toms.

[ace516]

recently at a show, i witness my friend's drumkit turn into a GOOD sounding kit. his toms sounded awful, but through the p.a. they sounded amazing. i'm just wondering, does anyone have ideas on approaching doing this type of work live and/or in my mixes? (what mics? what gear? plugins? eq?)

 

[andycerrone]

Sennheiser MD421 work wonders on toms in the studio, I'm not sure about live. Granted, I'd suspect they'd sound just as good. If not, they probably used Sm-57's to mic it cause of the beatings they can take. Possibly the drummer had someone tune the toms, cause as everyone knows, most drummers can't tune anything, so someone has to do it for them.

That's my $.02

 

[Nico2112]

...cause as everyone knows, most drummers can't tune anything, so someone has to do it for them.

If a "drummer" can't tune, then he's not a drummer...he can "play the drums". but definately not a drummer.
When playing live, on almost all of the cases, soundmen like toms to resonate as little as possible, for them to be able to control the mix. May sound good mic'ed, but not naturally un-mic'ed.
There ya go.
Cheers!

 

[SillyBee]

If a "drummer" can't tune, then he's not a drummer...he can "play the drums". but definately not a drummer.
When playing live, on almost all of the cases, soundmen like toms to resonate as little as possible, for them to be able to control the mix. May sound good mic'ed, but not naturally un-mic'ed.
There ya go.
Cheers!

So if he can tune drums better than Bonham but never picks up a pair of sticks in his life he is an awesome drummer?

 

[tourettes5139]

So if he can tune drums better than Bonham but never picks up a pair of sticks in his life he is an awesome drummer?

I don't think he said or meant anything like that. Merely meant that to be a drummer, you should know how to tune them well. If you haven't picked up sticks ever, of course you're not a drummer (not counting hand percussionists or anything like that) and of course you can't play drums.

(I hope you're being facetious.)

 

[Tom W]

recently at a show, i witness my friend's drumkit turn into a GOOD sounding kit. his toms sounded awful, but through the p.a. they sounded amazing. i'm just wondering, does anyone have ideas on approaching doing this type of work live and/or in my mixes? (what mics? what gear? plugins? eq?)

I usually find if a kit sounds bad going into the desk it's still going to sound bad coming out the PA but especially on toms you can improve the sound by gating each one and eq-ing out certain frequncies- often a chunk cut out around 200-250 Hz helps.

 

[Nico2112]

So if he can tune drums better than Bonham but never picks up a pair of sticks in his life he is an awesome drummer?

If he can tune better than Bonham, but he can't play the drums, then he's a great drum tech
Well my point was towards the fact that all drummers can play drums, but not all that can play the drums are drummers.
Your point is valid. I just realized that I can tune and play guitar & bass and definately I'm no guitarist nor bassist.
Cheers!

 

[Farview]

Toms that sound cardboardy when you are playing them will translate well through a PA.

You have probably noticed that any drumset will sound different when you are behind the kit playing it than it does when you are sanding in front of the kit. The microphones hear things differently as well.

FOH guys like toms that don't ring. It is much easier to make them sound powerful without making the PA feed back.

 

[Cult_Status02]

A lot of the magic is in EQs, just listen to when the FOH gets the levels you'll usually here the sound change pretty drastically. Obviously though, you can never make COMPLETE shit sound good. Also, a lot has to do with atmosphere, you obviously can't rewind and listen to that fill again and again, so you won't be able to here some of the mud you may have heard if it were recorded. If you check out some local bands' live recording there drums will probably not sound so hot.