Queens of the Stone Age Drum Sound

[tomraffe]

I love the QOTSA drum sound, quite dampened, quick delay but still quite big.

Anyone know how to get roughly this drum sound?

I'll dampen my drums for a start. Using Red5 mics and SM57 on snare.

Im thinking EQ settings, effects and mic positioning.

 

[dr.colossus]

i'm gonna assume your talking songs for the deaf here... the drums on that album were recorded without any cymbals (rubber pads or something ekse were used, then the cymbals were over dubbed. each individual drum has been compressed to the netherworlds. apparantly grohl laid down the entire albums worth of cymbals in one night.

 

[HeyHeyMyMy]

I think someone told me there was a bonus DVD included with some copies of Deaf that showed them recording the drums. I can't vouch for whether or not this is true, but if you can track that down I'm sure it would help at least a little bit.

 

[Rickson Gracie]

what is the exact benefit of recording the cymbals seperately? is it to edit and mix them easier?

 

[sysera]

what is the exact benefit of recording the cymbals seperately? is it to edit and mix them easier?

No bleeding at all into the other mics and then you can change the cymbals to fit the mix better in the end I suppose. This is kind of odd, though, I find that done more with the bass drum and toms than with cymbals.
-Sys

 

[dr.colossus]

recording the cymbals seperatly meant the toms could be serverly compressed with out any horrible cymbal artifacts, then the cymbals could be kept a little quieter in the mix (with no servere compression artifacts).

 

[donkeystyle]

sounds like a job for drumagog or soundreplacer.

 

[sysera]

sounds like a job for drumagog or soundreplacer.

Could be, but you'd still have the cymbals bleeding into the tom mics if you did it that way.

 

[donkeystyle]

Could be, but you'd still have the cymbals bleeding into the tom mics if you did it that way.

so gog the toms too.

 

[KevinDrummer]

so gog the toms too.

The problem is the overheads. Overheads capture the cymbals, but also a good deal of toms. Gogging leaves you with only one sound and everything else is either silent or converted to that sound. Usually it's undesirable to make your cymbals sounds into tom sounds.

With tight pattern mics and individual cymbal mics, the problem can be reduced, but never really eliminated.

 

[donkeystyle]

The problem is the overheads. Overheads capture the cymbals, but also a good deal of toms. Gogging leaves you with only one sound and everything else is either silent or converted to that sound. Usually it's undesirable to make your cymbals sounds into tom sounds.

With tight pattern mics and individual cymbal mics, the problem can be reduced, but never really eliminated.

preoblem solved: gog the tom mics, not the overheads. if there's too much of the original drum sounds in the overheads, mix them quietly.......they did that on the queens of the stone age record anyway. if there's still too much original drum sound.......and there shouldn't be, then roll off a lot of low end and low mids. the drums in the overheads will sound like complete and utter shit, but they'll be a ton quieter and you're going to mix the overheads quietly anyway, so it wont really matter.