Drums in your face?

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Teddie

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Folks, I'm going through some kind of weird, self-critical time with my music.

I'm thinking of adding a little verb to the drums... I've been listening to a lot of music out there with real drums, and they sound more in the back, spatially, within your head. While I think my drums on my songs have some punch, they're pretty dry, and spatially, within my head, and possibly yours, there in front of your face, right there at the tip of your nose. I want to try and put them more in the back, make it sound like they're in an actual room...

Is there anything I need to watch out for when I put the verb on the drum track, besides using too much? Am I going to offset something, screw myself, and the track...

I am totally going through some sort of subconcious self-evalutation of my music, and feeling pretty weird (I also whined about the bass in "Thunder..." tonight in an earlier post... but I'd like to improve the drums in all the songs overall...

If you've got one of my old mp3's sitting on your desktop and really listen to those drums... verb? eh? put them in the back?
http://mp3.com/smartapple

The exception to this is "Darker Shade.." I didn't use the Drum machine. I used a drum track that came with my software.

I'm going to take a dump... and think.
 
Teddie...

With your kind of music, quick attack and release/decay would be best (plate)..other
wise drums will mush into the rest of the mix...

One way I get the verb to be bigger without
using a larger room, is to introduce some predelay on the verb. Rather than the verb being tight to the sound, put 20 or so milisecond delay on the verb...

I wouldn' go too bananas on your sound...it is good as is too ya know...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>I'm going to take a dump<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

AHH yes..the thinking room!!

[This message has been edited by Ric (edited 05-29-2000).]
 
Alright Teddie, I'm no pro and my monitoring system is crap but I'll tell you what I think anyway.

"Morning Light" - I think the drums in this sound pretty good except that during the verse the bass drum sounds a tad 'hard' or 'stiff'. I'm not sure if reverb will help that.

"The Dream" - dunno. But I remember the first time I heard this I thought it was great.

"Thunder on the Mountain" - I think I mentioned something about this one on another post. Like the drums need some ambiance or something.

"Which Way" - same as "The Dream"
 
First of all, in case you'd forgotten, your stuff kicks a significant amount of ass.

I'm a live drum kinda guy. I think the best thing would be to mix live drums with the Roland... I'm sure it'd be HUGE.

I don't know what your rig is, but you might be able to go a long way with a touch of EQ and delay, too.

Morning Light: try a boost between 65 and 85 Hz on the kick. Maybe find some extra "snap" in the midrange on the snare (I've had trouble on my own here, so I'm not sure where to look...eh...listen). One EQ thing that has worked for me on some snare sounds is to cut a frequency that is "watering down" the sound. It's a subtle thing... overkill is easy.

Which Way: Drums are alreay pretty punchy, IMO.

There's a general trick I love to use to open the sound a bit. You either need a delay that lets you set the left and right delay times independently, or two delays; L and R. I dial-in a repeat time I like, and then back the left side off a few ms, and bump the right side up a few ms (or vice versa). It's one of those things I usually don't notice in the mix unless it's NOT there.

Also, a little bit o' panning on the snare/hats and toms can really open the mix too.
 
Just my $0.02... :D

I don't know what capabilities your drum machine has, but mine (SR-16) has four outputs available. What I usually do is group it into "dry left", "dry right", "wet left" and "wet right".

You can record drums onto two tracks if you don't have four available until mixdown, but if you run four to the mixer you can put some verb on snare, cowbell, toms, and kick, and leave the hi-hat and cymbals dry.

That way it sounds more natural, the way you'd mix them live. When you have just left and right... by the time you put enough verb onto the snare and toms to make them sound big, usually the hi-hat or cymbals sound like crap.

(Ideally, I like to have just a touch of verb on the kick rather than as much as the snare, but this would mean having more than four outputs from the machine... and I ain't got 'em... <shrug> ).

Just a suggestion.

CT

[This message has been edited by CharlesThomas (edited 05-31-2000).]
 
smartapple...my 2 cents on 'thunder'. maybe the guitars could b raised.(could that b the source?)
during the verses in thunder where only the hat is playing then BOOM the kick and snare....u could definitely flood that with verb. as to the choruses..maybe adding would do u some good too...remember the name of this song is ;'thunder'...so give it some more thunder...back to the geetarz.i think at the first note of the last chorus they come in loud and hard...rite?like thunder??but i was expecting them to come in even louder..u could really exclamate this song right at that point with a HUUUge storm...lader.
 
Ric, hehe, okay, I took my dump in the thinking room and decided to put a tad verb on all the drum tracks for the songs and I think it sounds pretty good. Unfortunately, mp3.com keeps telling me my mp3's aren't encoded at mpeg layer 3 128 44.1 blah blah so I can't post the new versions... I sent them an email letting them know there was a problem... have you had this problem as of lately?

MrLip, thanks... yeah, I'll post the new ones when mp3.com fixes the situation so you can let me know what you think... I think it turned out pretty good.

pglewis, thanks man for the encouragement! I actually just ended up putting a tad bit of verb on the drum tracks and I think it really does the trick (I think). It's hard for me to separate the kick from the snare, etc. cuz it's all on one track coming from a drum machine... I'll let you know when the new versions are up so you can gimme some feedback on it. Thanks again.

Oh... One question... Anyone out there have any recommendation on a good bit of Drum SOFTWARE??? What's everyone using?
 
Sorry for being a spaz guys. I'm gonna just leave it as is. I added verb at one point to all the drum tracks, but I think I need to program each piece (snare, kick) separately for diff amts of verb within the Roland drum unit... it doesn't work well just verbing the drum track. I thought it sounded okay but the more I listened... well, you know. I'm just going to "close up shop" on this CD and start my new one, so basically the first Smart Apple CD is complete and you can get it here if you want it: http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/cds/50/50033_qb0.html or here http://chooser.mp3.com/cgi-bin/cd_chooser/cd_chooser.cgi?cd_id=50033&cd_url=http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/cds/50/50033.html&srclk=isd

The next CD is tentatively called "Nineteen, 6 and 9".

Thanks for the input everyone - I'm always grateful to you folks.
 
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