Trying to Eliminate drums from overheads...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Uladine
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Uladine

Uladine

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I know this sounds weird and is usually not something that most people want, but I want to do an experiment. I want to be able to replace each drum sound with a sample. but of course if I have the drums blaring through the overheads theres no way to do it with good results. I know its impossible to completely eliminate the drums from the overheads, but is there any way I can get mostly just cymbals through the overheads with my AKG C3000b cardiod mics? I dont really want to go buy new OH mics because I'm just trying to experiment with the sample thing and my C3000b's sound wonderful as overheads in the traditional way of using them.
 
You could try using a lowcut filter. Maybe cut everything below 1kHz that would effectively remove most of the drums. Im not sure abt the optimum frequency. Mebbe others on the bbs can tell u.

KB
 
In theory i suppose you could close mic the drums, then put them out of phase with the overheads to cancel them out. I'm not sure how effective this would be, but it might work.

How are you planning on generating your sampled drums? Do you have triggers on your drums? If so, you could muffle the hell out of the drums to minimize the acoustic sound. Better yet, pick up some Roland Vdrum mesh heads and stick triggers on them.
 
Well I have a friend that makes frequent trips to L.A. and watches the recording process of a local band from here that just signed with Geffen. He knows way more than me about recording and he says theyre using drumagog to replace the drum sounds with perfect samples and he swears by this. I'm just a bit skeptical, but at the same time it sounds like a really nice idea and I want to try it.

I'm going to be buying Drumagog and an AKG D112 soon. If this idea works, it will make the recording process much more relaxed because I won't have to stress so much on drum sounds, just getting good takes. I'm a guitarist but I'm playing drums on the recording because we're between drummers right now. All of my recording equipment is at our rehearsal space (the only place we can play drums without people getting mad). If the sample Idea works, I can record the drums, and then just take samples of every drum and bring my stuff home and work on it. I think I'll try the phase idea.

One other thing I am skeptical of though, is by the time you're done with the drum tracks and its time to take the samples, wouldnt the heads be slightly detuned from use? How hard would it be to tune them to an exact pitch on a recording? I'm new to "drum replacement technology"
 
I'm still not exactly clear what you are trying to do. Do you want to generate well-recorded samples by recording your own kit? Or are you just trying to record any old drum sound to then replace them with high quality samples? I believe Drumagog has samples included already.

Either way, I don't think you need a D112. This is a good, and pretty expensive, mic. If you just want to record a kick without caring how it sounds and then replace it with a pre-packaged sample, you could use a cheaper mic. If you have a 57, stick it in there.

If you are considering creating your own samples from your kit, you might want to reconsider. There are lots of samples out there that can be bought pretty cheap, or even for free. If you are not very familiar with drum tuning, or if your kit is not great, you'll almost certainly get more variety and better samples with a purchased CD of drum samples.
 
If I do end up using this idea I am going to take my own samples of my drum kit. I think its more of a moral thing than anything else maybe. I just feel that if I'm going to sample the drums, I'd have a better sense of satisfaction if I used my own samples. Call me crazy.
 
I respect your thoughts on artistic integrity,Uladine.
However,for those folks who would like some nice royalty-free drum samples,I have a bunch posted here.
 
uhhhhhh

well here's a novel thought:

mic the drums internally (take off the bottom heads and stick a mike in them) and track them that way (or trigger them into whatever your digital solution is.

Don't play the crash or ride parts (hi hat is easy to isolate with a mic if you must play that part)

then overdub the crash parts.

I used to do this all of the time when I was working with an electronic band and it makes the cymbal tracks more enjoyable to track and mix :)

nP
 
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