Kick And Snare Problems

J

James21

New member
Just recently recording a full acoustic set. recorded a song and went back to listen and the kick is very...Lame. No definition no thump just like a puff of air. and the snare is very not faint but sounds distant.

the toms sound fine.
the over heads kinda suck too. A little harsh and really picking up the snare and a little of the kick.

Used 57 on snare and toms pointed a little off center of the head, At4040 as overheads. and a Beta52 for the kick, placed inside the hole.
Drummer had two small pillows inside the kick. placed against the bottom of front and back heads.
 
You should look in to making a sub kick microphone. I made one out of a 8" woofer from an old fender bass amp, and it drastically improved my kick drum sound.

My bass drum is not the best sounding bass drum out there, but i can get a good sound by mixing my homemade sub kick with my Audix D4.

Also, eq. Drop the mids and boost the lows and highs.
 
You want your B52 right up to where the beater hits. 1 inch or so. A subkick will help. IMO, the best bet is to get Steven Slate Trigger EX and never worry about a gook kick sound again ever. You could mic it with a Fisher Price mic on a Muppet drum kit and get an awesome kick sound. Snare too. :D
 
Well i was thinking about that, but then i feel like everyone else in my genre of music. :[ are there any free triggers?
 
What genre? A good drum sample is just a good drum recorded with good mics through good gear in a good room. Something that can be tough for us to get all right at home. You can download KT Drum Trigger for free and trigger midi with it. HALion One kicks don't sound so hot but I suppose you could use it to enhance your kick for free. EZDrummer would be an upgrade from that. SSTrigger EX is under $200 including Ilok and way better for enhancing recorded drums IMO. There is no way my recordings would be any where near where they are without it.
 
Check the phase on your kik and snare. You might have to reverse the polarity on one or both of them.
 
Ok, i take it i would have to download a phase checking plug? any free ones out there? and one that would reverse it for me?
 
The problem with triggers is that they can't match the nuances you get from a great drummer, in a great room, with a great sounding kit. Having a drum track that is nuanced to match the feel of the song is something that can't really be reproduced with samples. At the same time, most of us generally don't have those resources available to us, so triggers end up being a big improvement for home recordings.
 
Overheads will always pick up the whole kit - frequently snare more than anything else. That is why it is common to match the distance from the snare to each overhead mic - to avoid phase issues with the snare. Jimmy's advice regarding the Beta 52 placement would be my best bet for a fix. You will get a lot more attack from the kick the closer the mic is placed to the beater. IME, subkicks and kick tunnels generally add more body or 'whoomph' to a kick, so those might not help - but it is something worth trying. How do the drums sound in the room compared to the recording? If the kick lacks definition before it is miced, it is probably best to take care of the problem at the source and retune it, or try different heads or beaters.
 
guitaristic said:
Yeah, evidently from what I've heard Beta 52s will do that too you. They don't pick up much click.
Click to expand...
What? the only time they won't pick up much click is when you put it in front of the reso head and hit the drum softly with a felt beater. The beta 52 likes to be placed right in the vent hole in the reso head.

Don't be afraid to EQ the crap out of the kick. Depending on what sort of sound you are going for, you will need to really EQ wildly.

You don't need a plugin to check phase, you can hear it. Every DAW that I've seen has a way to reverse the phase/polarity of a file. Just reverse it and see if it sounds better. If it does, you had a phase issue, if it doesn't, you didn't.
 
James21 said:
Ok, i take it i would have to download a phase checking plug? any free ones out there? and one that would reverse it for me?
Click to expand...

No, you just zoom in on the waveforms and look. And you don't reverse (or flip or invert) phase, you shift it. Polarity is the thing that can be flipped, but it is routinely mislabeled as "phase". To shift the phase you slide a track left or right in the timeline. Different DAWs have different ways of inverting polarity.

I get decent kick drum sound all the time with a Beta 52. It starts with a good sounding kick drum. I prefer no resonant head so I can get the mic well into the shell. I try different places until I find what's best. Then typically I cut something between 100Hz and 200Hz where the mud is and boost something up in the highs to get the click.
 
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