Mixing Vintage Drumsound?

  • Thread starter Thread starter s_amuel
  • Start date Start date
S

s_amuel

New member
Hi.
I´m working on a four song-demo and it´s sounding jeff b, j cash kindof singsongwriting/country/acustic. I´d like the drums to sound "vintage". I know its a wide therm so I´ll try every tip thats not turning them hightech!

I´ve recorded them with six mics - kick, snare, 2 tombs and overheads. The overheads are placed 15 feet in front of the set, (x/y) since the room sounded good. I have a nice set in a big room in the overheads.

I guess its mixing tip/plugins and eq-tip m after now, but I know its best using right microphones/room/micing right in the first place... what can I do with what I got in the mixing process?

thanks! This is a GREAT forum.
 
You left out the most important details. What kind of drums are they? What are they made of? What are the sizes? Are they tuned well? The source of your sound is the most important thing.

After that, what kind of mics??? What kind of pre's??? What kind of board?

You get the gist.
 
Probably one of the best things for getting a old school sound is to record the drums as an entire kit in stereo (or mono if you want really old school) rather than multi-miking them. I'd see how do just those X/Y OH's alone sound.

Narrowing the freq response on whatever tracks you use can help too. Lowpass everything below abut 7kHz or so, cutting down everything brighter than that. Similarly highpassing to cut the sub bass also. Perhaps some small boost in parts of the midrange to taste may be in order, but that depends on the recorded sound and your individual taste.

G.
 
RAMI, I know - you´re right its all about setting the sound in the recordingpreocess. I didn´t focus @ any "vintage-sound" during recording - just to get a nice room in the OH, clear kick and snare with a good punch. It has become more fun and better than I thought though, and it would fit to get them vintage with the other tracks on them. I´ll plan this better next time :confused: So I can´t remember witch kind/sizes witch don´t matter since I have the take I have, so my question is more IF there is genrelly tips in the mixingprocess like plugs, eq-hints or whatever.*

Thanks glen! I start with those OH as you said and build the sound of what I got, high and lowpassing :cool:
 
Like Glen suggested just use the room mics. Micing the whole kit didn't become popular until the 70's.
 
I wouldnt just use the OHs, but I would also use a bit of the close mics aswell. But make the Ohs quite loud in the mix. I wouldnt tune your kit to be punchy, I would slacken it to make it loose sounding, but also make sure the drums sound quite dead. You could stick foam on the drums to deaden them.

If you have analogue pre amps then I would clip the inputs when recording to get a slight distorted sound.
Also if you have any old mics then that would help alot! :)

Eck
 
Pan all the drum tracks to one side. Really. Get some headphones and listen to some of the old stuff you're trying to emulate. It becomes more clear.
 
i dont have much experience with drums, other than one failed attempt, but im really into that old clunky kind of "thump" sounding drumset like on a lot of 70s recordings. though its not quiiiite the 70s, "come together" by the beatles represents my ideal vintage drum sound. im not sure how it was miked, but i think draping thin towels over the drums helped a lot to create that sound

not sure if thats what youre after, but good luck!
 
I`m a huge fan of the 70`s drum sound.

Some hints, Get a dead room, really dead use accoustical absorbants.

Loose the bottom head of your toms, tame the snare a lot, us a muffle ring, moongel or tape.

I just learnt a new tom trick, it goes like this.

Get a towel or a cloth, kinda thick and soft.

Cut it into 1 inch long stripes (long enough to cross the tom).

Then you mount the stripes under the batter head, this gives an awsome sound. well to me it does.

I would say it would be smart to start with as little mikes as possible, just add if nescesarry.

just my 2 cents :)
 
nddhc said:
i dont have much experience with drums, other than one failed attempt, but im really into that old clunky kind of "thump" sounding drumset like on a lot of 70s recordings. though its not quiiiite the 70s, "come together" by the beatles represents my ideal vintage drum sound. im not sure how it was miked, but i think draping thin towels over the drums helped a lot to create that sound

not sure if thats what youre after, but good luck!
Click to expand...

Well, this post sure brings up the need to express what we mean by vintage!

What vintage? What style? What studio? What drummer? What drums?

You will find examples of "live-sounding" drums, "dead-sounding" drums, and everything in between in just about any vintage. Ringo's drum sound doesn't define vintage any more than Max Roach's does...
 
Yea, dude.

Vintage? You mean like vintage Motown? vintage Hank (Williams)? vintage as in John Lennon or vintage as in Buddy Holly? Hell, I suppose if you're young enough, vintage could mean NWA or Insane Clown Possie. :D

Anyway, the kind of drum sound I refer to as "vintage" would be characterized mostly by the type of room it's recorded in and how it was mic'ed. I don't know if there's really any insanely different mixing techniques or anything, other than the amount of compression and how it is applied. Specifically, in certain music genres, there is a lot more compression on everything in general nowadays ... but drums especially. In particular, the use of extremely compressed room mics.

So basically, you might want to approach it with the idea of saving the heavy compression for the close mic tracks while leaving the room mics alone, for the most part. A lot of the old stuff was tracked in very dead (accoustically) rooms, and pumping room mic making the snare sound like gunshots might run counter to that general vibe. :D . Consider using a lot less compression, overall, unless you're talking about tape compression, which is perfectly acceptable and highly encouraged, in fact (You might even consider running a submix to an old consumer cassette deck even, and slamming that).

.
 
"You might even consider running a submix to an old consumer cassette deck even, and slamming that"

slammin with a high input from the computer to get it distort, or what... how? Sounds like something I´d like to do, hehe. Slamming is nice.
 
s_amuelSlamming is nice.[/QUOTE said:
Slamming Sammy! :D

Something like that is actually not that bad of an idea. Depending upon the deck and the tape forulation, I wouldn't slam it too god awful hard, but just sending it to cassette with ferric tape (Dolby B off, not too hot) or chrome tape (dolby B on, hotter peaks) and then recording the playback could give just enough of a (for lack of a better term) lo-fi smoothing to the recording.

Added bonus: tape hiss! Not much more vintage than that ;) :D

G.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top