Interesting question regarding recording drummers

M

MrBlackthorne

Funkmaster
So, I have run into an interesting situation and I figured I'd post here and see what people have to say...

I'm just starting up my studio, which I guess is just slightly more than a project studio. My first project has been a band that I've known for a while, very good guys. We had allocated two weekends to record three songs, which was reasonable to me. But at the last minute they had to change things to record almost everything in the first weekend. Ugh, I hate to rush.

Anyway, we set up to record drum tracks - we had already cut click tracks and scratch tracks on a previous week. I had told my main contact in the band to let his drummer know to tune his drums and make sure his heads were in good shape. Unfortuately, it was the exact opposite. His heads were in shambles, and out of tune besides. He apparently wasn't very good at tuning. Now, I grew up a drummer, so I know how to tune heads. But 1) we're on a tight schedule and 2) no matter how well I can tune drums, these toms are going to sound like paper. What do I do? Do I just tune them the best I can (which I did) and hope I can EQ and gate out the weirdness associated with dead heads? Do I tell him to go out and get new heads? We're on a schedule, here.

Well, I mixed the drums, and to my surprise they came out sounding like drums. But certainly not up to my obsessive-compulsive standards. I blame myself mostly for not communcating better that **THIS IS IMPORTANT IF YOU WANT TO SOUND GOOD **. Is that what I have to do? Do I have to bang people's heads into a wall until they realize that no engineer, no matter how good, can make gold out of crap?

The funny thing is, studio-virgin musicians have some really strange preconceived notions about recording. I overheard the drummer saying,"I'm going to change the heads after recording because you should record with heads that are well broken in." OK, first off, it doesn't take THAT long to break in heads, and newer heads are always going to sound better than heads that have been through 20 or so gigs. Next off, there's a big difference between "broken in" and "broken". Where do they come up with this stuff?

So my question is: When this happens again (and it will happen again), some young kid comes in with dead or lousy equipment ignoring what I said about tuning and using nice heads, do I just put the mics on, hit record and plug my ears? Do I risk putting out a subpar product and risk my reputation because they can't follow directions, or don't really know how to care for their instrument? Should I even care? Should I hold their hand and show them how to tune drums? Has anyone run into a problem like this before? How'd you handle it?

Just something I thought I'd share.

Rick
 
I think that depends on the hat you are asked to wear!

If you are asked to be the engineer, put up with what they show up with and explain after the fact why it doesn't sound good. Make suggestions as they are setting up and ask why they didn't do what you asked them to. They are trying to be the producers themselves, and end up with what they put into it.

If you are asked to be a producer, then it is your job to insist that you will not record one note until you are happy with the condition of the instruments. Those are the jobs you put on your resume, and it is your name on the line. Not to mention the band will gain vauable experience and learn quite a bit in the process.

It's also a good measure of how professional a band is. Pros know when and how to listen as well as talk.
 
PhilGood said:
I think that depends on the hat you are asked to wear!

If you are asked to be the engineer, put up with what they show up with and explain after the fact why it doesn't sound good. Make suggestions as they are setting up and ask why they didn't do what you asked them to. They are trying to be the producers themselves, and end up with what they put into it.

If you are asked to be a producer, then it is your job to insist that you will not record one note until you are happy with the condition of the instruments. Those are the jobs you put on your resume, and it is your name on the line. Not to mention the band will gain vauable experience and learn quite a bit in the process.

It's also a good measure of how professional a band is. Pros know when and how to listen as well as talk.
Click to expand...

I agree.

As an Engineer your job is to work with what they bring to the table.
As a producer, you can kind of "dictate" how the sessions will go.

For example - I'll give them a card telling them to have new strings and drumheads, and to bring a spare snare and kick head to the recording as well as drumsticks and extra strings, picks, and guitar straps.
As an engineer, if they don't follow it - that's their fault - they were warned.

As a Producer, I make their drummer drop his Kit off the day before to "acclimatize" it to the studio (meaning I take his kit with new heads on it, and tune it.)
And if he doesn't get new heads - I won't record them until he does.

Now, if the heads aren't super old, and super beaten in - I can deal with that, and if worst comes to worst - I'll trigger the kit and he will just be "S.O.L." about having "his" sound, because he didn't follow directions.


Tim
 
You might try micing the resonent head of the toms.

If you have to mic the top head, find a spot up close where the head sounds at least decent. It's not always possible, but if all else fails...

If the drums sound better farther way from the kit, put the mics farther away from the kit.

If the drums sound better from where the drummer sits, put them there.

Sometimes lower on a kit will sound better when there is nothing else going right. Try an LDC above the three feet out from the kick drum pointed up.

Spend less time on micing it up and more time on performance in real bad situations.

Just try to keep an open mind, walk around the room and try and find a spot where the drums sound good. You may not always find great, or even good, in those cases just keep an open mind and aim for decent.
 
I had this exact same problem only slighty worse. Some kids in indy who know people I know heard about me and wanted to come to stl to record. It was sweet for them because I informed them if they came out I'd let them crash in the spare room and would be supplying food. I talked to the drummer who informed me the recording needed to be as professional as possible. I told him no matter how new his heads are to change all of them before he came, and of course he said no problem. So they showed up on a friday afternoon and the drummer says "hey I still need new heads". So I had to run him up to my local GC get him heads, the guitar player strings and the bass player strings. Spent the entire day friday changing and tuning and setting up leaving us with just saturday to record 6 songs. It was pure hell, great musicians, but 16 straight hours of tracking(7 on guitars alone) pretty much kicked my ass. You just need to let every band you record know that new drumheads are essential and that they need to be totally prepaired when coming into the studio.
 
You could make it a policy to ask the band "Is this your first time in a studio?". Then you could set some ground rules (if they are first timers, or you suspect studio virgins) and ask if they understand the rules before showing up. Maybe print out a little check list that they have to have done before they arrive.
 
These are all really great suggestions. Thanks for the input. I think I'm going to get my website up and running and put that stuff on there, along with a flyer that will include that "check list" that I can give to bands.

In the case of this most recent recording, the guys are longtime musicians and I know that at least half of them have done studio recording before. So I made some assumptions I probably shouldn't have made. Which makes me wonder: Do other studios even care about this? Or do these studios just have them set up however they want, have them jam out, give 'em a CD, and say cha-ching? I suspect this may be the case. I mean, I know that's an overgeneralization, but you have to think this may be the case, if not the norm. I'm just way too anal to not care about quality.

Rick
 
Another good idea is to perhaps buy your own studio drum set that's always there. So if the client ends up bringing crap drums, then you can use yours and it wouldn't be much of a problem since you would pretty much know how to set them up and mic them.
Then when the session is over - you can tack on a "equipment rental" to the bill!!! :D
 
Sloan said:
Another good idea is to perhaps buy your own studio drum set that's always there. So if the client ends up bringing crap drums, then you can use yours and it wouldn't be much of a problem since you would pretty much know how to set them up and mic them.
Then when the session is over - you can tack on a "equipment rental" to the bill!!! :D
Click to expand...


Yeah but then you get "but it won't be my sound". Just went thru this with some guys a couple days ago. They brought in one of the mg marshall heads and they had to bash the hell out of the top of it to keep it from howling. I have any Avt50 and while it isn't great if you A/B'd the two you'd tell the difference, and I offered to let them use it, they refused. I told them they could at least use my cab(1960a), nope wanted to use the mg cab instead.
 
Yeah, I've got a "house kit", although I must admit it's not in the best shape. It's an old 1990's Pearl starter kit I played when I was in school. It's always sounded decent on recording, though. Maybe when I rake in more of those "big studio bucks" (rolls eyes), I can put it toward a decent quality kit. :)
 
Spread the word

Disk Makers has a pamphlet of what to expect when going into the studio.
No matter what I do, I cant convince this one Drummer to practice to a click!

Two times he refused to play with one!!!! :cool:
 
well rick think of it this way,


If you're a mechanical engineer and you ask for titanium and they bring you aluminum, do you make the car anyway?

Of course the next question is if you can afford to be picky or not.

You see, even as an engineer, you have the right to reject anything you can't work with. I personally would rather push out fewer projects with better sounding drums, than a million projects with a unstatisfying reputation.

Eventually people catch on and it wears on your business.

And yeah, shit happens. Heads break. Even CYMBALS break (apparently for those who can't play properly). Just have a list of back up plans.

Say your high tom just snapped right off. What do you do? Say the guy broke all his sticks. What do you do? Say he just broke your HH cymbals (true story). What do you do? You can't stop this session, it's due for review tommorow!

Play out every senario possible in your head a few times with a fast solution. Make it a personal game. Call it "What would you do if...". It's a good exercise.


There's a saying in this industry: For every project you do well, they will tell at least 1 other person. For every project you do poorly, they will tell at least 10 other people.

Don't stand for it. Your work ethic should be understood before the studio. That's the 101 on professionalism. Paid or not. If the kid is planning to make a carreer of it, do him a favor and teach the newbies.

-How to properly tune
-How the recording process *really* goes and his place in that process
-How to professionally take direction from whoever is giving it to him.
-How to avoid thinking for the engineer (some would take that as a disrespect)

Those are things that can save his carreer later on.

Your level of standards and how you enforce them makes you or breaks you.

Just think of yourself as John Travolta in that fireman movie and how he pushed his new recruits. Wise but not too overbearing.

I'm in my early 20s and already I have a reputation for sending people home. Don't get me wrong, I'm a great guy, but poor work ethic frustrates me.

So if I specifically request Emperor weather kings on the batter sides and ambassador clears on the resonant sides, it don't wanna see aquarians or evans in the studio. Of course thats why studios have thier own custom kits already setup.

Don't ever come out of a session knowing you of could easily avoided a silly mistake or desicion. That attention to detail is the difference between a "we like your style, lets work again sometime" and a "well thank you, we'll keep in touch".

That's a very arrogant approach, but I learned from some of the best that it's ok to be assertive and still have fun. :D
 
Last edited:
Bdrum said:
Disk Makers has a pamphlet of what to expect when going into the studio.
No matter what I do, I cant convince this one Drummer to practice to a click!

Two times he refused to play with one!!!! :cool:
Click to expand...

This is a whole other topic we could get into. A lot of younger musicians don't see the value in playing to a click. They use the excuse, "Oh, it's going to sound lifeless." My response is, "It'll sound lifeless if you play it lifelessly. Having proper tempo is not going to make it sound lifeless." Then they counter with, "Well, we're looking for a more live sound." Obvious marks of a newbie. I made the same mistakes when I was younger, too.

Younger musicians don't realize how much playing to a click makes you a better musician. In the first band I was playing in, I tried to get our drummer to play to the click, and he had a really hard time with it, so we scrapped the idea for the first CD. Consequently, the CD wasn't up to our expectations. But even with that initial attempt at trying, his live playing became more controlled and he became more aware of his tempo. The next time, he could do it no problem. And the recordings were that much better.

I personally wouldn't do it any other way. But I know this can be a topic of heated debate. Which is why if I'm recording another band, I'm not going to force them into it. I will make sure I educate them on the advantages to playing to a click and if they still don't want to do it, there's nothing you can do about it. There are worse things that could happen. The guitarist could show up with a 10 watt CRATE and say, "This is my sound." LOL

Rick
 
MrBlackthorne said:
This is a whole other topic we could get into. A lot of younger musicians don't see the value in playing to a click. They use the excuse, "Oh, it's going to sound lifeless." My response is, "It'll sound lifeless if you play it lifelessly. Having proper tempo is not going to make it sound lifeless." Then they counter with, "Well, we're looking for a more live sound." Obvious marks of a newbie. I made the same mistakes when I was younger, too.

Younger musicians don't realize how much playing to a click makes you a better musician. In the first band I was playing in, I tried to get our drummer to play to the click, and he had a really hard time with it, so we scrapped the idea for the first CD. Consequently, the CD wasn't up to our expectations. But even with that initial attempt at trying, his live playing became more controlled and he became more aware of his tempo. The next time, he could do it no problem. And the recordings were that much better.

I personally wouldn't do it any other way. But I know this can be a topic of heated debate. Which is why if I'm recording another band, I'm not going to force them into it. I will make sure I educate them on the advantages to playing to a click and if they still don't want to do it, there's nothing you can do about it. There are worse things that could happen. The guitarist could show up with a 10 watt CRATE and say, "This is my sound." LOL

Rick
Click to expand...


TESTIFY, my bother!!!!!

The most valuable thing I got from learning to play to a click, was hearing everything that I was doing WRONG!! It points out bad habits you are not aware of! It's like your singing. You're convinced you sound one way until you record your voice and play it back. Listening to a recorded track with a click showed where my phrasing was falling apart. Its a mental blow, but puts you on a path to understanding true tempo and how to strive for it.

I'm still on that quest!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top