please, please help me.

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spacehorse

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hey, i'm in a band and i bought a tascam portastudio 788 so we could do some demos, unfortuneately we cant get the drums to sound very good. i will tell you what and where we are recording and maybe you can help. first off the room were recording in is my garage, which is basically a square with 2 concrete walls, one garage door wall of wood, and one wall of insulation. the cielilng and floor are also concrete. i have been using 2 matresses in front of the kit to reflect the sound which has helped a little, i also have 2 large pieces of plywood i could cover with a futon or something and put in front of it, i also have a futon matress.

basically what i want to know is:

where in the room should i put the kit?

which wall should it face?

which of my fake "walls" (the matresses and the plywood) should i use, and where should i place them?

sorry that this is such a long post, but i thought the more info you guys have the more specific your advice could be.

if you want, you can hear the shitty drums on my band's site:
www.debasertheband.com

any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
 
I listened to "Keep it in the family".

The snare sounds very similar to the bass drum. Can you see wrinkles in the snare head? That thing sounds like it's tuned reaaaalllly low. I would definitly try tuning it up a bit higher and see if the sound cuts through the mix any better.

If you don't have a kick mic, that might make a huge difference in giving your bass drum some beef or at least some punch (even if it's not a kick mic, something like an SM58 is better than nothing).

I'm no expert on acoustics, but I'd say that your drums might be a bigger issue than the sound of your garage right now. What kind of drum kit/heads?

The cymbals are audible, so to me the main issue is the bass and snare sounds.

What kind of mics, and where are they placed?

I'm sure you'll get some better answers, but that's what I'd try. Hope some of it helps.

/My 2 pesos
 
Spacehorse,
When recording drums in a live room symmetry is NOT your friend.
Place your drums in the room with a reflective wall behind you but not directly perpendicular, aim off at an angle towards what ever absorbtive materials you have. You need to diffuse the reflecting sound as much as possible.

Don't be afraid to be closer to one wall than another. It is a mistaken concept that when tracking you need symmetry around the recorded object to receive a balanced image. Actually you want to avoid receiving a lot of reflections from mutiple symmetrical surfaces because it tends to induce comb filtering and a smeared image.

Symmetry is only important in a Control room / Monitoring environment.

Don't get m wrong, live is good if controlled , dead stinks big time,it makes the kit sound puny.

You did not say how or with what you were micing the kit. That will also make a big diff.
 
I think you need to check your snare drum at first. Tune it higher, maybe need to replace the heads or snares. What kind of heads are you using??. Second are you micing the snare or how many mics are you using for the whole kit??.
I´m almost sure that if you tune it well, your drums will sound better.
For some tips on tunning go to

http://www.drumweb.com/profsound.shtml

Hope this helps

Tama
 
thanks guys for your replies. sorry it took me so long to get back to you about this as well.

in reply to your questions:

the kit i'm using is a hodge-podge mix of stuff, the rack and floor tom are Stewarts, with a coated pinstripe on the racked, and just a pinstripe on the floor one. the bass drum is a pearl world series, with the original skins on it. im not sure where the snare is from but it has coated ambassador skins on it and its all metal and falling apart.

i have been using 5 mics for recording this stuff, which is why im so worried that it sounds like crap. the mics are:

a sony ECM-MS907 electret condenser mic, which was not made for micing drums, but seems to work well.

a regular 90$ vocal mic.

and a drum mic kit i got for 300$ called kitpack, it's made by audio technica. it didnt come with specs or anything so, thats all i can tell you about them really. it comes with 4 mics, 2 are snare/tom, and 2 are bass/tom.

i put on of the kitpack mics in front of the bass, i clip the others on the snare and rack and floor toms. then i place the condenser mic above and behind the kit, facing towards the high hat, the cheap vocal mic i put close to the ride to pick up that side.

and then we just play with levels until they sound ok. but they never sound good enough... if you guys can give me any other tips now that you know this stuff i would really appreciate it.

by the way, does anyone know the kitpack from audio technica? are they worth the $ i layed down for them? i'm hoping to be able to use your tips and just experiment myself so i dont have to buy anything else.

thanks again.
 
well, the obvious answer is this: the best way to get a good drum recording is a great kit played by a great drummer in a great room using great mics into a great console run by a great engineer.


we don't all have that. :D


i'd start by addressing the kit--if it sounds like shit in the room, it'll sound like shit on tape. it's even harder when it's a FrankenKit like this. first order of business: put new heads on everything. if you don't know how old they are, if they look blackish or the coating's coming off (for the coated heads) or if there are dents in any of the pinstripes, etc, then they're dead......just take $100 and replace them all. if applicable, look into one of the Remo or Evans "pre-packs", where you get several "standard sized" heads in a pack--it's cheaper than buying individual heads.

THEN learn to tune the drums. read that Tuning Bible on the drumweb url TamaSabian posted....read it.....learn it.....apply it. it's sad, but most drummers don't know how tune their instrument properly. so when you get those new heads, tune em right. between changing your heads and tuning the drums properly, you SHOULD notice a large (good) difference in the sound of the kit.

then, i'd sell that "kitpack" on ebay and take the cash and buy some used SM57s, a real kick mic and a pair of mxl 603s or oktava mc012's. use the 57s on the toms, the kick mic on the kick and the 603/mc012's as overheads. if you can't afford to obtain them all at once, then do it over a couple months. these should give you a noticible step up from the kitpack. plus, the sm57's will be usable elsewhere as swiss army knife mics. the mc012/603's are great acoustic guitar mics, and you can use the kick mic for bass cabs, or possibly even a vocal mic if it fits the voice.


then get that drum kit off the concrete floor. nothing robs wood shells of tone like concrete. build or buy a drum riser for the drums. wood drums on a wood riser will let the drums breathe. that goes for the amps, too.....i'd get them off the floor too. that's a good project, and is one i'm actually working on now.



you didn't state what kind of console/pres this was all going into.....that will affect this as well......but start with changing the heads and tuning the drums, and go from there. the goal is to get the kit sounding good on its own in the room first and foremost.


HTH, HAND :D

wade
 
i just want to thank you guys for your help, esp. tamasabian with the drumweb link, i am now overloaded with useful info. i will post the new stuff we record (with the changes i can get done) later.

thanks again.
 
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