usually a “ring” isnt in one frequency…it’s a complex combination of frequencies. so you may need to eq out 2-3 different places. if you find a resonance, and eq it out, but still hear a ring, then repeat the process till all rings are gone. Then, give the snare a little boost in the mids to fatten it up, add a hint of distortion, send it to an aux with a plate verb…whatever it takes.

If you’ve never recorded outside your own home studio, you’ve likely found yourself wondering: How does the solo’d snare drum mic sound in a pro studio?

the mic picks up what you point it at. Your ears sit a good what.. 2-3 feet above the snare itself. When you hit a snare you hear a snare mic 3 feet below you and the rest of what you hear (a good portion) is how the room reflects the snare sound. When you have a mic an inch away from the snare itself..it’s picking up what your ears would hear an inch away from the same space. The snare sound you’re used to is compiled of the sounds from the top head, the bottom head, the walls, the ceilings…. and so on and so on

Tips for a fat, warm snare drum sound:

One thing that will help is a real consistent drummer. Grab some big sticks….. 2B Rock…. whatever. Tune the drum pretty loose with a little bit of muffling. If you’ve got a dynamic mic that is a little bottom heavy, try it out. I’ll use a ATM63HE, got the snap of a 57, with less honk and more balls. Light compression going in…. thats that….

And finally, some advice on reducing snare drum bleed on the kick mic …

The drummer is hitting the snare really hard and the kick really quiet. Tell him to stop. Moving the mic back will help because it puts the shell of the kick between the mic and the snare. You might also be using too much compression on the kick.

… and reducing other stuff bleed in the snare mic:

Is whoever that’s playing the snare hitting it properly? They should be attacking the shit outta the snare, make that hooker pop. On the flip side tell whoever it is to settle down on the cymbals, no need to mash them. It may be their thing and thats fine, just tell them to tone down their thing just a bit for the good of the recording. Playing properly will cure most of your micing problems.

The ideal drum reference tracks feature few other instruments, as musical instruments tend to mask frequencies in the snare and kick drums. But since drums aren’t often featured solo in pop and rock recordings, it can be tricky to find usable passages.

So these raw tracks of Dave Grohl playing on QotSA’s Songs for the Deaf should save some time! In fact, they might be the best commercial modern rock drum reference I’ve heard, as they sound like final mix stems, essentially the same drum mix used in the released track.

And for a classic sound, check out raw John Bonham drum tracks, outtakes from Zepplin’s In Through The Out Door sessions. Unlike Grohl’s samples above, these are compressed more than in the final album mixes, but they still make a great reference for tones and overall kit balance.

I mentioned Drumtrig in the list of drum replacer plugins. It’s a free, dressed-down alternative to Drumagog: Only one sample per track, but incredibly easy to use.

As with the similarly-fated Paris EQ, I saved the install file:

Here’s a brief description of the plugin from Storm’s old site:

By using this plugin on single drum tracks like Snare or Kick you can replace the sound with any sample (.WAV file) you like. Great if you’ve tried everything to salvage a poorly recorded drum sound and got nowhere!

If you like this plugin but fancy something a bit more sophisticated, have a look at Drumagog. It’s not free but it has a lot more features.

And there’s a copy of the Storm Recording website on archive.org with some more information. (Note that the plugin is Windows-only.)

I was certain the space would yield a better drum sound. Still, I thought it would be interesting to hear how big a difference the room actually makes. So I took lots of measurements, and recreated the drum and mic configuration when I got home.

First, though, here’s a rough mix from one of the drum tracks I recorded at the cottage:

I used a standard arrangement: Recordman overheads; kick, snare, and floor tom close-miked; and my T4 as a room mic, in omni mode about 15 feet from the kit, up high. My home studio doesn’t have anything near 14-foot ceilings, but it’s spacious enough that I could get all the microphones, including the T4, the same distance from the kit that I had them in the cottage.

Here’s the same piece recorded after I got home:

Again, this is the same drum kit, tuned the same way, recorded through the same microphones, played by the same drummer. Literally the only thing that changed is the room in which the drums sit.

The difference, predictably, is most obvious in the solo’d room mic. Here’s how the drums sounded through the room mic in the cottage:

And here’s how they sound through the same microphone, at the same distance, in my home studio:

The clearest differences are the snare drum, which sounds much bigger in the larger room, and kick drum, which sounds like a different drum altogether in each recording.

The end result? The drums sound a little more natural in the high-ceiling, all-wood room. So the space matters, obviously.

I have a fairly large home studio, and it’s well acoustically treated, so I wasn’t expecting a night-and-day comparison – and this isn’t. But while either of these mixes would make a serviceable drum track, depending on the mix, I prefer the stuff I recorded in Muskoka, as it’s a bit more open and natural-sounding.

Perhaps the real lesson here, though, is that every recording decision affects the final product. Just as small tweaks can improve a mix, big changes, like traveling 2 hours north of the city with your drum kit and recording gear, also add up!

Previously: Better drum mixes with a drum reference track, Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

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But when used sparingly, a tight short reverb effect can add body and punch to a dull kick drum. This is especially useful in home recordings where the drums are often dry samples, or tracks recorded in bedrooms and basements with poor live sound.

Here’s an example to illustrate how reverb can beef up a bass drum. As I mentioned in The Morning Rain post from which I took the sample, I used a no-nonsense mic arrangement: Stereo room mics, a single mic on the kit, and an SM58 in the kick drum.

Here are the drums as recorded, with the kick drum track untreated:

In the next sample, I added a short reverb tail to the kick drum only. I used the Kjaerhus Classic Reverb for this example (though there are a few other free reverb effects listed in the great free vocal plugins post, including Mac-based options.) I set a room size of 65 square meters, dampened as many high frequencies as possible, and blended the signal on the dry side.

Here’s how it sounds:

The effect is subtle, but obvious.

Though it’s more obvious in the solo’d kick drum track. The first 3 hits in this next sample are dry, and the last 3 have the reverb applied. Notice how dead the kick drum sounds by itself (I recorded it with an SM58, after all,) and how much more body there is to the tone with reverb applied:

Some notes about this technique:

• It works best on sparse tracks, when the drum hits have space between them. If the track is already dense, adding reverb usually just yields mud.
• It will work on miked or sampled kick drums, but it’s most effective on dry, flat sounds. Basically, if you’re stuck recording your kick drum with an SM57, a little reverb can work wonders to deliver usuable tones.

Previously: Better drum mixes with a drum reference track, Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

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The name “Recorderman” comes from a user on the recording.org forums who is credited with popularizing the technique. (Though his approach has been used by engineers for decades. It’s largely a two-mic adaptation of Glyn Johns’ mic setup.)

Here’s Recorderman’s original post about his technique, along with some good followup discussion. And this Gearslutz thread on overhead drum mic placement has more discussion and pictures.

Recorderman in a nutshell: Use two drum sticks as a ruler to place your mics the same distance from the snare drum, and a cable or string to get them equidistant from the kick beater. Here’s the best video description I’ve seen, to better illustrate:

Recorderman’s approach accomplishes 3 things:

1. It places the snare and kick drums in the center of the stereo image.
2. It ensures any close mics on the kick and snare are in phase with the overheads.
3. It captures a balanced drum kit sound, close to what the drummer hears.

This microphone setup is ideal in a few situations:

When you have limited microphones for the drums: Especially when you only have 2 or 3 mics, Recorderman can still get you an open, balanced stereo image of the drum kit. If you’re recording a talented drummer, 2 or 3 microphones in this arrangement might be all you need.

Recording with low ceilings or in a tight space: Drums sound best in a big, open room. Traditional overhead miking approaches tend to capture a “smeared” drum sound when used in small rooms, largely because sound reflections off the ceiling interfere with the direct sound from the drums. Recorderman’s technique gets the microphones close enough to the drums that this isn’t an issue.

When the drums sound killer at the drummer’s position: With decent microphones, this setup usually captures a sound close what the drummer hears. If the drums sound ideal right where the drummer is sitting, you should consider a Recorderman setup even if you’re in a high-ceilinged space.

(Note: I use a modified version of Recorderman for The Morning Rain drum tracks. There are a few pictures, and sound samples here.)

Previously: Better drum mixes with a drum reference track, Parallel compression for fatter drum tones

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A compressor raises the level of quieter elements in a signal. This tends to “fatten” the recorded sound, which can add a lot of character, especially on drums and vocals. However, the effect is most pronounced when the signal is heavily compressed, and over-compression usually kills the dynamics of a performance.

What is parallel compression?

Parallel compression offers a good compromise. In its most common implementation, parallel compression refers to mixing a dry signal with a heavily compressed copy of itself. The dynamics in the dry signal are preserved while the compressed signal adds body and character to the overall sound. It works for any instrument, but on drums and vocals in particular, the added character can really bring a track to life.

This article from Sound On Sound lays out an approach to parellel compression in Logic. (Note, though, that the article incorrectly calls the technique “sidechain compression.” Sidechain compression is an unrelated procedure used to implement ducking, better described here: Sidechain compression in Logic.)

SoS’s method involves duplicating the track on which parallel compression will be performed. I prefer to use a bus or effects send which allows me to pass many tracks through the same compressor, handy for fattening related tracks together. But both approaches produce the same end result, so if your DAW or recording platform doesn’t offer busses or sends, you can still use parallel compression.

Hear it in action

Here’s a short drum passage that I’ll use to illustrate this technique in action:

In this first example, I routed the kick and snare drum tracks to a second mix bus, the parallel compressor (“IIComp” as I call it – see the screen shot below,) and mixed the result with the dry signal heard above:

It’s also obvious that the compressor on the parallel bus is really crushing the signal. For this example, and the one below, I used a Waves C1 compressor with a fast attack, a ratio of nearly 14:1, and a hard knee, as shown here:

This is what the compressed signal sounds like by itself:

While I most commonly apply this technique to the kick and snare only, parallel compression can also be used on the overhead microphones:

Finally, here’s a screen shot to help visualize the signal chain I used:

The kick and snare drum tracks are routed to the primary drum bus (not shown) which carries the dry signal, and to the “IIComp” bus which contains the Waves C1 compressor shown above. Note, too, that the IIComp bus has its level reduced by almost 16db. It’s not necessary to mix the dry and compressed signals at the same level. In fact, doing so usually defeats the purpose of using parallel compression as the compressed signal overpowers the dry signal and smears its dynamics.

Other approaches to parallel compression

The examples above show the most common implementation. However, there are as many ways to set up parallel compression as there are ways to configure a compressor. Different attack and release times create different effects, as do different ratios. In my examples, I used a fast attack and slow release, which removes all the transients from the signal. However, with a shorter release time, you can create a “pumping” effect which often adds a distinctive sound.

Further, different compressors have different characters. The free Blockfish compressor, for example, is great for crushing a signal beyond recognition. And when mixed at low levels under a dry track, this “distressed” signal usually adds complimentary qualities.

As with all recording techniques, of course, experimentation is the key to finding sounds that work for you.

UPDATE: See Andy’s comment below about using this technique in a DAW that lacks latency compensation

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Previously: More on compression, Better drum mixes

First, some drum recording suggestions from ProSound:

here are some of the few really useful things I can tell you:
Treat it like a drum kit. not like 6, or however many, individual sounds.
Use as few mics as you CAN.
Use only one type of mic pre on everything.
EQ when you have to, without hesitation. But don’t when you don’t have to.

Some tricks for recording hi hats quieter:

- Try different stick materials. Many find that maple sticks hit softer than hickory.
- Move the drum kit away from the walls.
- If the hats are mostly in the overheads, try a compressor with fast attack, rather than low-pass EQ, to reduce their level.

From Gearzlutz, thoughts on recording drums in a room with with low ceilings:

don’t put the mics over the drums… “overheads” are great when you have [minimum] twelve foot, ceilings… other than that I would suggest ‘underheads’… which are mics out in front of the kit roughly halfway between the ceiling and the floor in approximately an equilateral triangle to the snare… sometimes it works… other times the room sucks to bad to be used for any purpose what so ever… in which case, run a snake to another room and try that [or drop back and punt... whatever your instinct tells you to do is probably the right course of action].

And an older thread on capturing a bright, smooth cymbal sound:

I’ve had good results with slight compression (1:2 – 1:4) taking a 3-4db off. I filter out the low stuff and then add in some shelf (1-2 db) somewhere between 10-15k. The big thing, I think, is that the room has to have that sound.

To illustrate what I mean, here’s a short piece from my drum reference track:

The songs I used are, in order, Indigo Girls Gone Again, Television’s Marquee Moon, Zepplin’s Fool In The Rain, The Hold Steady Hot Soft Light, and the intro from John Mayer’s Waiting On The World To Change (though 3 or 4 of the tracks on Continuum have excellent drum passages.)

Notice that I captured only the parts of each song where the drums are prominently (or solely) featured. In fact, I chose the songs above precisely because they have such sections. Other instruments mask drum tones in a mix. So to build a good drum reference collection, it’s important to find songs that have clear drum intros and breaks. The best references come from tracks with good separation between the kick drum, snare drum, and cymbals.

Also, not all songs with drum breaks lend themselves to use as a drum reference. You should choose drum parts from songs you enjoy, with sounds you’d like to emulate. The drum solo in Moby Dick will be a great reference for many people, as it’s 3 minutes of drums and nothing else, but I avoid it because I find the compression and distortion on the overhead mics, and the off-center kick drum, distracting. And I can’t play like Bonham.

One final note: You’re welcome to use the section I posted above as your own reference. However, remember that it’s an MP3, so the sound quality is somewhat degraded. Ideally, your reference sounds should be taken directly from the original CD.

The famous drum fill, Collins contends, could have been anything. What is on the record is what came out at the moment. “When people talk about the ‘Phil Collins drum sound,’ that is actually a huge variety of drum sounds,” Collins says. “We never left the setup; we always broke it down and started again so we could end up somewhere different. The Townhouse Studio actually wasn’t that live. It was quite tall, but not really a big room — probably smaller than most people’s bedroom. The Genesis studio we designed had a much livelier, bigger room, glass and reflective surface. So when you listen to “In the Air Tonight,” it is not really that live, it’s big. The snare drum and tom toms kind of bark, but it is made from a lot of compression with ambient mics as far away from the drums as possible, and those are noise-gated.”

Collins and engineer Hugh Padgham are generally credited with pioneering the use of SSL’s talkback mic compressor as a drum channel compressor, and it’s a huge component of Collins’ drum sound on Face Value. (SSL now offers the talkback compressor as a free plugin.)

But distinctive as his drums (and famous drum roll) are, with In The Air Tonight Collins actually relied on drum machines, at least up to the point where “all hell lets loose”