal mics. Put a compressor on the buss.

Set up an aux with the reverb on it and send the reverb to the drum buss.

Get the compressor to pump in tempo with the song. This will meld the reverb with the drums. Sometimes just putting the room mic in there is enough, but that depends on the song.
 
I forgot about the bus tracks :facepalm:, yeah depending I might have up to four busses set up for drums as I dont like to comp my indivuidal tracks not too much anyway. Then give them a good lash of comp in the busses if need be. Bus1 for all drums, Bus2 for kick, Bus3 for snare, Bus4 for drum verb for toms, snare and sometimes kick. As with all this stuff it depends on what the song is asking for.
 
Lemme aks ya this....if the room is dead, why even bother with the room mic?

You could also just find better reverbs. I like impulse files, and there's lots of freebies out there.
 
Greg_L said:
Lemme aks ya this....if the room is dead, why even bother with the room mic?

You could also just find better reverbs. I like impulse files, and there's lots of freebies out there.
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I dont always use the room or bathroom mic. When I do use a room mic I like it up in the corner of the room facing into the corner or on the floor. To answer why, I cant say I know for sure. Just that when I get the position right it adds something nice to the sound but as you would expect it does not add any liveness. Room mic is either an AKG perception something or other or a CAD m179 if not being used on floor tom and some kind of SE Electronic in the bathroom. I think the mics are fine for the job. My wallet say so anyway..

Later on tonite/morning I'll post the drum file of an instrumental work in progress that belongs to a friend that we were working on last Saturday. He's playing everything. I'll post the before and after.
 
Why are you sending individual drums to different busses? A drum set is one instrument. The only reason I buss the cymbals to their own buss is because of the amount of compression I tend to use. I don't like the cymbals pumping that much, so I run them to their own buss to compress them separately.

All the drums I've recorded since 2000 have been in a reasonably dead room, using reverbs for ambience. There's nothing really fake about it. My studio before that had a really live sounding drum room, but it really only worked for some songs. Faster songs would be bathed in the roar of the room, it would get in the way.

I actually prefer doing it this way, because you can get the decay of the reverb in time with the song. That can help propel the song.
 
Farview said:
Why are you sending individual drums to different busses? A drum set is one instrument. The only reason I buss the cymbals to their own buss is because of the amount of compression I tend to use. I don't like the cymbals pumping that much, so I run them to their own buss to compress them separately.

All the drums I've recorded since 2000 have been in a reasonably dead room, using reverbs for ambience. There's nothing really fake about it. My studio before that had a really live sounding drum room, but it really only worked for some songs. Faster songs would be bathed in the roar of the room, it would get in the way.

I actually prefer doing it this way, because you can get the decay of the reverb in time with the song. That can help propel the song.
Click to expand...

Thats a great point that I never condsidered about the room. Wow that is something to really think about.

The reason for the buss set up is I dont like to over/compress the individual tracks. All the drums would go to bus1 with varying levels and just the tiniest smidge of compression on the buss like a db at most. I like slow attack and release to taste. Then the kick would be sent again to another bus on its own or sometimes with the snare. I can slam the kick and snare if need be. I feel it gives me greater control over the overall compression. Is this not a common practice? Am I doing it wrong again?
 
Farview said:
Why are you sending individual drums to different busses? A drum set is one instrument. The only reason I buss the cymbals to their own buss is because of the amount of compression I tend to use. I don't like the cymbals pumping that much, so I run them to their own buss to compress them separately.

All the drums I've recorded since 2000 have been in a reasonably dead room, using reverbs for ambience. There's nothing really fake about it. My studio before that had a really live sounding drum room, but it really only worked for some songs. Faster songs would be bathed in the roar of the room, it would get in the way.

I actually prefer doing it this way, because you can get the decay of the reverb in time with the song. That can help propel the song.
Click to expand...

Yes, this ^^^^^

Roomy drums on faster songs just sounds real bad. It's a mess. I prefer to track in my super dead room and just ass a good reverb later.
 
Cool will defo keep that in mind in future. The file I'll post later has no room mics and one kick mic, I'd still be greatful if ye guys would take a listen and kick the snot out of it.
 
Pretty interesting to me guys, I know I don't quite belong here, because I use drum software, but, I do try to treat them like they're real as far as how I mix/process 'em....Maybe one day I'll be able to apply everything I've learned to a real kit, but until then, it'll be samples/vsti's for me...Bottom line is I wanna learn how some of you guys mix your drums...;)

I'd be interested to see a screenshot of some of you guys' drums just to see how you're doing things like this if any of you are up for it....

Like I said, I try to treat my fake drums as if they are real. I have each mic on it's own track (multi-out thing for Superior, kick, snare top, snare bottom, toms, oh's, etc, usually about 6-8 individual tracks), with a folder/master/buss track. This way I can eq, compress each track if I want/need, without affecting the rest of the kit. I also send each track/mic to a couple different 'verbs (room & plate usually), at different levels (I personally don't like a lot of 'verb on a kick drum for example)...On the folder/master track I usually have a little compression also to try & glue the kit together a little, but not much, just a little, that's really about the jist of how I mix my drums...
 
I also treat all the stuff from Superior drummer and Steven slate drums like real drums, when they come in.

A lot of times I just use the ambience or room tracks for the reverb, if it fits the songs.

Basically, I EQ and compress each track a bit, then send all the drums to a buss and compress there too. The cymbals are compressed separately. The settings change, depending on the drum sounds used and the type of song and sound of the rest of the instruments.
 
Farview said:
I also treat all the stuff from Superior drummer and Steven slate drums like real drums, when they come in.

A lot of times I just use the ambience or room tracks for the reverb, if it fits the songs.

Basically, I EQ and compress each track a bit, then send all the drums to a buss and compress there too. The cymbals are compressed separately. The settings change, depending on the drum sounds used and the type of song and sound of the rest of the instruments.
Click to expand...
Thanks man, that pretty much confirms I'm doing things about the same way...

Just curious, do you ever blend sounds (IE: snare from Slate & snare from Superior)??? The last few months or so, I've been doing this on certain things, & it seems to work, obviously it's song/material dependent, but again, it seems like it does pretty good for me....
 
raven46 said:
Ok so some are probably cringing at the thread title. I know the answer here is go to a great sounding live room but lets not forget this is home recording and we work with what we got. Anyway heres the thing.

My drums are set up in my living room where I mix. Its not a very big room with standard 8/9ft?? ceiling. I have alot ot treatment(Gobos, cloud, bass traps etc) in the room and carpet. Its very dead, possibly the worst kind of room to record drums in, unless your living in the 70's then it don't sound too bad at all. But thats not the sound I'm after.
I mic each drum, two on snare and sometimes two on kick. Spaced OH. A mono room and sometimes a bathroom mic which is down the hall.

The two things I know of to liven up a drum sound: Adding a room verb to the room mic(dont really like that, depends can be hit and miss). Crushing the room and or bathroom mic(Can be very nice but sometimes not very natural). The bathroom mic can be really nice but sometimes the cymbals come out a bit too harsh and I cut out a lot of it.

Their the two things I know of. Anyone got any other suggestions?

I plan to get another interface maybe next year. Then travel down the road. I got a nice location picked out and record in Auria on the pad, bring back home to mix. But till then is my dead room.
Click to expand...

To add a room mic is the only way to really give a natural reverb that add the "live" aspect of the drums.

You can do two things:
-Forget about that, because you have a small dead room and go use a good ol' reverb plugin.

-Try balacing the room mic as well as your drum kit within the room to the point that it sounds the best than it can be...and the you play with the faders in the mix and add minimal plugins, because presumably, your drums already sounds fine at this point.

This is a subjective deal and there is absolutely no right path to choose, although I think the second one is better for many reasons.
 
minerman said:
Thanks man, that pretty much confirms I'm doing things about the same way...

Just curious, do you ever blend sounds (IE: snare from Slate & snare from Superior)??? The last few months or so, I've been doing this on certain things, & it seems to work, obviously it's song/material dependent, but again, it seems like it does pretty good for me....
Click to expand...
People send me their projects with whatever drums they used. If it's completely inappropriate, I will just retrigger with something from my Drumagog sample collections, or use SStrigger.

Sometimes I stack samples in SStrigger, but not often. I normally just find the sample of the drum I'm looking for. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel, and I sampled dozens of different kits and nearly 100 snares when I was making samples. I can usually find what I want.
 
Cool man, I try to use a couple 'verbs (room & plate) not only to give the drums a sense of space, but also the other instruments. Do you do the same? You mentioned using the room/ambient mics/sounds from Slate/Superior, which I do also, but wouldn't it help in certain situations to make all the instruments (drums, guitar bass, etc) sound like they're in the same space with the mentioned 'verbs??? Just curious to what other people think about doing this....

Thanks again man, I appreciate the insight...:)
 
raven46 said:
The reason for the buss set up is I dont like to over/compress the individual tracks. All the drums would go to bus1 with varying levels and just the tiniest smidge of compression on the buss like a db at most. I like slow attack and release to taste. Then the kick would be sent again to another bus on its own or sometimes with the snare. I can slam the kick and snare if need be. I feel it gives me greater control over the overall compression. Is this not a common practice? Am I doing it wrong again?
Click to expand...
I didn't see this post yesterday...

There is no right or wrong. If this gives you the results you are looking for, there is nothing wrong with it.

I do about the opposite of what you are doing. I do compress the individual tracks, sometimes a lot. Then I send them all to a buss and compress the kit as a whole using a relatively fast attack and I set the release to work within the tempo of the song.

The compression on the individual tracks is to shape the transient and decay. ie. make the decay longer on the snare and shorter on the kick, etc...


The compression on the buss is to bring the kit together and get it to pump in time with the song.

But, I do a lot of heavy music. This approach wouldn't be appropriate for everything.
 
I just listened to the tracks.

The reverb on the drums is way too long. Bring it down to about a second and a half, or less. If it becomes too dense, put about 30ms of predelay on it. You have some good solid low end on the kick, it could probably use a little more attack to balance it and make it stick out in the mix without having to make it much louder than everything else.

For someone who doesn't like to compress the drums too much, the mix with the guitars is smashed to death.

One of the reasons I compress the drums so much is so that it is controlled. This makes it easier to get them to sit in the mix. Bass tends to get compressed a lot as well, mainly for the same reason. If all the instruments have huge dynamic range, you end up running the entire mix through a compressor to try to smash it all together, which sounds worse than if you compress each thing individually and leave the mix alone.

Compressing a mix to control it will always be a compromise. If you compress the individual tracks (that need it), you can set the compressor to bring out the best of each individual thing.
 
Farview said:
I just listened to the tracks.

The reverb on the drums is way too long. Bring it down to about a second and a half, or less. If it becomes too dense, put about 30ms of predelay on it. You have some good solid low end on the kick, it could probably use a little more attack to balance it and make it stick out in the mix without having to make it much louder than everything else.

For someone who doesn't like to compress the drums too much, the mix with the guitars is smashed to death.

One of the reasons I compress the drums so much is so that it is controlled. This makes it easier to get them to sit in the mix. Bass tends to get compressed a lot as well, mainly for the same reason. If all the instruments have huge dynamic range, you end up running the entire mix through a compressor to try to smash it all together, which sounds worse than if you compress each thing individually and leave the mix alone.

Compressing a mix to control it will always be a compromise. If you compress the individual tracks (that need it), you can set the compressor to bring out the best of each individual thing.
Click to expand...

Thanks for checking them out. As stated it's still a work in progress. When I said I dont like to compress drums too much I was talking about the individual tracks. Their is no compressions going on other than the bus. The reason their smashed so much with the guitar mix is how the musician wanted it to sound, esp without any bass etc it needs to be hitting hard.
 
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