Less than perfect room for drums

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sixer2007

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A while back I recorded some drum tracks in my living room. I think they sound good with the mixing that i've done with the tracks, but they lack a little something.
For instance, when i listen to professional mixes, i can really hear the room in them, and it's perfect of course. Their rooms have the perfect conditions for tracking drums, where as my room was just what i had to use... Im sure they use some room mics in there to capture that perfect room sound, but i only had enough mics/pres to just get the drums..

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here ever adds a bit (maybe just a few dbs) of a small room or hall verb to the overall drum buss (after verb on individual components like the snare, maybe toms, etc) to try to capture that "room" feel of using room mics and such.

I know it can muddy things up, so i planned to cut out the low frequencies to leave the kick as untouched as possible.

Idk, what do you guys think? Ever done it or heard of it being done?

Thanks!
 
A good way to get a room sound is to compress the OHs loads. Use a long attack and longish release. Maybe say 100ms attack and 150ms release. with a strong ratio and a good deal of threshold.
This will not catch the snap and punch of the drums but it will bring up the room reverb more so.
Also adding a nice reverb to all the drums (apart from the kick drum IMO) can work wonders.

Can you post a clip of your drum sound please?

Cheers,
Graeme - Founder of Crystal Mixing and Mastering.
 
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone here ever adds a bit (maybe just a few dbs) of a small room or hall verb ..
Click to expand...
Hell yes. But that presumes faily dry' to begin with.
Drums in the living room- without gobos or what not to tame the room? Seems you'd have plenty (? but then you didn't say..
 
This is the chorus to a heavier song I've been working on. One track semi dry with some verb on individual pieces, and then one with a bit of small hall on it to test out what i mentioned before

I never thought to compress just the overheads, but as you can probably tell I took out most of everything except just the cymbals because i just didn't like how they sounded. I did use parallel compression em, It made them way better.

Dry: Drums Dry.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
Hall: Drums Hall.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
 
Those clips don't sound too bad, but they do sound "off" in a weird mega isolated kind of way. Overheads are supposed to pick up the whole kit and provide the gel that glues it all together so they sound like drums and not just a bunch of random percussive sounds popping in and out. They're not just cymbal mics. I can't imagine "taking out everything except just the cymbals" helps anything, and in your case, I don't think it did. What you have there sounds unnatural and weird. If your overhead tracks sounded bad or you just didn't like them, then try a different overhead technique or a different room. Most likely you simply just didn't have them set up properly for the room you're in and the sound you want. There's a science to setting up overheads. You can't just stick one there and one there. I'm not saying that's what you did; I'm just putting it out there in case you didn't know.

If your room is bad, I'd advise against compressing the overheads. Just my opinion. Compressed overheads can sound really bad, and bring out even more of a bad room. Cymbals get butchered with hard compression. I'd say record as dry as possible in a bad room and add "room" after the fact with a good reverb unit or plug-in. Good being the key word here. There are some really bad reverbs out there. Find you some good impulse files and use a convolution style reverb plug. Yeah pro studios use pro rooms, but artificial reverb has been used for decades. There's nothing wrong with it.
 
sixer2007 said:
This is the chorus to a heavier song I've been working on. One track semi dry with some verb on individual pieces, and then one with a bit of small hall on it to test out what i mentioned before

I never thought to compress just the overheads, but as you can probably tell I took out most of everything except just the cymbals because i just didn't like how they sounded. I did use parallel compression em, It made them way better.

Dry: Drums Dry.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
Hall: Drums Hall.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
Click to expand...

The cymbals sound really thin. There is no meat to them. Did you cut the low end from your OHs? if you did then don't. :) You want to probably boost the low end and maybe cut a little around 300kHz.

Sounds like you need to compress your kick a good deal more as the levels are not very consistent. Try an attack around 6ms maybe so you don't catch to much of the punch. and a release around 40ms. and try smashing the compression but without killing the punch.

I like the meatyness of the snare. I would maybe boost at 5kHz a little and maybe cut a tiny bit of the low mids, but just a tiny bit as you don't want to loose that meatyness.

Good stuff.
G
G
 
Can you post the separate tracks for the drums at all so I can have a shot at Mixing them please?

Cheers,
G
 
sixer2007 said:
This is the chorus to a heavier song I've been working on. One track semi dry with some verb on individual pieces, and then one with a bit of small hall on it to test out what i mentioned before

I never thought to compress just the overheads, but as you can probably tell I took out most of everything except just the cymbals because i just didn't like how they sounded. I did use parallel compression em, It made them way better.

Dry: Drums Dry.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
Hall: Drums Hall.mp3 - File Shared from Box - Free Online File Storage
Click to expand...

That's not too bad, but I think if you were to tighten up your snare it would have more of a high-end crack (!!) which would project better. It could do with a little more rattle too, have you not used a mic on the bottom?
 
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