Cymbals & Overheads

Z

Zach Frazier

New member
Hey I was wondering how musicians get that amazing cymbal sound when it comes to recording drums. I understand first off good quality cymbals is key in achieving this goal. As of right now I am using Sabian Xs20's both 16" and 18" and when I record I seem to only get the high end of the cymbals. It just seems I am capturing a lot of sharpness with the cymbals and cannot get that smooth clean cymbal sound I am looking for. My microphones are the Samson 8 piece mic kit, and I am using a Tascam US-1800 with pro tools 10. I have watched multiple videos and read many articles when it comes to using EQ with the overheads, but so far have not seemed to get the hang of it. Also as of right now I am recording in my small room which I know is not by far a good area to record in. My overhead microphones are also equal heights above my kit. If pictures would help please let me know.
 
The quality of the cymbals, the room they are recorded in, and a great pair of overhead mics are the most important to get a great sound. Eq will not fix anything if one of these is not up to par.

You can get only as close as your gear and room will allow. I would start with treating the room and getting better overhead mics first.
 
Without a sample of the music and the drums it's hard to tell what the problem is but I'll give it a shot. My guess is you're hitting the cymbals hard; at least as hard as you are hitting the heads. Sabian B8s are brighter but the B20s should sound really nice so I don't think it's the cymbals. A lot depends on the sound your cymbals make when YOU hit them. That is a product of how you strike them. I know it looks good seeing drummer thrash away at their cymbals, but since your room is small, try practicing a while just lightly brushing the shoulder of the stick on the outer edge of the cymbals. Unless I'm in a really good drum booth, I hit the drums hard but give the cymbals just enough to hear the crash sound. (I suggested practicing this because it is often hard to change your stick dynamics mid-beat) For the drums I also snap the stick a little, actually pulling the bead away from the head immediately. This lets the drum resonate without choking. I hope that helps.
Rod Norman
Engineer

Zach Frazier said:
Hey I was wondering how musicians get that amazing cymbal sound when it comes to recording drums. I understand first off good quality cymbals is key in achieving this goal. As of right now I am using Sabian Xs20's both 16" and 18" and when I record I seem to only get the high end of the cymbals. It just seems I am capturing a lot of sharpness with the cymbals and cannot get that smooth clean cymbal sound I am looking for. My microphones are the Samson 8 piece mic kit, and I am using a Tascam US-1800 with pro tools 10. I have watched multiple videos and read many articles when it comes to using EQ with the overheads, but so far have not seemed to get the hang of it. Also as of right now I am recording in my small room which I know is not by far a good area to record in. My overhead microphones are also equal heights above my kit. If pictures would help please let me know.
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I could care less if a drummer bashes the hell out of his cymbals. If the room and the mics used to capture the performance (whatever type of playing it is) are not good, than nothing will help much. I have never been one to try to tell a musician how to play. I personally beat the hell out of my cymbals.

Giving advice for someone to change their playing style is not really something I would consider good advice ever. An engineers job is to capture any given performance. Not to teach them how to play.

OP, please focus on the fact that your small room, it's lack of acoustic treatment, is likely your first order to address. Third would maybe be the cymbals themselves, but I found in my quite well treated drum room that just upgrading my overheads to Shure KSM141's made the next biggest difference. Even my cheap ass rehearsal B8's suddenly sounded way friggen better than when I was using the cheap Samson CO1's as overhead mics. Night and day what the Shure mics did for the smoothness and clarity of the overhead mics.
 
As stated above, the cymbals, mics, player, and room make the biggest impact on the drum sound.

One small tip is to use a narrow band of an eq to sweep the upper frequencies in the overheads. There may be some irritating frequencies in particular cymbals that can be removed.

I would also suggest that you place your overheads equal distance from the snare drum. This does not impact the cymbal sound but it will improve the sound of your snare.
 
jimmys69 said:
I could care less if a drummer bashes the hell out of his cymbals. If the room and the mics used to capture the performance (whatever type of playing it is) are not good, than nothing will help much. I have never been one to try to tell a musician how to play. I personally beat the hell out of my cymbals.
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While I generally side with everyone else when it comes to Rod being wrong about pretty much everything, in this case his statement about hitting cymbals hard does have a lot of merit.

Yes, drums really need a good sounding room and good overheads to truly shine, that's a given. But cymbals sound by far their best when they're played at "medium" volume when you want loud, "soft" when you want medium, and tap when you want soft. Wailing on a cymbal never sounds good, even if its a quality cymbal.

And cymbals are also something you can't cheap out on. You can get away with cheap guitars and drums if they're set up well and tuned up, but cheap cymbals always sound like garbage lids.
 
Perhaps unorthodox and it was a case of necessity being the mother of invention, but I place my "overheads" below the level of the cymbals. I'm no drummer, much less a drum expert ~ but I know what I like and the sound of the cymbals ceased to be wayward once I began to place the mics under rather than over.
I also noticed that certain drummers I played with got a much better sound, one I preferred, yet didn't hit them anywhere near as hard as younger drummers who didn't get as good a sound. They seemed to get more simultaneous 'meat' and 'shimmer' with a lot less effort. It wasn't only the cymbals either, it seemed to apply across the entire kit.
Funnily enough, there are other drummers that play with such deftness and finesse that it would drive me to distraction and I'd want them to be smashing the drums into next week !
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Zach Frazier said:
Hey I was wondering how musicians get that amazing cymbal sound when it comes to recording drums. I understand first off good quality cymbals is key in achieving this goal. As of right now I am using Sabian Xs20's both 16" and 18" and when I record I seem to only get the high end of the cymbals. It just seems I am capturing a lot of sharpness with the cymbals and cannot get that smooth clean cymbal sound I am looking for. My microphones are the Samson 8 piece mic kit, and I am using a Tascam US-1800 with pro tools 10. I have watched multiple videos and read many articles when it comes to using EQ with the overheads, but so far have not seemed to get the hang of it. Also as of right now I am recording in my small room which I know is not by far a good area to record in. My overhead microphones are also equal heights above my kit. If pictures would help please let me know.
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Those aren't great cymbals, but they're not trash either. They are bright though. The deep rich balanced sound you're looking for doesn't really exist in those cymbals.

But really, without hearing it, I'd bet it's probably your room and mics. Small rooms suck for drums, small untreated rooms suck really bad for drums, small untreated rooms getting picked up by small cheap mics sucks even more. Ideally you'd want a very large lively room for drums. Not for the big room sound, but more so the drums can breathe. Comb filtering is a serious problem for drum overheads. The decay of a cymbal gets murdered by comb filtering. Small rooms magnify the problem. But you use what you got, right? So take every effort to kill that room's reflections as much as possible. Make that room dead as shit. Once you got the room dead, play with kit placement and mic placement to get the best you can from what you got. It's going to take trial and error and a lot of effort. Don't be lazy. Do the work and your results might surprise you in a good way.
 
Greg_L said:
Those aren't great cymbals, but they're not trash either. They are bright though. The deep rich balanced sound you're looking for doesn't really exist in those cymbals.

But really, without hearing it, I'd bet it's probably your room and mics. Small rooms suck for drums, small untreated rooms suck really bad for drums, small untreated rooms getting picked up by small cheap mics sucks even more. Ideally you'd want a very large lively room for drums. Not for the big room sound, but more so the drums can breathe. Comb filtering is a serious problem for drum overheads. The decay of a cymbal gets murdered by comb filtering. Small rooms magnify the problem. But you use what you got, right? So take every effort to kill that room's reflections as much as possible. Make that room dead as shit. Once you got the room dead, play with kit placement and mic placement to get the best you can from what you got. It's going to take trial and error and a lot of effort. Don't be lazy. Do the work and your results might surprise you in a good way.
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Not to high jack the thread, but would a large untreated room work as good or better than a small treated room?
 
DM60 said:
Not to high jack the thread, but would a large untreated room work as good or better than a small treated room?
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I don't know. Define good or better? Better for what?

Think about live rooms in real studios. Real studios, not some guy's basement or spare bedroom. They're usually pretty big, high ceilings, often odd shaped, and while they're not made to be dead, at the very least the low end is usually controlled with bass traps everywhere. These rooms are good for room mics and mics up in corners and all sorts of other mic trickery to get "bigness". Small home studios typically have none of attributes of an actual drum/live room, so you need to go the other way. Kill it dead. Take the small boxiness of the room away as best you can. With close mics and smartly placed overheads, a kit in a small less-than-ideal but dead room IMO can be every bit as good as a huge live room if you do it right. You can always add reverb later.

"Room sound" is way overblown in my opinion. It's not the 50s anymore. Yes, the overheads are gonna be influenced by the room. You as the engineer or whatever you wanna call yourself can take control of many of the factors involved to make things go your way in just about any room. And ultimately, a bad drummer on a shitty sounding kit using shitty gear in the best room on earth will still sound shitty.
 
Greg_L said:
"Room sound" is way overblown in my opinion. It's not the 50s anymore. Yes, the overheads are gonna be influenced by the room. You as the engineer or whatever you wanna call yourself can take control of many of the factors involved to make things go your way in just about any room.
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You answered the question with this ^^^^^
 
jimmys69 said:
I could care less if a drummer bashes the hell out of his cymbals. If the room and the mics used to capture the performance (whatever type of playing it is) are not good, than nothing will help much. I have never been one to try to tell a musician how to play. I personally beat the hell out of my cymbals.

Giving advice for someone to change their playing style is not really something I would consider good advice ever. An engineers job is to capture any given performance. Not to teach them how to play.

OP, please focus on the fact that your small room, it's lack of acoustic treatment, is likely your first order to address. Third would maybe be the cymbals themselves, but I found in my quite well treated drum room that just upgrading my overheads to Shure KSM141's made the next biggest difference. Even my cheap ass rehearsal B8's suddenly sounded way friggen better than when I was using the cheap Samson CO1's as overhead mics. Night and day what the Shure mics did for the smoothness and clarity of the overhead mics.
Click to expand...

I wish to explain a bit more about my point here in my previous post:

I have a tendency to play stupid hard. I am NOT a drummer with great technique and I don't claim to be. I am also not a big guy so I suppose my use of the term 'bashing' may be misleading. I tend to pound things, yet I also hit my snare with the same level of attitude throughout a track.

My point was directed to the fact that the room and microphones used are the first things to address.

Keep in mind I am more speaking to the OP about what will be best for him to get better results. I happen to record others more than I play myself. The player is going to do what he does. Trying to change the way a drummer plays is not going to speed up a production on a low budget home recording situation.


Now Rod did make a great point that the playing style is important, and he is 'absolutely' correct there. But that is not IMO the first order of business for the OP to get better results. Room treatment and mic choice is going to have the most to do with the quality of his recordings. The quality of the cymbals and the player have just as much to do with it, but if the room sucks, the mics suck ($300 8 piece mic kit mentioned here) then not much would be improved in my experience by using the best of cymbals.


Like I said, I have some crap cymbals that I use to record when doing basic tracks for others. I don't bring out the Paiste's unless I am laying something down for keeps because I am a retard and tend to destroy them. I would rather spend that money on better gear to improve the quality of recording for clients than when I feel the need to play myself. That is just what I do these days...

The point was that after I treated my room and started using better mics, even the crap ones started sounding WAY better. No eq was going to fix that. I tried.

Just my opinion based on my personal experience in my space with the improvements I have made.

And blah blah... :)
 
Yes, but laying into your snare is a totally different discussion. You're supposed to lay into your drums to get your best tones. With that I'm with you there.

I always tell my students...play into the drums, play off the cymbals
 
Seafroggys said:
Yes, but laying into your snare is a totally different discussion. You're supposed to lay into your drums to get your best tones. With that I'm with you there.

I always tell my students...play into the drums, play off the cymbals
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Great way to say it! Cymbals are so much more expressive if played with finesse. Some genres, however, do not play well with finesse. :D
 
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