Interesting drum sounds

  • Thread starter Thread starter Josh English
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Josh English

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I've been experimenting recently with drum sounds off thigns other than drums. For example a while back i got a cool reverberated (i think that's a word) sound from setting a microphone inside of a bathtub and playing on the outside of it. Or a friend of mine said he got an interesting sound from pressing a mic head onto the middle of a matress and playing on the outside.
I was wondering if anyone else has any success story's of stuff they've played around with and got interesting sounds and how they recorded it.
Josh
 
I once augmented a crappy sounding kick drum by putting a mic on a desktop stand, putting that on a plastic folding chair, and tapping the seat of the chair with my finger. The vibration through the stand was just the sound I needed.
 
Josh English said:
I've been experimenting recently with drum sounds off thigns other than drums. For example a while back i got a cool reverberated (i think that's a word) sound from setting a microphone inside of a bathtub and playing on the outside of it. Or a friend of mine said he got an interesting sound from pressing a mic head onto the middle of a matress and playing on the outside.
I was wondering if anyone else has any success story's of stuff they've played around with and got interesting sounds and how they recorded it.
Josh
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If you have an good ear for and a curiosity about these things, you might want to take a look at sound effects for movies and such. You might do really well there, as those guys are always coming up with the strangest ways to get what would seem to be the most natural sounds...
 
On their earlier records, Pink Floyd used many household items for drums, sound effects etc...
 
I was mixing some tracks a few years ago that were recorded by the band. the snare drum had nothing about it that indicated it was a snare, it sounded more like a flat sounding tom.

I had an old toaster oven from the '60s that my Mom had given me. The heating elements were like coil springs and when you tapped on it, it sounded kinda like snare bands with a nice ring.

We wound up duct taping an old 6x9 car speaker to the top of the toaster oven, gated the snare track and re-amped it through the speaker, miked it with an sm 57. Blended the toaster track back in with the original snare track and, well, it wasn't the best, but it did sound like a snare drum!
 
Depeche Mode used a lot of odd samples during the 80's for percussion, and other effects. Sometimes you think you are hearing synth but it's a sample of a vacuum cleaner or whatever.
 
strmkr said:
We wound up duct taping an old 6x9 car speaker to the top of the toaster oven, gated the snare track and re-amped it through the speaker, miked it with an sm 57. Blended the toaster track back in with the original snare track and, well, it wasn't the best, but it did sound like a snare drum!
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WOW, now that is wild, how the hell did you think of that? very, very interesting :D :D :D
 
Carter said:
WOW, now that is wild, how the hell did you think of that? very, very interesting :D :D :D
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Drugs. :D

No, but seriously, the toaster oven sat below a shelf where all my coffee and junk was. A couple weeks earlier, one of my buddies knocked the creamer off the shelf and it landed on the toaster oven. I thought, "hmmm, that sounded kinda like a snare".

The old 6x9 was just something I had lying around and it fit pretty nicely on top, so we were of to the races. I had seen a similar trick done re-amping an actual snare drum, but I'm not a drummer so I didn't have a snare around.
 
I have replaced many a kik drum track over the years by slapping my thumb onto the head of an SM-57. Works like a charm.
 
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