Toms don't pop out

[grosslocust]

Hey, I am having a problem. I can't seem to make the toms pop out of the mix like I want them to. They sound distant and somewhat muted even though I close miced them. I added some compression and eq to attempt to bring them out but I must not be hitting the sweet spot. Any suggestions? Thanks for your help. Peace.

 

[grosslocust]

Oh and yeah... also

I'm wondering what the recommended tom recording practice would be. I know that close micing is often used in conjunction with overheads, but how close to the heads, angles, and what about incoming compression/effects?

 

[TexRoadkill]

Most of it is the tone of the toms in the room and the technique of the drummer.

 

[xfinsterx]

if the toms dont sound present and full when youre just listening to him play in the room,,

Youll probably need to make some adjustments to the drum its self.

if thats not an issue,
and you just cant hear em clearly, or they just dont sound good in you mix....
next time try this...

When youve got everything on the kit miced up and you're listening to the drums being played over the monitors(or headphones),
beforeyou record.

listen to the toms.

if you dont like they way they sound before you record youre certainly not gonna be likin them after you record.

Point is, dont just toss the mics up and go for it.
Listen and use good mic placement to your advantge.
Its crazy... if you change the height of the mic above the drum by even an inch, you can hear a pretty different sound coming from that source, be it drums, voice, guitar, whatever.

 

[Farview]

don't put too much reverb on them, that will make them sound far away. run the drums to a stereo bus and strap a compressor across that. Don't bother compressing the individual toms, it is easier to kill them there. then just crank the toms.

 

[screws]

Do the tom tracks sound distant when soloed, with no compression or effects? Then the problem is your mic technique and or choice of mics.

If the tom tracks sound great soloed, then try backing off the effects and turning up the attack on the compressor to let more attack through. Also try parallel compression, a technique that mixes the uncompressed tom tracks with the compressed ones. You can do this by copying the tracks and compressing one set, or by sending the tracks through a subgroup and compressing it before bringing both sets to the stereo buss. By mixing compressed and uncompressed tracks you get the best of both - one set has all the attack and the compressed set has more body and weight.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Zoom in on your waveform and check the toms aren't being cancelled by out of phase signals on your other tracks, maybe overheads or kick.

Also mic placement - try pointing the mic down at rim of the tom instead of at the centre of the head

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Getting exploding toms isn't easy to do. We'll just pretend that you followed all of the above advice and have a great sounding kit in a decent room using good mics (like MD421's) on the toms.

Keeping in mind that toms are a lot like the snare--about 80% of your tone is in the overheads.

First thing is to make sure they sound thick enough. If not I prefer to use CHORUS rather than reverb to fatten 'em up for reasons mentioned above (reverb can push stuff back in the mix psychoacoustically).

Okay, let's pretend that they are thick sounding enough.

Next thing you want to do is to EQ them with a focus on making them really explode. Here are a few pointers at what to expect in certain freq bands appropriate for toms:

100hz: usually the bottom end of the floor tom
400-600hz: a lot of the fundemental tone of toms are here
2000-3000hz: the stick attack tends to be here
4000-5000hz: pretty much the utter top end of the toms
7000-9000hz: most of your upper harmonics from the head live here

Now for more booming toms you of course want to hit 100hz, but I actually find that a healthy 400-600hz boost works better for getting things to really explode. Then I try to find the stick attack and give it a really sharp (i.e. narrow band) boost by a few db to bring out the edginess of the stick hitting the heads. Around 5000hz is another place I like to add some low level, wide boosts to for general excitement in the toms.

One thing I also tend to do is carve out an area around 1000-1200hz and give it a deep but narrow cut of about 6db or so. The reason why is to seperate the fundemental from the stick sound--allowing the "hit" to be more readily heard.

That's just my style of doing things. I've never been 100% happy with how I record toms yet. One guy on here... damn I forget who... had an AMAZING TOM SOUND... the best I've ever heard on any recording professional or otherwise.

 

[xfinsterx]

One thing I also tend to do is carve out an area around 1000-1200hz and give it a deep but narrow cut of about 6db or so. The reason why is to seperate the fundemental from the stick sound--allowing the "hit" to be more readily heard.

Thats an intresting tip.
Ill have to try that.

 

[Bulls Hit]

Keeping in mind that toms are a lot like the snare--about 80% of your tone is in the overheads.

Yeh this has never worked for me. My toms sound like sh1t in my ohead, but the snare sounds OK.
I've just acquired another dynmaic mic, and I've put it between the mounted and floor toms, so now I've got 3 dynamics & 1 ohead. Well I've suddenly got a great tom sound, compared to what I had before

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

My tom sounds didn't start getting better until I took off the SM57's and switched to using MD421's whenever available.

In general I've switched my entire approach to drums over the years when I came to the realization that the core of your drum sound is in the overheads. How I place mics now is to:

1.) Mick the kick (RE20 and a D112 in tandem)

2.) Work the overheads until just the OH's and kick make the kit sound great... my pref for OH mics is AKG 414's, but C2000's will do in a pinch. I'm thinking of moving to 3 OH mics.

3.) Once the OH's sound great I will then place room mics, if any. The next experiment I want to do is using AKG 414 set to omni.

4.) Once you have a great ambient kit sound with the rooms and OH's, move on to mic'ing the snare. MD421 is my choice lately. Generally I'm looking for a lot of thwakk and head off the close mic.

5.) Mic the toms last--once again supporting the OH's and rooms.

 

[grosslocust]

Thanks

Hey,
Thanks for all your help. I wish I could afford some MD421's, but maybe sometime in the future. Anyways, I'm going to work on all of this, my latest recording got a far better tom sound which I believe had a lot to do with the room, the drummer, and the mic placement. Thanks for everything, if you have any more advice please feel free to post more, I'll continue to check in every few days. Peace.

Adam

 

[knightsy]

You have got the toms muted when they're not being played, right?

 

[Ronan]

If any of your drums are really ringy this will screw up the definition in your toms really fast. If you snare has a long sustain or your toms ring a long time than half your battle is lost right there. Drum swith long sustain sound fun on their own but the really screw up the imaging and definition of the whole kit.

 

[mixandmaster]

If there on individual tracks you can gate them. It doesn't have to be a hard gate, you can raise the floor, and have a short release time. This gives the impression of more "stick".

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

I recorded a band tonight and we got some major exploding toms. I tuned those suckers like a madman. My ears must have been golden tonight or something because they just sounded great. The drummer was like 'holy shit my kit never sounded this good before'!

It was a pretty decent Pearl kit too.

We had a helluva time with the snare tonight though. For some reason the MD421's weren't happening, and after running through about 4 other mics (NT1, AT 4035, SM57, SM7) we ended up in desperation putting a crappy Samson condensor on it... and it sounded great.

I was confused at that one.

We put 3 overheads up--an NT1 running down the center and 2 CAD condensors on the R/L overheads. Sounded great after some moving of the mics.

Except for the snare being a turd, getting drums sounds were easy tonight. Score one for the team.

 

[Ronan]

If there on individual tracks you can gate them. It doesn't have to be a hard gate, you can raise the floor, and have a short release time. This gives the impression of more "stick".

True, but if the toms have to much sustain, the will smear the imaging of your overheads and room mics, which at least the way I tend to make records is a huge part of the sound.

 

[xfinsterx]

i recorded a band this weekend.
I was playing his kit and getting sounds/mic placement, while recording.
It sounded awesome!
The toms in particular were very ass kickin' indeed.

So two days later all the tracking is done,,they go home and im just listening to the raw drum tracks.

Bass drum sounds good-----Snare sounds inconsistent------

The toms----SOUND LIKE INCONSISTENT SHITOLLA!

F'in great. now i gotta turd polish.

So i go back to my recorded drums.

Same drums, same room, same levels, same mic's.
But adifferent drummer!

My recorded take sounded like glory on a stick.

Moral here is, even if you got everything just right.
The performer can easily turn it into something wrong.

 

[Farview]

Moral here is, even if you got everything just right.
The performer can easily turn it into something wrong.

Can I get an AMEN!

 

[xfinsterx]

Can I get an AMEN!

My knowledge endowed brother....you most certainly can!

A-fricken-MEN!!