Drumset vs. the Recording Components

[tnagz]

Hi All,

Interested in opinions from the drummers and the engineers in the bunch.

Me and a fellow band member (who also thinks of himself as THE engineer and owns the recording equipment) are having some differences in opinion. I am trying to figure out if I should press the issue further or simply be happy with the opportunity at hand.

We are about to embark on the journey of recording an LP and album. I have a nice drum kit (Tama Bubinga/Birch Starclassic) that I want to record with. He has a studio set which is an entry level Pacific kit. However, he is insisting that we use his kit and provides the following arguments:

I can understand how you feel about using your own kit. I really wish drums were easy to record like guitars. Just throw a mic or two on them and your ready to go. Unfortunatley, switching the kit out at this point would be a problem here. Please understand that I am not trying to be lazy or anything and Im not trying to give you some long drawn out bullshit excuse, Its just a number of other issues that would cause way more trouble than its worth at this point in time. 3 issues that come to mind at the moment are below.

Issue#1: The Sonar session files have a very specific effects chain setup, like noise gate threshold settings and specific noise gate rez frequencies for each drum, volume/compression settings and EQ settings that are set up only for the Pacific kit for each individual mic on each track. Those setting only work for those individual drums. This is not something that I could just correct in a couple of days and I would have to rebuild the SONAR session files again from scratch and waste alot of time on trial and error building out custom effects chain presets for each drum track.

Issue#2: Just like the EQ/effects setting compatability issues I listed above. The same goes for the mic preamps. Just because the individual preamps that I have setup work for well for the Pacific kit does not mean that they would sound good on your kit. So I would probably have to re-route alot of stuff and go down that dark road of trial and error again.

Issue#3: That problem with locking the tom mics onto your toms.​

So, I am the drummer, but I have an ear for good sound. I also prefer the sound of my drums and setup. Unfortunately, I have a superficial knowledge of all the equipment that is necessary to record good sounding drums. So, I am not sure if what he is saying above is really time intensive or not.

I am going to have to put new heads on all his drums anyway, so wouldn't he have to tweak all his preset settings regardless? Does it really matter in the end, since 90 % of a good drum recording is made up of the drummer playing well? I feel like I have the drum chops part down after playing for 20 years. Maybe I am just partial to the kit I own and paid a lot of money for...

Again, I am trying to just understand both sides and see if the above has merit. Thanks!

BTW, I apologize if some of you may have seen this originally in the Drum section. This sort of lies in a gray area between drums and general recording...

 

[tmix]

Well.... I am a recording drummer.
I have a nice place, nice drums etc....and while I can understand some of what your friend has to say....I think either he is over thinking it, or he relies too much on specific bandaids (like effects and eq) to get a decent sound.

I have my setup tweaked in with things like mike choices and placement, as well as room treatments. I can pretty much recreate the setup with all drum sets and get really close to the same good sound within 30 minutes.... all it takes is a little adjustments here and there and we are off. I don't EQ or Compress or anything at the the time of tracking...I just get good level with the best sound I can and adjust things when I have everything else all together.

Don't get me wrong...maybe your friend is an absolute genius and his sound can't be beat...I'd have to hear something.

I like to get folks to use my stuff when they are just dropping in for a quick session so I don't have to go through breakdown and setup of all my gear...plus most drummers who come into the studio have their drums in an awful state...badly tuned..horrible trashy clankers for cymbals etc...but it sounds like you are particular so that may not be the case with you.

In the long run will it make the difference in whether your recording is enjoyed....maybe not.
If I can at all accomodate the folks I record...I feel it is my job to do so.
Sounds like he has a finicky setup or recording situation...or at least he thinks so.

 

[RAMI]

I think either he is over thinking it, or he relies too much on specific bandaids (like effects and eq) to get a decent sound.

I agree with this. He's gating, compressing, EQ'ing, etc....while TRACKING???? And it's all on a "template" that he's locked into??? That's ludicrous.

 

[guitaristic]

Yeah, you're friend isn't nearly THE engineer he thinks he is if he's relying on all of those gates and compressions WHILE recording the signal. Especially if he's got it preset That means his drum tracks (unless heavily modified) will all come out sounding the same on all the tracks. And that's just lame, even if they do sound good.

 

[tnagz]

I appreciate the feedback and this sort of confirms my original thoughts as well. To me, the most important things in recording are

1. the player's ability (if you suck, the end result is going to suck)
2. the source of the sound being recorded (if the source sucks, chances are you are going to record a compromised sound, although cover ups can be engineered)
3. Micing and preamps
4. and then the rest (which he mentions in his argument for not wanting to use my set) is added bonus for tweaking the recorded sound.

And tmix, I agree with your point, if it was a scratch track recording or quick weekend session, I would be fine using the other kit. I have been using it for band practice without any complaints for several months. But since we are going to be recording in a long term arrangement and I am planning to leave my kit over their for several months, I would just assume spend the time getting everything dialed in for my kit for this recording and future recordings.

My other point that I made to him was that his kit needs new heads all the way around, so the mics are going to have to be removed and put back on anyway and recording levels rechecked, etc. So it's not like his kit is ready to roll right now.

I don't know, maybe I am over thinking this thing, but just thought that if I am going to lay something down for posterity's sake, I would like that added comfort and familiarity of being behind my set and hearing my drum shells' sound/tuning.

Again, appreciate your feedback specifically about the effects he mentions. I have some knowledge about the effects he lists and understand their applications, but the time it requires to setup behind the scenes in software was a little beyond me.

 

[miroslav]

I am trying to figure out if I should press the issue further...

"Please understand that I am not trying to be lazy or anything and Im not trying to give you some long drawn out bullshit excuse...."​

I think your engineer friend is doing just that...giving you a total pile of bullshit.

I use my own studio kit when my drummer buddy comes over...but he clearly admits my kit sounds better than any of his. It's like-new, well maintained, and it's large kit, top-notch cymbals, etc, which offers him variety.
I worked with him to set it up how he likes it. If he hated it and insisted on using his own...I wouldn't debate the issue if it made for better sessions.

All that crap about FX/signal chain set up for THAT specific kit...and the tom mics...blah..blah...blah...is a joke...
...he just doesn't want to take down his kit (lazy or ego...?)....nothing more.

 

[miroslav]

If you are recording HIS songs/music, and just playing drums for HIM...use his kit. If he is just the engineer...he needs to accommodate you.
He may be just covering his own inexperience, and is afraid to take down his kit and start from scratch with your kit.

Tell him you'll work with him to set it all up and get the right sounds for your kit, no matter how long it takes.
Maybe offer to do some with his kit and some with yours...that way you can have some variety....?

Don't crush his ego...try to let him save some face...but hold your position and try to work with him. Tell him it will be good experience for when he is a big shot engineer and has all kinds of bands/drummers coming in to work with him.

 

[tnagz]

Miroslav, you make excellent points.

As it is, these are songs that we as a band wrote together.

Again, I appreciate everyone's feedback and plan to use the facts above to argue my position. Hopefully we can reach an agreement. Maybe I should bring in a Memphis guitar and ask him to record using it to prove a point?

 

[James K]

It sounds like complete rubbish to me. There's not that much variation in drums and any adjustments would more likely take less than an hour and certainly not more than a couple of days. I would think that unless the preamps, EQ, compression etc. are specifically chosen to be Lo-Fi and to mask the bad sound of the kit then there's no reason why they would sound bad on your kit. Even then, I can't imagine the settings being so different that they would take ages to change.

Basically, I think he's just making excuses so he doesn't have to record a different kit for some reason.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

If his kit were so great it wouldn't need all that processing to sound good. A good kit played well will sound good through one good microphone out front with no processing. He just doesn't want to break down his kit.

 

[bassman1441]

This guy sounds like he's either lazy or incompetent, or both.

 

[Moseph]

I think Miroslav hit it on the head with the bit about "who's the performer." That being said, I do have some comments (see below)...

I can understand how you feel about using your own kit. I really wish drums were easy to record like guitars.

This is red flag #1 in my book. "Easy" isn't a well-defined term. He might be better at recording guitars, but that doesn't mean guitars are easier. To suggest they somehow require less care is a total rookie-move: everything should be given the same amount of attention to detail if you want top-notch sounds.

Please understand that I am not trying to be lazy or anything and Im not trying to give you some long drawn out bullshit excuse, Its just a number of other issues that would cause way more trouble than its worth at this point in time. 3 issues that come to mind at the moment are below.

"More trouble than its worth" is just another way of saying "too lazy to do it." It might be true that you can say it in the situation where there is, at best, a marginal benefit. Where the labor involved does in fact outweigh the gains from performing the labor. The bottom line is that still means you were unwilling to do that labor.

In fact, consider his actual excuses:

Issue#1: The Sonar session files have a very specific effects chain setup, like noise gate threshold settings and specific noise gate rez frequencies for each drum, volume/compression settings and EQ settings that are set up only for the Pacific kit for each individual mic on each track. Those setting only work for those individual drums. This is not something that I could just correct in a couple of days and I would have to rebuild the SONAR session files again from scratch and waste alot of time on trial and error building out custom effects chain presets for each drum track.

Issue#2: Just like the EQ/effects setting compatability issues I listed above. The same goes for the mic preamps. Just because the individual preamps that I have setup work for well for the Pacific kit does not mean that they would sound good on your kit. So I would probably have to re-route alot of stuff and go down that dark road of trial and error again.

Issue#3: That problem with locking the tom mics onto your toms. [/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]

Okay, looking at #1: he's basically unwilling to tweak plugins. Let's ignore the most glaringly obvious issues here for second and consider this: plugins are easy to tweak by design. That's kind of a big part of their appeal. Most have the ability to save a preset, and if they don't, most DAW software (Sonar included) can save it anyway! You can always go back.

#2: He's unwilling to adjust microphone preamps? This is just bad practice. What if you have different drummers who are playing louder/more softly than each other? What if you want to use those pres to record something else? A mentality of "set it once and leave it, forever" is asinine. Why did the designer put in a gain knob if that's the case?

By the way, both #1-2 fall into the "preset trap." There is no "correct" way to do things, so there can't be any recipe to follow to get amazing sounds. Consider for example that what is considered a "great drum sound" for heavy metal will be incredibly different than for big band swing. You're going to need to make adjustments to highlight the nicest things.

Even assuming you only ever record one style of music, even if you only ever record one band, you still need to make adjustments session-to-session. Sound is intrinsically related to the qualities of the medium it moves through. If you hear it, that means it's affected by the qualities of the air. So unless the ambient temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are identical from session to session, things are going to sound a little bit different by default. Even if all of that is rigidly controlled (pro tip: it's not), then you also need to be sure that the drum heads are at the exact same tension and that they exhibit the same recoil (pro tip: you can't control this because wear and tear always happens).

Finally, we get to #3, which to me is the epitome of laziness: "I can't be bothered to move my microphones." Microphones, for the most part, are designed to be mobile. Even if they clip onto your drums, they aren't cemented in place. You should be able to unclip and reclip them (unless he made some rather inconvenient modifications to the clips). They even sell these handy devices called "microphone stands" that can help facilitate the placing and moving of said microphones. Maybe he should look into them.

This, by the way, isn't even considering the issues caused by leaving your mics out to be exposed to ambient humidity and dust all the time. That will cause them to wear down and corrode much more quickly than properly storing them in a clean, dry, sealed container.

So, I am the drummer, but I have an ear for good sound. I also prefer the sound of my drums and setup. Unfortunately, I have a superficial knowledge of all the equipment that is necessary to record good sounding drums. So, I am not sure if what he is saying above is really time intensive or not.

It actually can be time intensive. Not always the case, but certainly not an unreasonable expectation. I imagine it would be very time intensive for him, because he appears to be something of a novice to this, based on his attitude about things. However, which is really more important: moderate convenience, or making your album sound its best? What kind of engineer would you both be if you were to shy away from the actual engineering part of the process?

I am going to have to put new heads on all his drums anyway, so wouldn't he have to tweak all his preset settings regardless?

Yep.


Now, it is possible that he doesn't think your kit sounds better than his (or ever could). In that case, this is just a bad argument (the real argument should have been "my kits sounds better"). But assuming that he agrees that your kit is better-sounding and you will perform better using it, then his whole argument turns to crap real quick-like.

I need to commend you for even considering that you might be wrong on this. If somebody presented that argument to me, I would be more than slightly irritated by it. For one, it's completely condescending (he basically assumes you don't know nearly as much as him). And the implication is that you either (a) are dumb enough that you don't realize the situation, or (b) are dumb enough to fall for this crap.