Damn that bass drum!!

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RecordingIdiot

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ok this isnt my first time on here so you all know how stupid i am already.lol. anyways, my band is currently trying to record a cd on our own and we can get the toms and snare sounding pretty good although not perfect. but as you already may know the damn bass drum sound like im hitting cardboard box. i know the problem is probably in the mic, because to save money when i bought them i bought the same kind of mic for my bass drum as the i did for the toms (sounds pretty good live). we were thinking about just going and getting a trigger and module and only trigger the bass drum, but im scared the kit wont mesh well if we did that. also when we did our demo about a year ago roughly, i played my drum tracks and then the guy went over the live drum tracks with a sampled kit and a drum machine. is this a good alternative? cause i hate it. should we just trigger it? or should i try to maybe rent or borrow a good low-end bass drum mic?

hope that made sense.
 
How is your kick drum tuned? How are you micing it? It will help a lot getting hold of a mic with better low end response, but you should be able to get something workable.

I've just finished a recording session, and we did spend a lot of time on the kick sound. For a start, having the right sound before a mic was even anywhere near it helped - the batter head was pretty loose and the front head tight (ish), giving a pretty low, booming but controlled sound. (i've learnt from the session that you often have to tune drums differently for recrding than what you are used to - my snare sounded weird, and felt weird to play in the room for a while, but sounded awesome in the mix and eventually i got used to the feel of the drum - keep trying different things...Patience!). In terms of mics - we had one wide diaphragm through the hole in the front head, towards the top of the shell, one SM57 on the batter head, giving you the option of mixing in a little more attack if desired, another 57 (i think) pointing at the drum from about 3 feet away, and our crazy engineer had ripped apart an old speaker and was using a 6 inch cone as a mic, placed parallel to the front head. The low end coming from that was amazing. You don't say how you're recording (i.e huge studio or 4-track), so you may not have that much gear at your disposal. Perhaps a mic in the drum and a room mic mixed properly will give you the low end you're after? Then of course bleed becomes an issue.... I'd spend some time trying out the different options if you can afford to, it doesn't sound like the trigger route is going to compliment your sound from the way you describe it.

Give some more information about how you're recording....

While we're on the subject - i'm frequently referring people to Shellac's drum sound - it's a very live sound but pretty minimal. The results are amazing - check out the snare sound too - awesome! Musically i'd recommend "At Action Park" and "Terraform", the first two records. If you cacn get hold of "The Rude Gesture" or "Uranus" (pretty rare 7"'s - they rock!). Anyway, have a listen for ideas on kit sound.
 
If you are recording on a computer, get drumagog. Or you could just EQ the snot out of the kick. Cut 400Hz (drasticly) add a lot of 60Hz and 3kHz.
 
I too tried for so long to get rid of that cardboard box sound. :mad:

I use an AKGD112 and it sits anywhere from 2-6 inches from the batter head inside the kick drum (depending on if you want more click or boom) off centre.

I also changed both heads.
I improved the overall sound of the kick by removing the front head which had a hole directly in the centre (factory Pearl front head) that was about 8 inches wide. I replaced it with an Aquarian head (Regulator Series) with a 4" hole near the side. This gave the kick more tone since the hole was not so big and off centre, with the tone being deeper sounding.

I replaced the batter head (previously dbl ply Remo pinstripe) with an Aquarian (Full Force series clear with muffle ring) and the overall sound was louder with fatter tone.

Both were tuned just shy of wrinkles.

I still needed to EQ after tracking as I found I really couldn't get that chunky/punchy sound that I wanted without EQ. Mic bleed was an issue in the overheads as the raw sound still came through those mics but just turning those mics down in the mix gave me enough cymbal clarity with no kick drum issues.

I use Pro Tools and have High and Low frequencies boosted. Can't remember at this time what the exact freq settings are but I agree with Farview's comment.

You have any gear?
 
Farview said:
If you are recording on a computer, get drumagog. Or you could just EQ the snot out of the kick. Cut 400Hz (drasticly) add a lot of 60Hz and 3kHz.
Click to expand...


good guidelines, but I guess you know you don't have to take them literally. I usually do the old trick of taking a narrow Q in my EQ, and boost it very much while sweeping the frequencieS. Once you have find the eact spot you can change the boost and Q.

A modest boost below 100 Hz and a boost around the attack of 3kHz can make a lot of difference. The cardboard effect is also often a dirty mid frequency. Try to find it and cut it slightly.

After you have set your compressor right a tiny bit of verb, small room setting with fast decay, can spice it up.
 
first, get the kick sounding good in the room. if the kick sounds bad in the room, it'll sound bad on tape. make sure it's tuned properly. and then assess the kick itself--if the kick is a crap drum and sounds like ass to begin with, it's hopeless. there's a reason studios invest in a high-end drumset--they just plain record better. good drums record well.....bad drums record poorly.

second, get the drums off the floor. you have no hope getting a decent kick sound with the drums sitting on a concrete floor (if you have one). a wood floor is better...and even better if you have a subfloor, but i'd recommend at least a 6-12in riser for your drums (depending on your ceiling height), if not more.

third, get the room sounding good. it's hopeless to get good drum sounds in a bad sounding room. high ceilings are best.


that said, i like to take the front head completely off. make a little tunnel with some packing blankets and put the kick mic up in there if you're using just one mic--that helps isolate the mic from cymbal bleed.

usually, i use 3 mics on kick:
1) my EV RE38 inside the kick, about 6in off the head, right inline with the beater (this gets a good compromise between the inside the drum/shell resonance and beater attack). this mic is a sister of the EV RE20.

2) an sm57 (or equivalent) on the beater side of the kick, off axis, aimed at where the beater meets the head, and flip the phase. this gets the beater slap.

3) a condenser, about on level with where the front head would be if it were there--sometimes as far as 4ft back, but usually closer in. this gets the "boom" that develops a little ways off the head and is prominent in the shell resonance. be careful with this one--use a pad if you need to. aim it wherever it sounds best.

when i combine all of them, i get a rather workable kick sound--lots of options and places to go with it.

usually i mult one or more of the above tracks once they're in the computer and radically eq and/or compress the bejeezus out of the multed tracks and slide those up underneath the "raw" tracks.

drums are by far the hardest thing to record--it's really like recording a group of instruments rather than one instrument. it takes a lot of patience and skill, and usually a significant amount of bourbon. :D


good luck!
wade
 
i will write something wierd and stupid, but it works for me every time! more shitty (cardboard) sound i record, better sound i get in the mix. i am somehow used to bad drums, so i had to learn to fix in the mix. I just aplly lot of 75 Hz (q=0,5) cut 350 Hz (q=1.5) aplly some 2000 Hz (q=0.5) and apply some 6000-8000 Hz and this always workes for me! optionally you can add some reverb. the other options of frequencies are the ones, that FARVIEW wrote you. with combination (depends of bas drum and mic) of this frequencies you will deffinitly get some acceptable results. but anyway i sugguest that you dont use worse mic than sm57!
 
Why would anyone use a 57 for the kick? Except for a second mic!
Anyway,All this tech stuff about right heads and good drums I think are crap, unless your in a multimill$ studio because you dont want to be embarrased showing up with a crappy kit :)
Sorry if I ruffled any feathers but....
I spent 4 months playing around with different bass sounds.I used old heads and a mic for the Bass Drum that wasn't anything below a D112 and got a great recording! It wasn't until I bought the Aquarian kick pack
that now i have to try to take all the boom out.
I believe, in recording it's better to add then strip away :cool:
 
Bdrum said:
Why would anyone use a 57 for the kick? Except for a second mic!
Anyway,All this tech stuff about right heads and good drums I think are crap, unless your in a multimill$ studio because you dont want to be embarrased showing up with a crappy kit :)
Sorry if I ruffled any feathers but....
I spent 4 months playing around with different bass sounds.I used old heads and a mic for the Bass Drum that wasn't anything below a D112 and got a great recording! It wasn't until I bought the Aquarian kick pack
that now i have to try to take all the boom out.
I believe, in recording it's better to add then strip away :cool:
Click to expand...

i assume that this is satire? i mean conisdering you contradict yourself in this thread https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?t=139949
 
Didn't you hear the boom before you hit record? A little damping would have gone a long way to fixing the sound before you recorded it.
BTW Normally the boom is good, in your case it goes on for too long. The Aquarians have a tone all to themselves that you have to manage at the drum, not in the recording. If you are used to a thin kick sound that needs to be beefed up, you screwed yourself when you treated a boomy sounding kick in the same manner as a thin one. The idea is not to have to add or strip away much of anything.
 
like the hip-hop boys, you could just buy a "sampler" , steal some open kicks you can find, get a foot pedal midi controller, and trigger the kicks that way, and it'll be 100% easier :D
 
Yes! I did say get new heads, not a certain kind of head!
This isn't about me anyway :mad: ,
This is about a low budget recording!
Anyway, Far View I do hate that boom because it sounds like I'm going through my P.A. when I'm not. ;)




"It's better to shed more heat than light" Neil Peart
 
Bdrum said:
Yes! I did say get new heads, not a certain kind of head!
This isn't about me anyway :mad: ,
This is about a low budget recording!
Anyway, Far View I do hate that boom because it sounds like I'm going through my P.A. when I'm not. ;)
"It's better to shed more heat than light" Neil Peart
Click to expand...

Put a pillow or a blanket in there to dampen the head. that head will give you the low end you want without having to add it in the mix. (which causes other problems)
You might be a candidate for a Remo Powerstroke or an Evans EMAD head. The powerstroke being the thinest sounding.
 
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