feedback on drum sound?

[mark_guinn]

Here is a rough mix of a song in progress. It is just drums and rhythm guitar. I think it sounds pretty good but my ears are new to this still. So what's wrong with it? And more importantly what do I need to change? It was tracked with three channels -- kick, snare and overhead.

Thanks

 

[sonusman]

You might wanna try two overheads and can the snare mic. Better imaging and stereo spread.

The kick sounds like it is clipping. Also, it sound like you used a D 112 on it. YUK!!! Anyway, it is what you have, so you need some help. I think you might have maybe deadened the kick a bit too much. Pull the pillow out and put a smaller one in.

The guitar by the way does not sound too bad.

The drummer really needs to work on his chops. Very sloppy.

One more small thing. Next time, encode to 192kbs. The quality difference between it and 320 is not enough to bother with the much bigger file size. You are not going to get that many downloads with a 8MB file! (how I know....a lot of the bands I record seem to have these very long songs, and at 192kbs, they wind up being quite large files....)

Ed

 

[mark_guinn]

I will try to get a smaller mp3 up. The reason I only used one over head is that I only have one condensor mic (NT1) and then a bunch of borrowed 57's and 58's. That was actually a 58 on the kick drum, but I eq'ed it quite to death (10-15db at 2k). That's probably why it sounds like it's clipping. Is there anything I can do to make it sound good or should I just give up and replace it with a sample?

Yeah, the drummer didn't quite know the song. so he wasn't very confident. I had to do a lot of editing and it still isn't very steady in spots.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback.

 

[sonusman]

Placement of the kick mic is of course just as important as it is with any instrument. Interesting that you used a 58 though. Here is something to try.

Remove the front head from the kick. Place the mic about4" from the shell, and about 1" inside the drum, with the mic'ed aimed at where the beater strikes the head. Movement of the mic either in, or angled more towards the beater will help increase the "click" sound. This will take a bit of moving around to really find that sweet spot, but keep at it until you have found that perfect spot. You may STILL have to use some eq while mixing, but hopefully NOT 10-15dB of boost!

Another thing. A well applied noise gate can sometimes help bring out that "click" sound too. Although, I have found that digital noise gates don't do this as well as analog ones do. Another thing, some limiting on the kick can sometimes help too. The trick is to record a bit of the kick, then try some of these tricks before you record the track just to see if you can get what you want out of the sound before you invest a bunch of time recording it. If you don't get that sound, you can then hear what you may have to do at the source.

Good luck.

Ed

 

[mark_guinn]

Thanks a lot for your advice! I put a smaller file (5Mb) up there. I will try some of that stuff you mentioned. I didn't really feel too good about the 10-15db boost either, but I didn't know how else to do it. I have some more ideas now, and will definitely try some different things in the next session. This is all just for fun right now really. It's just a couple of my friends and I who are home for the summer looking for something to do. Thanks again, ed.