Posted by longgone1 ,

I find that all of my drum recordings sound good but when i compare them to professional recordings i find that they are puny and weak sounding. I was wondering what kind of tricks to big professional studios employ to get that huge rock sound.

Could you please discribe how you are recording drums? What mics, pres and other gear are you using, and how are you setting it up? Kurt

Kinsol,

> I was wondering what kind of tricks to big professional studios employ to get that huge rock sound. <

Mostly by using ambience. You can get that either naturally in a large room with hard floors using distant as well as close miking, or by adding the effect afterward with a reverb unit set for a "room sound" type effect. A small amount of compression will accentuate this even further.

--Ethan

Try renting a huge stone mansion with 20 foot ceilings. Put the drum kit in the recieving area, close mike it, use overheads, then put a mic in 3 adjacent rooms.
Mix to your liking.

...then again, do what Ethan and Kurt tell you... :D

(I heard doing this will also raise the soul of John Bohnam)

1/Close Micing....plus Over Heads
2/Gates on Kick and Snare (and if you've got enough ,on the toms)
3/Compression on Kick and Snare after Gates to keep peaks uniform.

Something like tape saturation to get analog punchiness?

Originally posted by Sebatron:
1/Close Micing....plus Over Heads
2/Gates on Kick and Snare (and if you've got enough ,on the toms)
3/Compression on Kick and Snare after Gates to keep peaks uniform.

I've never been fond of gating anything other than the toms. could you explain your gating process a little further? thanks.

The only gates I have ever found that are reliable enough to use on drum tracking are the Drawmer gates. 202's and 404's. I have found nothing else that doesn't false trigger or fail to open at times. I also like the Valley Dynamite gate / compressor for triggered gates. I like to gate kick snare and toms. The only problem with gating snare is it cuts little portion of the leading edge or attack of the snare off, so you have to be sure you can pull a bit of this from the overheads. Gating toms allows you to really turn them up loud without adding a lot of spill from the cymbals. Keeping the cymbals low in the mix can contribute to a bigger sound. Adding some verb and a bit of lows and highs makes the toms sound huge. Gating kick and snare can help with ring and allows you to tighten up the sound and time the amount of overtone so that it won't interfere with the rest of the kit. I personally avoid distance micing most of the time. I think it causes phase anomalies that “smear” the sound. I prefer to re amp drums through a speaker in a large room and mic that up in mix. This technique seems to have more definition and allows more control by allowing you to select which drums get the distance treatment. …….. Kurt

I am using some cheap apex mics as overheads, 57 on the snare, unfortunatly a 57 on the kick, 57's on the high and mid toms and a 58 on the low tom. For preamps all i have are the ones on my studiomaster console which aren't the greatest. I guess what my question should have been was, what do i need to buy to get a fuller bigger drum sound. I have an idea of what microphones to use but I dont really have a clue about preamps.
thanks

I think part of the problem you are having is the preamps. IMO there is no substitute for good mics or pres. I made a post regarding this a few days ago in another topic thread … here is part of it.

Mic Pres, along with mics and other front end gear, more than anything else, impact the way your recordings sound. Unlike the latest digital piece of junk they can last a lifetime. ………… Recordists are still using mics, preamps and compressors that are 40 years old and these pieces still retain their value ……. But you don’t have to find a vintage piece that may need recapping or a lot of other work and that you won’t feel like you can rely on! There are many new designs/reissues/clones that fall into this category also. The common thing all high quality mic pres and compressors have is high power consumption resulting in high headroom. I am not a tech so I can’t explain it very well but EveAnna Manly says, “Joules Man! Joules!” There just is no getting around it. You gotta have massive power supplies to get that headroom, bandwidth and those linear operation characteristics. …….. Bite the bullet and learn what the hit makers have known for years. Almost every top flight engineer that is working the majors is traveling with their own racks of mic pres, comps and a cases of vintage and high end microphones. Even Bob Rock who has his own SSL console has a rack of Neve modules! All the other stuff is superfluous.

It is difficult at best, to get huge sound from mic pres and front end gear that is energy starved. Huge amounts of headroom are necessary to get the “BIG” sound that you are looking for. I have been posting a lot of reviews for quality mic pres in the RO EMAG.

Click here ---> http://www.recording.org/e-mag/

Keep an eye out, I will be reviewing more mic pres from JLM, a Millennia Media STT-1 Origin, and Studio Projects in the near future. Also coming is a review on the Speck Electronics ASC equalizer! I can tell you already I have become a fan of the Speck ASC EQ!

An option to gating, if you work in the digital domain, is to edit the tom tracks after recording. This will allow you to clean the tracks of bleed and also put little fades after each tom hit so they ring out and disappear more naturally sounding than having a gate close. Time consuming you say? Maybe, depending on how often the toms get hit. But anything worth doing…

Whether you’re using audience perspective or drummer perspective in the mix, the cleaned tom tracks can be panned without skewing your stereo image of the overheads. I second Kurt’s comments on mic selection and mic pres and would add that quality A/D converters will help also, especially with cymbal clarity.

For another opinion, go to MercenaryAudio.com and check out Fletcher's guide to drum miking with only three mics. I have used these positions (added a top snare and a mic on the kick to have options) and it works! The drummer's style and the kit/room will have a huge impact as well. Doc

BTW Fletcher used to be a Moderator here, and he's a Bad Bamalama. Doc

Yeah, what those guys said. Huge drum sound usually comes from a huge drum sound, meaning the room is huge and you mic the ambience. However I did not see my usual setup which is to get a decent kit sound with a room mic that gets good low end. Take that sound and add a quick slap delay. Put a little delay on the rest of the kit as well. It's much more controlable than reverb and does the trick for me.

J