How to improve BD sound

TamaSabian

TamaSabian

Peruvian skin beater
Maybe you could give some tips on how to improve my kick sound. I got a Tama Rockstar DX with a 22" BD. Batter head: Powerstroke 3, resonant head: original Tama head with a 6" hole. Dampening: 2 pillows. Actual tunning: batter head very low, the lugs almost jingles when you hit it. Resonant head: a little higher in pitch.
How can I get a "click" sound from my BD??. Using EQ could be the solution or maybe some type o tunning??. What about the heads I´m using??. BTW I´m micing it with a PRO25.

Thanks
 
Tune your bass drum up. Its too low, making it floppy. The resonant head needs to be looser than the batter.
 
couple of ideas:

the obvious- get a better bass drum (not the most affordable, but will make the most difference)

take those pillows out! get a dampening pad maybe (like the evans system), or a self muffling head. the pillows are just going to take all the volume and projection out of your sound. i'd rather have a loud shitty sounding bass durm, then a really quiet decent sounding one for playing out. if you have your bass drum tuned as low as you do, its making inaudible frequencies (if any, you might not even really be resonating if the heads are too loose) a lot of the time, tuning your drum up will make it sound deeper, since you bring the pitch made into an audible range. play with it, a lot, to find what you like (hey its free, whats stopping you?).

if you're just doing this for recording, to get a "click", you can:

put the mic closer to the point where the beater hits the head. point the mic right at the beater.

AND/OR

boost around 5000khz, thats the "click" frequency range.

jacob
 
TamaSabian said:
Maybe you could give some tips on how to improve my kick sound. I got a Tama Rockstar DX with a 22" BD. Batter head: Powerstroke 3, resonant head: original Tama head with a 6" hole. Dampening: 2 pillows. Actual tunning: batter head very low, the lugs almost jingles when you hit it. Resonant head: a little higher in pitch.
How can I get a "click" sound from my BD??. Using EQ could be the solution or maybe some type o tunning??. What about the heads I´m using??. BTW I´m micing it with a PRO25.

Thanks
Click to expand...

what kind of beater are you using? you're going to have a hard time getting a 'click' sound with a felt beater (if that's the case), I would try a wood or plastic beater.

the other thing that I would try is to add an sm57 inside of the kick pointing towards the beater impact point. this will give you more 'attack' which you can blend with the 'oomph' of the pro25.

one other thing that I've heard of people doing is to tape coins to the batter head at the point of beater impact. silver dollars would probably work well. never tried this myself, but it seems logical that it would give you a nice 'click' sound.
 
play with it, a lot, to find what you like (hey its free, whats stopping you?).
Click to expand...

My day job is stopping me. I only can play a lot on weekends.

what kind of beater are you using? you're going to have a hard time getting a 'click' sound with a felt beater (if that's the case), I would try a wood or plastic beater.
Click to expand...

I´m using a felt beater, gotta change for a plastic one.


I need a type of tunning that suits for live playing (got some gigs) and recording. I think I feel more comfortable with the batter head lower than the resonant. Now I´ve to pull out those pillows and listen. In the meantime I´ll leave just one I think, hate a loud BD.
Maybe my "poor" room is acting against good sounding kick drum. :(
 
First thing.

Tune your bass drum. If your lugs are rattling then it's not tuned. Take all the crap out of it and tune it so that lugs on each side of the drum sound the same. In order to accomplish this you will often have to dampen one side of the drum at a time to just hear one head. If you take a drumstick and hit the shell you will begin to hear the shell's fundamental. Start from there.

The typical way to tune a bass drum is with the resonant head just slightly lower (less than a half step) than the beater head. You can always get rid of resonance in a drum. You tune the drum to be resonant in it's fundamental (not it's octave harmonics).

Now you have a drum that goes Booooooooom boooooooooom. Congrats. put a pillow in it or a dead ringer or whatever till it makes the length of boom that you need. I like the foam dead ringers.

Now, if you need more click from the drum make sure that your mike is pointing into the drum at where the beater strikes. Still no click ? Add a wooden beater. Still no click ? put a mike on the batter head near where the beater strikes, phase reverse the signal and sum it with the original bass drum signal. Adjust the microphone distance till you have no phase problems.

Putting a coin on you batter head wrecks the batter head. Try it, then try to tune your drum again. Told ya so.

If you do it right the drum will sound great with very little eq and minimal compression.
 
A coin, or you can get a "whap flap" which is a piece of plastic sheathing that has adhesive on the back. You can get them in several different shapes and sizes (for single or double beaters). They are specifically made for the bass drum, and it helps your batter head last longer.
 
You tune the drum to be resonant in it's fundamental
Click to expand...

What do you mean by fundamental??. It has to be lower than floor tom, right?. I´ve been playing with what I thought was a well tunned kit. BTW I tunned my toms in fifths, starting on the floor tom, then mid tom, and finally hi tom.
I know that some drummers doesnt tune his kits into a specific note, the play high quality drumsets were tunning and dampening is not critical. But I´m sure that no matter what kind of kit do you have you can always make it sound decent, with good heads and right tunning.
 
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Well, I dont care if you paid $50,000.00 for a kit, you would still have to tune it. Just the pros have a tech that has spent years tuning drums, and knows what the artist wants and can repeat it everynight. Since most of the actual tone, attack, and density comes mostly from the heads. Have you ever heard the arbiter lites? The kit is just rings with the heads mounted on them. They sound just like a real kit, without just a little warmth. This proves that most of what you hear is in the heads. Thats why its imparitive that you tune your drums well. If you are tuning them in fifths, then you already know what you are doing. Try tuning the bd a fifth below your floor tom, if thats too high, then try lower.
 
Thanks Pratt, I came back to this page once in a while, but I never paid attention to the fundamentals of tunning. I always concentrate in how to tune, how to tune if your drum has 6, 8 or 10 lugs, tips for tunning the snare, etc.
 
TamaSabian said:
Thanks Pratt, I came back to this page once in a while, but I never paid attention to the fundamentals of tunning. I always concentrate in how to tune, how to tune if your drum has 6, 8 or 10 lugs, tips for tunning the snare, etc.
Click to expand...

yeah, I never used to pay attention to the 'theory' stuff either...until I read the tuning bible and tuned my drums accordingly....and got AMAZING results! it's important to know the theory (fundamentals) so that you can understand what's going on when you are tuning.
 
The cool thing about upper level DW kits, is that they print the fundamental tone of the shell on the inside. With a tuner and a good set of heads, you can actually tune the drum to the frequency that it resonantes the best. But every drum has a certian "sweet spot". You just gotta spend some time finding it.
 
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