Serious drum help needed!

[Alexbt]

Hi all,

Back in March, my band did a quick demo of some of our newer stuff.
I just got some monitors, and they tell me how crappy the drum track really sounds, no matter what I do with it.

I need some serious advice on EQing the drum tracks I have to make them sound anything listenable.

It was recorded live in the room with only two overheads. There is a lot of bleed from all the other instruments, but that's fine. There was most likely clipping, but the snare just sounds awful. Whatever I do to the snare makes everything else sound off.

Obviously retracking would be better, but I don't have that kind of option now to put together 4 tracks to give out to clubs.

Suggestions are greatly appreciated. Here is an example of one of the songs' drum tracks. (Stereo Overheads)

 

[punkorama]

it actually doesn't sound that bad on my mackie hr824's. Put some reverb on that snare and some compression on the kick and you'll be rockin!

 

[Alexbt]

I can't! What you hear is what I've got to work with. They're overheads, so I can't adjust the individual drums.

The drums really don't sit well in the mix as is, and if I EQ the snare to how I want it to sound, the cymbals get really thin.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

If you can't re-record them try this out:

Make mono copies of the overheads and treat it as a snare track. EQ and compress it as you wish. Do the same for the kick.

Make a stereo copy of the overheads and treat these as your toms... EQ and compress them for the toms to sound good.

Finally, process the overheads how you would normally.

If you can, try to overlay samples of a snare on top of your existing snare. If you have something like Sound Replacer it should be fairly easy, although it may involve cutting some mistriggering.

Good luck.

It may just be easier to re-record.

 

[Juggernaut]

I hope you don't mind, but I took a shot at your delema and if you like it I can give you a step by step of what I did if not throw it in your recycle bin and never give it a second thought. If I have offended you by using your material just say so and I will imediatly erase the message.

Anyway here is the link:
http://www.lightningmp3.com/live/file.php?fid=1569

Edit: You beat me too it see above post, that is exactly what I did, although I don't know if I did it well.

 

[Alexbt]

!!! I love it! What on earth did you do?

Edit: Reread your post. I didn't know that's what you had done. It came out pretty good to my ears!

 

[Alexbt]

If you can't re-record them try this out:

Make mono copies of the overheads and treat it as a snare track. EQ and compress it as you wish. Do the same for the kick.

Make a stereo copy of the overheads and treat these as your toms... EQ and compress them for the toms to sound good.

Finally, process the overheads how you would normally.

If you can, try to overlay samples of a snare on top of your existing snare. If you have something like Sound Replacer it should be fairly easy, although it may involve cutting some mistriggering.

Good luck.

It may just be easier to re-record.

I appreciate the advice, but it's not practical to re-record at this moment. I just need to put together a better mix for a press-pack to give some new clubs/venues that haven't heard us before. Especially pointless when we should be hitting the studio in less than a month.

I will try the other steps (I was thinking about doing it just for the snare and kick) and see if that'll help, and compare with what Juggernaut did.

I don't have the capabilites to trigger samples. This project is still in Cubase SX (I've been porting things over to Logic Express 7, which doesn't have a sound replacer, yet Logic Pro does... )

 

[Juggernaut]

To reproduce the sound that I got, simply bus out the drum track to two stero aux tracks. Then on one aply an EQ with a low pass filter that filters all but down to about 100 hz. Then I just boosted with the same EQ around 80 hz. In the next insert I used a Thump kick preset in Compresor/Limiter III and mixed to taste with the origional signal.

Then on the second Aux track that I made I aplied an EQ with both a High pass and a Low pass so that I could hear mostly the snare.(barly needed any other EQ) In the next insert slot Compresor/Limiter III was used again this time with a snare preset. Finally I aplied D-Verb with a large plate reverb preset a 38 ms pre-delay and mix value set to 80 percent.

Then simply mix your origional track with your kick booster and your snare reverb.

I'd love to hear the final track when you are finnished with this!

 

[Alexbt]

As a test, I had thrown your track in to see how the mix would sound (even in sloshy MP3 form), and it was way improved.

I think I'll have to move the project into Logic to use any aux buses (I don't think Cubase does that...) if I do that method.

 

[Juggernaut]

Well if you don't have aux busses you can just add two new stereo audio tracks where you paste the same audio clip into them. Then just apply the snare and kick operations and you are set. You wil have the advantage though, because you have the other tracks, so you can hear how the drums sound once in the mix.

 

[Alexbt]

Here's that test mix with your drums. I'm going to try and recreate them when I port this project to Logic.

 

[Alexbt]

I'm trying the tips with a different track from the same session and my results so far are not coming out very well.

Well, the kick drum I followed to your instructions and that came out okay, but I don't know what frequencies to filter out on the snare.

 

[Juggernaut]

Just mess around with the HP and LP filters cause the snare track is mostly for reverb and just a tiny bit extra bite to the snare, because your overheads picked up a great sound already. Personaly I really like the sound of your drums, especially for the song that they are in, they have a very natural sound to them.

 

[Alexbt]

I'm very suprised to say the least. I simply stuck two crappy dynamics above the cymbals. First time micing drums. Went right into my Delta's XLR jacks. I had nothing to monitor on so I couldn't really adjust the levels.

I'll post more examples of what I'm getting for results.