Big Drum Sound

M

mikesorensen06

New member
How do I get a big drum sound on my recordings without using a large room? If I need a large room, what size is best?

Cheers,
Mike
 
record your drums in a small room and find a natural sounding mix go to a really nice big room set up your monitors as if they were a drum kit and a microphone the other end, play the drum bus and record the results, add to taste,

The other solution bus the drums and use a big room reverb on the bus
 
The technique that GazEcc mentioned about playing back your drum mix over your monitors and recording it can be really valuable. I like doing this over adding a reverb to the Drum Buss because I feel like I can manipulate that newly recorded track as if it was an actual room mic. Play with the distance at which you set up the microphone(s) in front of your monitors. Just like in real life, the further back you go the bigger your "room" will sound on that track. I like to use 2 pencil condensers (one on each speaker) so that i can get a nice stereo spread, but one can be used in the center of the speakers for a good effect too, just depends on what you have and what you want it to sound like. Just mix that track in with your direct drums mics to your taste!
 
I always use a good Reverb on my drum bus but the best way to get fatter bigger drums is to use parallel compresion on your drum bus, works a treat in my opinion.
 
Or, you can do this....

I myself have a small recording room and I often have to emulate a big room for my drums. To do this, I use a good sounding room impulse (or a good algo reverb like Valhalla will work fine). To do this (after you've done your initial balances, of course), insert your impulse/room plugin on either the master or drum bus and solo all of the drums. It is quite critical that the room reverb you use is as high quality and natural sounding as possible. That is why impluse reverbs work so well. Now, what you're trying to do is listen to the sound of the room as you would listen to room mikes and strike a balance with the individual drum tracks until you get the balance you want. It's probably a good idea to save or take note of your channel levels before proceeding. What I usually end up doing is attenuating the kick, but not all the way, maybe -12dB. You want that low end push from the kick and the roomverb will most likely accentuate this. I then attenuate the overheads (or take them out completely) and attenuate the toms slightly so that they don't jump out over the snare when they're hit.

A bright reverb works best because a dark one will get lost pretty quickly and muddy things up.

Once you're done, you should have a pretty good simulation of room mikes. All that's left is to print the track (I usually split L and R), disable the plugin, and return my drum tracks to their original level. You can then mix the room sound in with your drums and apply compression, saturation, distortion, etc to embiggen them further.

A nice plugin to use on room sounds is the SSL LMC-1. It trashes the room sound a little while applying compression and this can do wonders to make it stand out and pump. You can get it for free here :

Solid State Logic | Music

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)
 
Hey Mo,

I never thought to just print a reverb so it can be manipulated like that. Great point! Saves a ton of time instead of setting up mics to record my monitors. But of course, as you said, if you don't have a good reverb, it will just sound like garbage. I'm gonna try this on my own stuff and see what kind of result I can get. Thanks!
 
Opening the door and putting a mic outside the room can really help, particularly if you have a bathroom or kitchen nearby.
 
can you guys post up links to songs where you have obtained a big drum sound. I'm also hoping to get a big sound by playing the drums through speakers and micing the other side of the room.
 
mikesorensen06 said:
How do I get a big drum sound on my recordings
Click to expand...

"Modern wall of sound" big? Or "lots of reverb, as if recorded in a huge room" big? I assumed the first, as that's what people usually ask about (regardless of you mentioning room size... people often make unrelated assumptions about how to do things around here). All these answers assume the second. Can you clarify?
 
I would use a big reverb. You could use an impulse of a big room as your reverb using a plug-in like SIR.
 
You can try to put a reverb (hall or plate) on the snare only.
This will create a backwall sense. Maybe on the overheads too.
 
A common mistake in today's mixing, especially metal, is leaving out bottom end on the kick drum. Make sure theres a decent amount of this, and as already discussed, plenty of reverb.
 
I am after the Bonham drum sound of Zeppelin. I have an opportunity to record drums in a room 25' x 50' with 16' ceilings. This involves much effort and I was trying for something less involved.

Thanks,
Mike
 
sixer2007 said:
What is your goal with putting a mic outside the room? What sort of sounds are you aiming to get that way?
Click to expand...

Room micing in a hall or reflective room can have a big impact. you can then do one of two things. either, blend in it gently with a hint of EQ to take out the real low and high end, or, compress it to hell and back! if you use a room mic, process it with a LCF (at about 100hz to take out some of the real mud) and with a HCF (down to wherever the cymbals become less overbearing, normally somewhere between 2kHz and 5kHz) and then smash it to death with either a compressor or limiter. with the compressor, set the ratio between 6:1 and 10:1, between 2 and 5ms attack and release to taste (i normally try and time it with the track so that the snare hits fall before the next hit) and get the GR hitting about -10 to -15dB on the snare hits. blend it in with the rest of the drums and you should hear get that BIG rock drum sound.

i personally find you can only go so far with reverb, even with a decent impulse based one (i use Altiverb 6). adding the compressed room mic really brings drums to life IMO
 
mikesorensen06 said:
I am after the Bonham drum sound of Zeppelin. I have an opportunity to record drums in a room 25' x 50' with 16' ceilings. This involves much effort and I was trying for something less involved.
Click to expand...

i'm lucky enough to work in an old victorian building with a huuuuuge entrance hall. we tried to get the bonham drum sound with the kit in there. it's not easy but it's by no means impossible. the big things to make it work are having a decent drum kit with fresh skins that are tuned well, a good drummer who's not afraid to really lay into a kit but with some control and moving the mic's around until you find the sweet spots. we tried for a more old school mic placement so had a LDC on the kick (sE titan, man i love this on kicks!) and a room mic (rode NTK). i took a while to setup but it was well worth it!
 
Personally I find that the height of the ceiling is more important than the size of the floor area. The rooms I like best for drums tend to be more or less as high as they are wide. You might have say 9m x 6m with a 5m ceiling height.
 
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