The New Tone Thread

[JDOD]

Been watching some Reading and Leeds festival on the BBC. Bubba can get it but I know most of you can't but I thought you'd like this
https://youtu.be/-gaF4q9m0jo
It's last years performance, not quite as good as this years, but you get the idea.

 

[Greg_L]

Good drummer.

 

[JDOD]

Greg, that's an excellent rock face

 

[JDOD]

Good drummer.

Thought you might like that, interesting idea and I've not seen a drummer play like that before. I really like that song too. I'd like to do a cover of it but I'd only end up toning it down... That would be shit.

 

[Greg_L]

Thought you might like that, interesting idea and I've not seen a drummer play like that before. I really like that song too. I'd like to do a cover of it but I'd only end up toning it down... That would be shit.

Rockabilly drummers sort of play like that. I used to play a stand-up kit occasionally. Cocktail kit. It sucked but it looked cool. I went back to normal seated drums. I loved my 'billy kit though. Kick, snare, floor tom, ride cymbal. That was it. Lots of fun.

 

[Greg_L]

So I mentioned this before...I think tomorrow I'm gonna roll a cab out to the entryway and try for some gigantic room sound. I'll run some mics upstairs. I've done drums out there many times, and I've rolled cabs out there, but never for the big roomness of it. It's gonna be awesome or suck horribly. Only one way to find out.

 

[minerman]

So I mentioned this before...I think tomorrow I'm gonna roll a cab out to the entryway and try for some gigantic room sound. I'll run some mics upstairs. I've done drums out there many times, and I've rolled cabs out there, but never for the big roomness of it. It's gonna be awesome or suck horribly. Only one way to find out.

I'm actually pretty anxious to hear you do something like that Greg...I do ok with 1 mic, & can get kinda ok stuff with 2 close mics, but could never get a good room sound...Because my room is small & sucks, I always end up using a reverb plug-in...

I get the 2 close mics have to be in phase, but in reality, a close & room mic would never be in phase, right???

 

[Greg_L]

No phase isn't really a concern with room miking. Once you get past several feet it don't matter too much.

 

[minerman]

No phase isn't really a concern with room miking. Once you get past several feet it don't matter too much.

That's about what I thought...I've read/saw videos of guys aligning their tracks by sliding 'em back/forth in the daw...Moving 'em around like that just seems like an awful lot of work for nothing, get it right to begin with, right???

 

[Greg_L]

That's about what I thought...I've read/saw videos of guys aligning their tracks by sliding 'em back/forth in the daw...Moving 'em around like that just seems like an awful lot of work for nothing, get it right to begin with, right???

That's okay for two close mics. Sliding the tracks around defeats the purpose for room miking.

 

[Tadpui]

I recently had a eureka moment with a room mic on a guitar cab. I'd arbitrarily placed a pencil condenser in the room (not exactly first choice for a room mic), played it alongside the close mic and it sounded like shit. Then I turned down the room mic in the mix, and it changed everything. It added ambiance but didn't cause any comb filtering. I had been trying to mix them too closely in volume. But that was only once, that pretty much sums up the entirety of my experience trying a room mic on a guitar amp. I'm curious how your big space works out!

I did the same with a room mic on my drums too. I compressed the holy living shit out of it (not sure I'd do that with a guitar room mic, but would be worth a try), and mixed it in relatively low. It was just mono, so it collapsed the stereo field a little, plus I didn't do a very good job of placing or panning the overheads...I am brand new at this, after all. But as soon as I muted it, I missed it. I'm anxious to try it again a few more times to see if I can make it really work.

 

[Tadpui]

Been watching some Reading and Leeds festival on the BBC. Bubba can get it but I know most of you can't but I thought you'd like this
https://youtu.be/-gaF4q9m0jo
It's last years performance, not quite as good as this years, but you get the idea.

That was actually much more entertaining than it should have been. I liked the song, and it was a spirited performance. And the stand up drums, playing the kick with a stick was a cool novelty.

Leeds...isn't that where Todd Margaret is from?

That's okay for two close mics. Sliding the tracks around defeats the purpose for room miking.

I totally agree. I found this out the hard way. So I guess I had tried room miking once before. And I was so pissed about the comb filtering that I manually aligned the waveform phase in Reaper. Zoomed in really really really close and looked for transients and whether they were moving up or down. It was one of the most awful guitar tones I've ever recorded. It was still weird and phasey sounding. Something didn't jive between the time offset being zero and the ambiance being different. I still listen to that track every once in a while, just to marvel at how bad it sounded.

 

[Greg_L]

Sliding the track basically gets rid of the time difference between the mics, and that time difference is what you want with a room mic. You don't want time difference with close mics because that throws phase all to shit. But with a room mic, it should be far enough away to overcome the range of phase problems. And no, it doesn't need to be as loud as the close mic track.

 

[JDOD]

That was actually much more entertaining than it should have been. I liked the song, and it was a spirited performance. And the stand up drums, playing the kick with a stick was a cool novelty.

Leeds...isn't that where Todd Margaret is from?

Yeah - that's what I thought too. Really good performance and seemed to be on the verge of slipping into being a complete disaster at all times. They got a kicking in the UK music press ""papier-mache punks with their mockney lip-flapping, fag-paper-thin-sentiment, derivative riffs, embarrassingly prescriptive pseudo-politics and sixth form poetry."" personally I take the fact you've pissed off a snobby twat at a magazine as a badge of honor.

I might be trying a bit of room miking this weekend too. I want to record something quite thick and heavy - its another song on my long list of things I'm trying to re-do.

 

[Greg_L]

I got notifications that some of you tried to send me a PM and my inbox was full. It's cleared out now. Resend if you want.

 

[Greg_L]

Okay, here's some clips miking my entryway.

First thing I did was roll a cab out there and laid it down so it was pointing up into the universe.


Then I ran upstairs and hung some SDCs over the upstairs railing. One pointing up, one pointing down. The up one was with the idea of catching ceiling reflections, the down one was, well, down towards the cab.

Death from above...


Death from below?


So here's the clips.

Gibson Angus SG - signature Angus bridge pickup
Marshall 1987 50w Plexi reissue
Presence - 6
Bass - 0
Mid - 7
Treb - 7
Vol 1 - 10
Vol 2 - 0
High input 1 only
Marshall 1960B 4x12 - Celestion G12-65
SM 57 on axis, on grill, about halfway to edge
Two Audix ADX51 SDCs about 25 feet away
No EQ or processing in DAW

So first up, just the close mic by itself:
Close mic

Next, close mic center + "Up" room mic panned left:
Close center, up room mic L

Next, close mic center, "down" room mic panned right:
Close center, down room mic R

Next, close mic center, up panned left, down panned right, all tracks balanced 100% equal:
Close center, up left, down right, all equal

Last, close mic center, up mic panned left, down mic panned right, room mics dropped -4db:
Close center, up left, down right, room mics dropped -4db

I made the mistake of not bouncing out the room mic tracks by themselves, so sorry bout that. This is what I got.

The takeaway for me, it's not worth it. It's not worth the trouble. And just about everything in the house rattled under the crushing weight of cranked Plexi. I spent a good amount of time just securing everything that rattled. Maybe if I had bigger and better space I'd like it better, but not like this. Hey, I gave it a try. My drums do better out there than loud cabs. One more thing I can try is leave the cab upright and mic the hallway leading out of the entryway. I have done that many times for other people and the results have been good. I've just never done it for my own stuff.

 

[Tadpui]

Just from a cursory listen on my 5.1, I can see how you'd say it's not quite worth it. On these average speakers, it sounds really similar to just adding a room impulse to a convolution reverb and blending that in to a guitar track. I think that the up/down panned l/r would sound cool as a special effect, it was distinctive. But I don't think that would carry a guitar through a whole song. For some reason the last clip stopped working for me as I was listening so I didn't hear the -4db clip. I'll listen again later when I can get downstairs to my monitors.

This was a cool experiment though. I like hearing some room on guitar solos in the right context.

 

[Greg_L]

it sounds really similar to just adding a room impulse to a convolution reverb and blending that in to a guitar track.

That's exactly what it sounds like. It sounds like a nice convolution impulse reverb, which makes sense since those things are real actual rooms applied to tracks via computer sorcery.

I'm glad I did it, I'm glad it worked, I'm not thinking there will be many instances where I'd wanna do this again.

The school across the street kicks back some AWESOME slap-back delay. Sometimes I stand out front shouting and clapping my hands just to hear it come back to me in near perfect tone and fidelity. I must look totally insane out there yelling and clapping at a brick school wall.

Maybe I'll roll a cab out to the driveway and see if I can capture that delay.

 

[Bubba po]

I love how you go the extra mile, Greg. Even if it didn't blow the world of guitar recording apart you went and did the experiment, which is awesome. Nice one.

The school across the street kicks back some AWESOME slap-back delay. Sometimes I stand out front shouting and clapping my hands just to hear it come back to me in near perfect tone and fidelity. I must look totally insane out there yelling and clapping at a brick school wall.

Maybe I'll roll a cab out to the driveway and see if I can capture that delay.

That would be ace. I can see it being like that scene where Wayne and Garth are trying to play hockey in the street; "CAR!!!!" All good fun till the cops show up.

 

[Greg_L]

I love how you go the extra mile, Greg. Even if it didn't blow the world of guitar recording apart you went and did the experiment, which is awesome. Nice one.

Thanks man. Yeah, I try things. One of my biggest pet peeves in here in particular is that people don't try things. They'll start thread after thread asking mundane questions that they could easily answer themselves if they'd just get off their ignorant lazy asses and do the fucking work. So, yeah, good or bad, I try things. I learn for myself, I can utilize it or not, and it's one more bullet in the gun when I need to shoot down some lazy ignorance.

That would be ace. I can see it being like that scene where Wayne and Garth are trying to play hockey in the street; "CAR!!!!" All good fun till the cops show up.

And I'm sure the cops would probably show up. My neighbors are cool as hell, but I don't know if they're Marshall-stack-in-the-driveway cool.