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Sorry I had no idea where else to post this.

Here's a clip of the best drum sound I've been able to capture so far (ignore the singing in the background lol):

[="http://soundcloud.com/kerfoot32/raw-drums"]raw drums by Kerfoot32 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free[/]="http://soundcloud.c…"]raw drums by Kerfoot32 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free[/]

Here's another song (full band):

[[url=http://="http://soundcloud.c…"]Little Miss Perfect raw by Kerfoot32 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free[/]="http://soundcloud.c…"]Little Miss Perfect raw by Kerfoot32 on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free[/]

Not perfect I know but what needs the most work?

My room is a large wooden barn. The drums are in a corner but it's very very open in front of the drums. There's also a huge bunk bed right next to the drums.

wallwallwallwallwallwall
w
a drums bed
l drums bunk
l drums bed
w drums bunk
a
l
l
openspacelotsofspaace

Should I build some kind of absOrban t wall/screen to stick in front of the drums? Should I hang duvets between the drums and bunk bed? Does my mic placement sound bad? Are large condensers as OHs bad? Is putting drums in a corner bad? Does the kit itself sound bad?
I'd appreciate anything to point me in the right direction. Thanks a lot guys.

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Comments

moonbaby Thu, 09/06/2012 - 16:07

"Not perfect I know but what needs the most work?" The heads. They remind me of my first groupie - old and loose :)
There's a strong ringing from the kit when the toms get going, how are you tuning your heads? How old are they?
The first thing you HAVE to do is get the kit sounding right ACOUSTICALLY. Then pull it out into that nice big room AWAY from the corners.
I never put any instrument that generates any kind of low frequency information in a corner. But that's just me...

RemyRAD Wed, 09/12/2012 - 15:35

This is all fine and good sounding, but it's not. Here's what you're missing. There is no problem, but the tonality of this live room. There's no problems putting it in the corner. You don't need any sound absorbing anything around drum set.

What you do need is compression and gating of the tom-toms, snare and bass drum. You may also want to invert the phase of the bass drum? On Johnny B. Goode beat style... maybe not? Heavy rocking drums? Most definitely. That's in addition to all the gating. You can also scoop out a little of 250-350 Hz from the bass drum. Kick up the overheads between 10-12 kHz by 2 DB, while also rolling off the low end.

Another thing you might want to think about on some of those drums is the use of judicious amounts of duct tape? And guys small wallets sound good on top of the snare drum. And then you'll have something.

What does it need? Everything.
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD Fri, 09/14/2012 - 00:57

The bad sounding quality of the room is actually what you want for drums. You want the ambience, good or bad, of the overall drum set. You don't need, and there is no benefit to sound absorbing devices around the drum set. I generally would record the drums right in the middle of the big room to benefit from the big ambience around it. Everything else necessary to do to the drums was from electronic means such as gates on the drums themselves and nothing on the overheads except for perhaps a little tilt up in the high end with a rolloff on the low end.

We've always used duct tape on drum heads. When the resonance sounded all wrong. The internal adjustable damper doesn't always do the job. So duct tape & guys wallets can do a lot to modify the over resonant quality of some drums to tighten them up for the mix. I've been doing that since the early 1970s, and I'm not the only one. Heck, sometimes we even draped a cloth handkerchief on top of the snare drum head. Just to get rid of the "boing boing boing", when we didn't want "boing boing boing". But instead wanted SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT. Where boing didn't cut it. And sometimes the tom-toms were boom boom boom. When we wanted thud thud thud. And then a great big bash of CPR on our chests and not something that was as loose as a goose, punching out at you, from the bass drum. Who uses an empty bass drum with the skin intact on the front? Max Weinberg that's who that also wants a Beyer M-88 on the front intact skin. And I didn't have a M-88, only a M-69, which sufficed. And that was nearly 20 years ago. He also liked my truck and appreciated the way I made his drums sound. He was very easy to work with. Nice guy. Little also. LOL. Big sound from a small guy for sure. And he always holds his sticks like that of a symphonic percussionist and not your typical rock 'n roll slob. I guess his folks made him take music lessons as a kid? LOL. My world-class musician parents only encouraged me to take music lessons and didn't force me to. So I had a nice French horn teacher. As I really needed to understand the proper use of a classical double French horn (B-flat and F) and how to " STOP ", the horn, where and when needed, with your right hand in the bell. The embouchure is also quite different from that which the trumpeters and trombone players utilize. And you don't get that information unless you get proper instruction as to how to utilize a French horn. It's the same with audio equipment. And that's how you learn how what microphones to use for each instrument and particular application needed. It's called having a mentor and apprenticing, one-on-one with a " teacher ". Otherwise how else would you become a rocket scientist? The early guys had more crashes and burns that they had to learn from before they got it right. And thanks again to German engineering for which everything was made possible thanks to a horrible and bloody war. It was the war after the war to end all wars, which still haven't ended. Unfortunately, we don't have any other dictators dictating new microphones and recording technologies to use today. So in a sense, while Hitler was bad for the world, Hitler was good for the audio industry. And maybe that's also why all good microphones, have serial numbers tattooed on them? It was also only good people that Hitler was putting serial numbers on. Unfortunately, he trashed his serial numbered components, and later throwing them into the fire. So he wasn't exactly into recycling. Not a very green dictator by any stretch of the imagination. And he burned bridges behind himself. Just like a lot of audio engineers do today.

No need to fix a bridge if it ain't broke.
Mx. Remy Ann David