Dirty

K

kindofblue

New member
Hey,

What exactly makes a recording sound 'gritty' or 'dirty' its hard to explain.
The sounds are all there...mabye concentration of frequencies? Whenever I record my drums it's not as crisp and clean as i want it. Mabye i'm getting too much room and that's making it sound muddy? I have a presonus firepod, the pre's seem clean when im recording guitars and vocals..the drums though..i dont know its its my overheads mics or the room...but there is something unsettling about the sound.

any places I can start looking at for problem areas? (i know thats a big question - im sorry :)
 
The Firepod is supposed to be pretty decent. So I'd look at your mics ... but more importantly than that, start to read up on acoustics. It's a bitch, but I've started doing it and it makes a big difference to how you sound.
 
Is the playing precise? Rhythmic innacuracy can definitely sound gritty and dirty, even if the recording is completely clean.

If this isn't the case, I'd look at the sound of the instruments and the room sound.
 
I feel your pain, man! Drums are just a bitch to record. (Which is why I've decided to use only drum samples on my home recordings.) My brother was a professional drummer who did some touring for awhile, and he spent YEARS getting his live drum sound to his satisfaction. Live sound engineers say that, if you can get the drums to sound good, you're 90% of the way there. There's probably a similar ratio in recording.

Those who have directed you to look at the room and the drum set itself, are giving you some very good advice. Room acoustics can make or break a drum sound. Even before you get to THAT point, the drums themselves often need work. There's all kinds of things to learn just about TUNING and muffling the drums. Many fairly decent drummers don't even know how to tune a drum head all that well.

Start with the drums, themselves. Have a drummer show you how to tune the heads and then make sure that the individual drums are in tune and sound good, individually. Then, listen very critically to the sound you're getting from the whole kit in the room. If THIS sounds bad, then you probably need to do some work on the room, itself (bass traps, acoustic tile, etc...). THEN you can start trying different mics and mic techniques.

Yeah, it's a pain. But, if you're really wanting a killer drum sound, and you want to get there with real, live drums, there are no short cuts. Sorry. Believe me, I WISH there were an easier way. :(

Brad
 
Could it be too much sound at once? Kind of like if you turn every track down to -3db, and then have 5 tracks, it gets distorted? I don't want to say clips, but just too much sound, taking up all the frequencies? Don't know, just another thought.
 
The drum heads and tuning have a lot to do with it as well.

Get some new heads and tweak them a little until they soud nice and crisp. Tighten/loosen the heads and the snares until you get a bright, snappy sound out of them.

And try using some quieter cymbals with a faster decay. Nothing muddies and clutters up an otherwise good drum track like a bunch of cymbal wash cluttering up the high frequencies and creating white noise. That's probably the biggest problem I have with most drummers.

You might try posting this in the drum forum and ask for some suggestions. Worry about the drums first ... then worry about tracking them.
 
Could it be the drummer? Experience has taught me that the best "performance" drummer is rarely even a decent "studio" drummer. Propperly tuned drums and balanced cymbals and correct mic placement are critical to getting a good drum sound but all of these things wont help much if the drummer is NOT consistent. As with any acoustic instrument, the player can ruin their own sound. As stated by others, recording drums is tricky at best, and if the drummer isn't consistent it is cloce to impossible.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top