Getting drums sounding fatter..

AndyB

AndyB

New member
Hey all

I've been recording drums in my home set-up for a few months, and have learnt to get them sounding nice using nothing but tiny hints of reverb and panning at mixdown. BUT ! what i ask for your help in is... How do i get them sounding much fuller, fatter and better ? At my disposal i have a Soundcraft Spirit M12, a pair of overheads, e604's on the two toms (12" & 14"), sm58 on the 14x5 very high-tuned snare (about to acquire a 57 for this !!), A/T Pro-25 on the kick, and a couple t'other mics on the ride and hihats. ALso have compressors (dbx + behringer), actually, they're all compressor/gates, 6 channels worth. i do have funds / spare channels to add more if neds be.

Everytime i've gone to a gig with a proper soundguy, and gone into proper studios, the drum sound is punchy.

So.. what comp/gate, eq and techniques etc settings would you suggest i use ? i ask as i'm self-taught !! Am after the modern rock/punk drum sound, with that really chunky and clicky kick sound. Also what techniques and mics are best for room ambience ?

Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated ! :)
 
First of all, the drums themselves will have the biggest impact on the overall quality of the sound but assuming that's all good, try some parallel compression.
Get a mix going of the drums that you like (panned and levels). Now these channels are already assigned to the main stereo buss. Also assign the kick, snare and toms tracks (not the overheads)to two channels of a SUB GROUP. Patch this SUB GROUP out to a compressor (I've used a Behringer Composer here with satisfactory results) and return that to two mixer channels (or even a stereo AUX return if you're starved for inputs) and step on it pretty hard. Bring this compressed mix of the drums up under the existing drum mix you already had going on to taste. You can get a very aggressive sound this way.
 
Good EQ is, well, good. But not vital in my experience. If the drums are sounding good and you take a little time to play with the mics, I don't have to EQ that much. I might get a little crazy with the kick drum and EQ and not as much on the snare but that's about it.
 
1) Find a really nice, large and open room and track there.

2) Use generous amounts of compression to draw out the resonance of the snare as it reacts with the room.

3) Make sure everything is perfectly phase-aligned in your audio editor.
 
A large degree of the 'fatness' of drums is directly attributable to the snare sounds (just as a lot of the punchiness relates to the kick drum, and the fidelity to the cymbals). You say you like a high-pitched snare... well in my experience that usually translates to a thin sounding snare, and consequently not the biggest sounding drums in the world.

You can thicken up the snare by overlaying snare samples or using a sound replacer like Drumagog. Or just use triggers.

The use of triggers or sampling on 'big studio' albums is so widespread a lot of people seem to forget this is a huge percent of the big drum sound.

I've actually gotten thin snares to beef out a bit by using the MaxxBass plugin by Waves. Just run it on the snare and move the center frequency around 170hz or so. Gives the impression of a deeper, fuller snare while still keeping the high end intact.
 
1)track to analog if you can.
2) paralell compression for the kick and snare and maybe the toms.
3) make sure the snare does not have a sustained ring/overtone (the death of big drum sounds)
4) make sure the drummer is playing solid.
5) Don't mix "in the box"
 
Don't know if this helps you but I just spent the last 6 hours helping a band track drums.

What Chessrock says about the room is more important than you can imagine if your doing accoustic drums. We actually found an old huge warehouse with 20 foot plus ceilings and all the walls and ceiling are plywood. So we basically set up a temporary studio there. It was a small kit so we ended up using only 8 tracks / mics.

d112 on kick
57 on top of snare LD tube condensor on bottom of snare(omni i think)
57 on each tom (2)
LD fet condensor over hihat and left crash (couple of feet up or so) cardoid
LD fet over right crash (couple of feet up or so)cardoid
LD tube condensor over ride (couple of feet up or so)cardoid

We started with omni OH but it was too much reverb in the room so we swapped for cardoid. the cardoid condensors cleaned out the wooshiness
Enough compression to keep the levels from clipping

Without even mixing, just reviewing to make sure things printed well, these drums were killer big. Most of it due to the room ambience i believe. The tube mics help warm it up the fets sparkle up the highend and tomorrow when we mix I'll know better how they sound but what we got so far is monstrous.

Oh and it really helps that the kid can play. He knows how to get good tone from his kit.
 
Big thanks to everyone so fr, very very helpful !!

Cloneboy studio, the snare sounding "thin" isn't such a problem in this case as it actually sits nicely and sounds fuller than i would've expected. It does need the compression though.
The main stumbling block i'm having is getting the kick and toms sounding full, fat and punchy....
I like the idea of recording them in a big room.. will look into that too !
 
AndyB said:
Cloneboy studio, the snare sounding "thin" isn't such a problem in this case as it actually sits nicely and sounds fuller than i would've expected. It does need the compression though.
Click to expand...

Just keep in mind that the 'size' of the kit is often directly attributable to the sound of the snare. Psychoacoustically it is what seems to determine the 'weight' of an entire drum kit.

AndyB said:
The main stumbling block i'm having is getting the kick and toms sounding full, fat and punchy....
Click to expand...

Kick is pretty easy: boost somewhere between 80 to 100hz, cut sharply someplace around 200-500hz, boost again at either 2khz or 4khz. Set a compressor with an attack around 12-45ms, release about 75ms, threshold varies but -30db is a good place to start lookin', compression ratio 4:1 to 6:1... adjust makeup gain to taste.

Toms are easy too... some 200-500hz will give them some solid bottom without mudding out, 5khz will give them some great punchy attack. A 4:1 ratio on the compressor is usually good, with maybe 30ms of attack, release time around 150ms, threshold probably near -28db.

You may want to silence the tom tracks except when the toms are being struck. I find it cleans up a drum kit sound.

Another weird trick, but it seems to work, is to give a soft, wide EQ cut on the overhead mics somewhere around 600hz to 1000hz. For some reason I haven't quite rationalized it lets a kit breathe more.
 
Probably the less you can do to the drums, the better.If you need to apply anything, make light touches.


ex. Light compression and limiting with a touch of sprinkled reverb.

If it works for Marry Popins, it can work for your drums.
 
chessrock said:
1) Find a really nice, large and open room and track there.

2) Use generous amounts of compression to draw out the resonance of the snare as it reacts with the room.

3) Make sure everything is perfectly phase-aligned in your audio editor.
Click to expand...

My vote right here!
 
chessrock said:
1)
3) Make sure everything is perfectly phase-aligned in your audio editor.
Click to expand...

Make surre you do this in a way that you can A-B before and after. Sometimes this is a huge help to the drums and others times it can make them worse. sometimes phase "problems" can reinforce frequencies in a very cool way.
 
Very true.......Actually, you can never truely get the "phase" of everything totally right, because of a variety of reasons: room response (because of direct vs early reflection sounds), mic response, etc..........So, you get to pick whether you need to attack to be phase correct, or the decay.

Generally though, the attack is a big deal.

A fun little thing to do is:

Record your drums with close mics making sure your toms are "sympathetic" to the kick drum.

Play back but mute/unmute the toms.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.....good ol' muting!
 
Don't bother with sound replacer, Drumagog, etc... just slap a trigger on there from the get-go. I mean, you know you're gonna need it half the time anyways. :)
 
Cloneboy, I've been looking at the ddrum triggers for possibility of supplementing snare and bass drum sounds on live recordings. I'm guessing I would need a brain that could convert these signals to MIDI, is that correct? I'm just looking to get MIDI notes from acoustic drums. Thx for your help.

Jonathan
 
Yeah, I was trying to do a quick reply a few minutes after I posted that but it didn't go through. I found the TMC-6 as well as an alesis d-4 that has 12 inputs and midi out. I'm guessing the Roland will most accurately track velocity differences. Do you track the cymbals live and then supplement the kick and snare? Will it accurately transmit the difference in velocity between a rimshot and a full hit? How do you address that, just lower the velocity in your sequencer and throw in a rimshot sample?
 
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