What am I doing wrong?

caseomaaate

New member
I'm lost with drum sounds at the moment..

I kind of feel like the whole track is in the wrong frequency spaces, like the bass freqs aren't low enough and there's an ugly resonance to the snare and overheads.
I'm in a bedroom, not a big one and it's essentially a perfect square. The walls are very reflective and I feel that's where the ugly upper-mid sharpness is coming from. Absolutely a terrible recording environment, I know.

Mono overhead, MXL v67 and dynamic mics on close.

I know bodgy sound is inevitable with these problems, so I'm really asking what I should be doing in terms of EQ to tame the upper mid hurt? I either feel I'm taking too much away from the snare and overheads and the sound becomes thin, or I end up getting too much ugly lower mid and upper mid resonance from the snare. I can deal with the overheads being a bit temperamental.

Basically, I wanna know if I'm going in the right direction in terms of trying to polish these turds, or if these tracks are even worth working with.

RAW drums:
RAW DRUMS by nothingtoseehere | Free Listening on SoundCloud

Mixed drums:
DRUMS with EQ by nothingtoseehere | Free Listening on SoundCloud


Thanks, I don't want to waste anyones time but I'm just so buggered by this :D
 
Hi there,
If you're fighting a bad room you always will be. Short of moving or heavily treating, that is what it is.

That said, your close mics don't sound awful to me. The eq copy is quite extreme IMO.
Totally depends what you're going for, but I think a lot of the meat has been sucked out of the kick and snare, leaving a hollower scooped sound.

My gut reaction on first listen was that the OH was the main problem - not the close mics.
I feel like the overhead is harsh and dominating so, since it's a mono overhead, maybe you can play with different placements within the room.

I know it's an 'over' head but have you tried it at, or below, cymbal height, a good few feet away, pointing at kick/snare?
Experiment. No rules. :)
 
close micing is key when working in un treated spaces. There is no set fast rule other than to figure out the right mic placement for your recording environment. Nice chops by the way!
 
That said, your close mics don't sound awful to me. The eq copy is quite extreme IMO.
Totally depends what you're going for, but I think a lot of the meat has been sucked out of the kick and snare, leaving a hollower scooped sound.

I agree that the EQ is a bit extreme, I'm struggling with mud so I do a lot of removing 200hz - 500hz and I guess my ears get fatigued and I over do it. I'm mixing primarily with headphones.

My gut reaction on first listen was that the OH was the main problem - not the close mics.
I feel like the overhead is harsh and dominating so, since it's a mono overhead, maybe you can play with different placements within the room.

I know it's an 'over' head but have you tried it at, or below, cymbal height, a good few feet away, pointing at kick/snare?
Experiment. No rules. :)

I'll definitely be playing with placement more in the future, usually I try to get my mic as close as possible to the cymbals without directly facing the edges of cymbals. Going to try boundary micing and definitely more diffusion in the room.

Thanks for the second ears, it helps a lot to get a second perspective.
 
close micing is key when working in un treated spaces. There is no set fast rule other than to figure out the right mic placement for your recording environment. Nice chops by the way!

That's what I was thinking, I would definitely benefit from individual cymbal mics but it's all down to trial and error for now. I'm just glad that for now it seems I've got something listenable since no one has said it sounds terrible. Thanks man :D
 
Yeah, there are two opposing ideas at work.

1: Get the overhead as close as possible to the source to minimise room ambience capture.
2: Capture the sound of the kit with the overhead mic.

The closer you get with that mic, the more it's likely to favour one element of the kit, so finding a close (ish) spot where the whole kit is represented may help.

Close miking cymbals is an option, but personally I prefer to consider them kit-mics and use the close mics as contributors.
Preference is all it is, though. Try everything once. :)
 
Yeah, there are two opposing ideas at work.

1: Get the overhead as close as possible to the source to minimise room ambience capture.
2: Capture the sound of the kit with the overhead mic.

The closer you get with that mic, the more it's likely to favour one element of the kit, so finding a close (ish) spot where the whole kit is represented may help.

Close miking cymbals is an option, but personally I prefer to consider them kit-mics and use the close mics as contributors.
Preference is all it is, though. Try everything once. :)

Usually I'd prefer to get the whole kit in the overheads and build from that, but since my room sounds so bad I avoid that for the most part or the track ends up too dark and fluffy, or way too EQ'd from fixing said dark/fluff. Just gotta keep experimenting :)
I usually get a good mix of crashes with little drum shell, but my hi-hat is always overbearing. Usually I'd find close mic'd cymbals redundant for what I'm doing but it might do the trick if room diffusion doesn't work out.

Thanks again for the help :D I ended up toning down the EQ on the snare and kick and it's getting somewhere.
 
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