drums in living room, HuuUGE toms

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corban

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hey everyone, we're currently setting up to record drums in a smallish living room with an A shaped roof and one non parallel wall. The acoustics aren't too bad. We're using Sennheiser 421s on the Toms, Rode NT5's as close overheads, with an omni Apex wide diagraphm room mic (Apex is apparently the Canadian version of Marshall mics) set up high and far to the front of the kit. Just for grins we also have a stereo pair of Rode NT1s set up as room mics/overheads on the other side of the kit. In general the kit is sounding good, except that in both the overhead mics and the room mics the toms are dominating everything. I believe the kit is a Yamaha, the drummer used to have these black coated skins on them that got a really beefy dead thud, probably most suitable for metal and hardcore. The more acoustic music we're currently playing needs much more tone, ring, and presence from the toms, so we put different skins on them and I spent a long time tuning them. We've got a really nice attack tone now, but just the longest decay ever that just booms around and muddies everything up. We figured we'd just gate the toms but the room mics are overpowered. I tried a ring we had sitting around, and it just killed the tone, I didn't like that at all. We've tried the butterfly masking tape on both heads, not much help. Any ideas for what to do with them? I guess we can high pass the overheads, but I'd prefer to not do that. I've got the bottom heads tuned to a third above the batter heads to get the tone we want. Thanks for any suggestions.
 
the best rings are made from old heads. i read that somewhere and didnt believe it until i tried it.

sometimes studio rings sound right other times they dont. try cutting strips of flannel shirt or t-shirt material and taping them to the shells. do 2 or 3 per drum. flip them on and off the heads and try different sizes and numbers.

when you hit the drum they fly up and you have a very open sound with all the tone. then they come down and muffle the sustain. one or two smallish flaps may give you the sound you want. i found 2 double flaps worked best for me.

im not a drummer but i have a drum set and went through it all.

hope that tip helps!
 
Two things I'd consider:

1. Is the tuning of the tom(s) causing one or more other drums to resonate? The decay you mention could be from one or more other drums ringing in sympathy? You might tweak the tuning of the toms relative to each other and the rest of the kit. Just a thought.

2. Have you tried Moon Gel? It works really well (probably better than any tape solution) and it's pretty cheap.

One more thing, huge toms are not neccessarily a bad thing :D. Many people post on here trying to figure out how to get a "huge tom" sound.
 
sounds like you're on top of your tuning. here's 2 ideas:

1. instead of a 3rd above, try tuning the bottom heads lower in pitch than the batter heads. that usually cuts down on the drum's resonance. it'll also change the tone of the drum.

2. MOONGEL. if the toms sound EXACTLY like you want them to, moongel will be your saviour. a little goes a long way and it controls ring like nothing else i've ever tried--and i've tried it all.


cheers,
wade
 
Scottgman said:
Two things I'd consider:

One more thing, huge toms are not neccessarily a bad thing :D. Many people post on here trying to figure out how to get a "huge tom" sound.
Click to expand...

:o Yeah no kidding, it's not the worst problem I've ever faced. The only problem is that they were huge for such an extended time, it was at the expense of everything else. Thanks for the tips, sounds like this Moongel stuff would have been good to try out, since I had a tone I really liked, and that flannel business sounded cool to try as well cause that open tone is what I was missing with the dampening. I had to start tracking before I could check back here though, so I just tuned the bottom head down and added some more tape to the bottom head, ended up with a usable good sound. I think the room was getting some bass buildup too, I tried using pillows and whatever else as much as I could. Good tips here, they should help me in the future. Maybe I can use that moongel on my snare now, going for that dry, low-tuned sound, it's way harder to get than the tight crack. Thanks all.
 
Always pull out the wrinkles.Tune them up where you can hear the tone!
Maybe new heads?
 
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