I'll Have a Tom Collins, please....

  • Thread starter Thread starter ChuckU
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ChuckU

ChuckU

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I mean, I want to get the toms to sound like Phil Collins'. Is gated reverb the solution? I've been playing with FX on toms lately. I've been using gates, reverb (not gated reverb, tho), EQ, (Cutting mids and boosing 1-2k, as well as 100hz). Also a touch of multiband compression, but I don't know what I'm doing there.

Any ideas other than "get Phil Collins to come over and play..." would help. Tuning hints are welcome as I'm not a drummer.
 
Gated reverb is a big part of the sound, but so is using a single headed kick and toms.


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"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
Yo CHUCK-U:]

Lemon juice, [fresh], sugar to taste, and A LARGE SPLASH OF GIN.

Shake well. Add a splash of soda water to fill a large glass.

This will give you a great Tom Collins.

As to the drum technique, alas, I know not.

Green Hornet:p :D
 
Green Hornet,
May Kato add a little "lemon juice" to your next Tom Collins....:D
 
It's been a while since I've been subjected to that sound... but from memory... it sounded like the toms were tuned a 4th apart, with the bottom head being a 5th below the top head... rather ringy, sort of a "Bonzo-esque jazz tuning", that doesn't 'ring' quite as long.

The "reverb" thing can be created in a bunch of different ways... the easiest will probably be to just rent an AMS RMX-16 and use the "Non-Lin 2" reverb patch [which legend holds was created to recreate the 'Huge Paycheck' [Hugh Padgham] drum reverbs.

The "Non Linear 2" setting in the Kurzweil KSP-8 is pretty damn close to the one in the AMS... and the KSP-8 is way less expensive, and way more reliable.

In lieu of that... put a bunch of mics around a rather large room with a high ceiling... trigger a gate off of each tom/drum that will open the "far" mic that sounds best with each drum. You'll probably want like a 10-12ms delay on the trigger feed to allow the front of the drum to come through without the reverb getting in the way of the initial "whack".

It sounds like a Drawmer DS-201 gate was employed as the 'reverb' seems to hold then quickly ramp down [as opposed to just turning off, but it's a damn quick ramp... something that I've only heard the Drawmer do well]. Then compress the living snot out of the reverb, and blend to taste.

Take none of the above as any form of 'gospel truth'... but [from memory] that's kind of a 'disection' of what I remember hearing with those. I could be a million and a half miles off...

Best of luck with it.
 
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