Ashes OF The Wake ... Production

[metalkingdom]

I still don't get why Machine would track the cymbals separate from the rest of the kit - other than he wanted to use the 414's for toms and the studio didn't have any other condensors that he likes to use.

His drums do sound great though, so....

 

[chadsxe]

I still don't get why Machine would track the cymbals separate from the rest of the kit - other than he wanted to use the 414's for toms and the studio didn't have any other condensors that he likes to use.

His drums do sound great though, so....

I can think of a few diffrent reasons.....

what if he really wanted to make the drummer focus on in getting each hit perfect.....this seems lke it might be easier to acheive when dealing with less stuff.....

I think it is because he wanted to have as much control of the drums and cymbals as possible.....seperating them from from the OH's hels with this alot...

What about bleed.....throughing the condensers on the toms has to introduce a lot more bleed then dynamics.....and lets say it's some funky ass bleed....

What about room dynamics....what if he wanted diffrent room's for cymabls then he wanted for drums....

There is a lot of reasons.....are the practical....maybe not....but in the end his drums sound F'ing amazing....

 

[ttiwguitar]

I love the way this album sounds. The guitars are a bit dry, but they're incredibly clear and the album still sounds full. Chris goes into how they recorded the drums in this interview:

http://www.chipritter.com/DV/thedrummersviewchrisadler.htm

CR- Can you tell us something that NOBODY else knows about the recording of Ashes of the wake / Lamb Of God? Or Any little known but possibly interesting fact we may have about recording ashes of the wake?

CA- One very interesting thing with the drums. Machine wanted as much separation as possible with the drum sounds – meaning he didn’t want snare sound bleeding into the kick mics and cymbals washing into the tom mics. This is an age old problem of drum recording – when you go to mix you try to bring up the toms and the cymbals get too loud – you try to bring up the kicks and the snare gets too loud. So, what we did was very interesting. We’d record the song 2x. The first time we’d cover each drum and cymbal with sheets or rubber heads except the bass drums. I’d play the song and Machine would record only the kicks – this left a pristine kick recording with no bleed from the other drums. Then we’d record the same song again with the sheets and rubber off the other drums and the kick drums covered up with blankets to deaden them. This way he had some great separation when it came to the mix.

So I guess that makes sense. Lamb of God is an awesome band.. they work really hard at what they do and I think they deserve everything they have. They're also the some of the most down to earth dudes I've ever met, they come to support my band at shows often and are just plain nice guys.

 

[KeithRT99]

his drums do sound good, but i think it's too much work trying to play them separately.

 

[metalkingdom]

I can think of a few diffrent reasons.....

what if he really wanted to make the drummer focus on in getting each hit perfect.....this seems lke it might be easier to acheive when dealing with less stuff.....

I think it is because he wanted to have as much control of the drums and cymbals as possible.....seperating them from from the OH's hels with this alot...

What about bleed.....throughing the condensers on the toms has to introduce a lot more bleed then dynamics.....and lets say it's some funky ass bleed....

What about room dynamics....what if he wanted diffrent room's for cymabls then he wanted for drums....

There is a lot of reasons.....are the practical....maybe not....but in the end his drums sound F'ing amazing....

What is the benefit from each hit being "perfect"? You can do that with Beat Detective and samples or DFHS or BFD. Maybe he's trying to get something comparable to that without losing the "live drummer feel" that is sometimes associated with timing correction.

Mic placement is the usual remedy for unwanted bleed. Some bleed is usually desirable to maintain a natural sound. I like my toms with no bleed also, and every since I started using Andy's trick I have none.

Room dynamics? Cymbals and the actual drums are all still part of the same instrument.

There have been many, many great drum recordings without employing these seemingly eccentric methods. One of my all time favorite drum sounds is on South of Heaven - which was recorded the traditional way. I'm not saying that he doesn't get killer drum sounds, because he really does - I'm simply playing devil's advocate. I've heard professional drummers complain extensively about producers "wasting" the bands time and money in the studio doing shit like this. I wouldn't doubt that 10 years down the road, Machine will talk about how he "used to" record drums.

 

[GeertSamuel]

Mic placement is the usual remedy for unwanted bleed. Some bleed is usually desirable to maintain a natural sound. I like my toms with no bleed also, and every since I started using Andy's trick I have none.

What's Andy's trick?

 

[nuclearass]

I usually edit the tom tracks manually or I use automation to bring down the volume where the toms are not played. However, this takes some time... and the bleed is still there during the fills, but to eliminate them even more, I'll sometimes duplicate the original and trigger that with soundreplacer using clean hits or other samples.

I'm also interested to hear Andy's trick...

 

[Mendel]

Yes! I love lamb of God: they used Mesa Mark iv with mesa and framus dragon cabs, and framus guitars, eccept Mark morton sometimes use a Jackson Roads.
Killadelphia is fucking good dvd, I have watched 10 times

and ofcourse his 2 own jackson signatures !!!

 

[Where She Wept]

Damn, now i have to go dig out A.O.T.W. I'v been playing around with my condensers on the drums and wow, what a difference. I though i HAD to us a 57 on the snare till i used a condenser. it picked up way more nuance that the 57. but the cymbal bleed is way more horrendous with them for sure. I'm still new to this so I'm trying all sorts of crazy ideas. My drummer plays with no resonant head on his rack toms. so i've been experimenting with micing up inside the shell. there was still some bleed but it was better that before. one other thing i've been doing is trimming all the tom hits, and when i do get a cymbal in the tom i'll do a fade on the end of the tom hit to simulate the natual decay. i lose a touch of the resonance but it sounds more natural than a gate. it takes forever but it's worth it.

 

[Glenn Fricker]

WTF.....that picture is funny as hell....what does have in his hand a 58...beta?

That's my old stage mic.... a plain-jane sm58... battered, bruised & bashed in. Essentially, I just asked, "What are you comfortable with? 'On the stand,' or 'handheld?'"
He replied, "Handheld! I'm sick of working on the stand. 'stand here' 'don't move' that sort of shit."
Sometimes, the easiest way to get a great vocal performance is to give the vocalist what they're farmiliar with. So, we brought out my seen way-too-many-shows 58, watched him consume too much beer, & let 'er rip.
A number of L.O.G. fans have mentioned to me it might very well have been his best vocal performance ever. Granted, this was a few years ago, so the guitars & drums are nowhere nearly as good as I can get these days, but we had a blast doing the record. Most definitley a fun day in the studio.


-0z-

 

[chadsxe]

What is the benefit from each hit being "perfect"? You can do that with Beat Detective and samples or DFHS or BFD. Maybe he's trying to get something comparable to that without losing the "live drummer feel" that is sometimes associated with timing correction.

Mic placement is the usual remedy for unwanted bleed. Some bleed is usually desirable to maintain a natural sound. I like my toms with no bleed also, and every since I started using Andy's trick I have none.

Room dynamics? Cymbals and the actual drums are all still part of the same instrument.

There have been many, many great drum recordings without employing these seemingly eccentric methods. One of my all time favorite drum sounds is on South of Heaven - which was recorded the traditional way. I'm not saying that he doesn't get killer drum sounds, because he really does - I'm simply playing devil's advocate. I've heard professional drummers complain extensively about producers "wasting" the bands time and money in the studio doing shit like this. I wouldn't doubt that 10 years down the road, Machine will talk about how he "used to" record drums.

To each there own you know I guess....what works, works......

I personally never have done what he is doing and I more so lean towards the same methods as you do...

In the end the production was great....

 

[metalkingdom]

Basically, the Sneap tom gating "trick" goes like this -

1) Slap a gate on each tom track
2) Make dupes of each tom track
3) Mute the duplicate tracks' L/R out (edit - or don't assign an output, duh)
4) Buss the dupes individually to the sidechain input of the gates on each of the corresponding original tom tracks
5) *CRITICAL STEP ALERT* - slightly nudge the duped tom tracks back (to the left). Usually a few samples will do.
6) Tweak the gates' threshold and attack times

This will create an adjustable "look ahead" function for the gates on your original tom tracks, allowing you to really clamp down on the threshold and have a smooth attack without that popping sound. You still have to record the toms with minimal leakage to make this work effectively.

 

[chadsxe]

Basically, the Sneap tom gating "trick" goes like this -

1) Slap a gate on each tom track
2) Make dupes of each tom track
3) Mute the duplicate tracks' L/R out
4) Buss the dupes individually to the sidechain input of the gates on each of the corresponding original tom tracks
5) *CRITICAL STEP ALERT* - slightly nudge the duped tom tracks back (to the left). Usually a few samples will do.
6) Tweak the gates' threshold and attack times

This will create an adjustable "look ahead" function for the gates on your original tom tracks, allowing you to really clamp down on the threshold and have a smooth attack without that popping sound. You still have to record the toms with minimal leakage to make this work effectively.

Very cool.....makes perfect sense......I am going to have try this...

 

[A Toolish Circle]

i have nothing against Machine , in fact i quite love Ashes of the wake but that drum recording technique seems extremely excessive plus is a huge time waster.

the best part is that the final product , while sounding fucking awesome, sounds like it's been soundreplaced a shit load.

Personally the whole point in good producing/engineering is to make the artist as comfortable as possible to capture the performance of his life , separating recording cymbals and drum shells to me takes away from a one whole performance. it's like recording guitar chords one string at a time ! ( haha yes i know def leppard have done it before and a few other bands too ) or recording riffs one string at a time.

 

[Suicide_As_Alibi]

Didn't Phil Collins record his drums one piece at a time on one album?

I don't think the drummer in my band would be able to do them seperately - he doesn't treat the drums and cymbals as different things. His rolls and fills quite often use toms and cymbals in sequence (e.g. he might go rack tom, splash, rack tom, ride, floor tom), so it would be like recording every other string on the guitar for an arpeggio. Getting those tight seperately would be a nightmare!

Steve

 

[Glenn Fricker]

Basically, the Sneap tom gating "trick" goes like this -

1) Slap a gate on each tom track
2) Make dupes of each tom track
3) Mute the duplicate tracks' L/R out (edit - or don't assign an output, duh)
4) Buss the dupes individually to the sidechain input of the gates on each of the corresponding original tom tracks
5) *CRITICAL STEP ALERT* - slightly nudge the duped tom tracks back (to the left). Usually a few samples will do.
6) Tweak the gates' threshold and attack times

This will create an adjustable "look ahead" function for the gates on your original tom tracks, allowing you to really clamp down on the threshold and have a smooth attack without that popping sound. You still have to record the toms with minimal leakage to make this work effectively.

That's a great system for doing the toms.... You can get the same effect in SS with a whole lot less steps. Set your gate thresh & release, set attack to say, 1ms, then hit the 'reverse' button. Then hilite your tom tracks, activate "remove silence from track" and watch the program strip out all the in-between crap.... all the while leaving 1 ms before the tom strike. Then de-activate the reverse button & you're good to go. What a time saver.

-0z-

 

[metalkingdom]

Sweet. But what's "SS"? Sonic Solutions?

 

[Glenn Fricker]

SawStudio.... I went by "SS" because I'm sure you guys are real tired of me harping on about how great it is

 

[cobrahead1030]

this kinda gives me an idea...i've been working for quite sometime on an instrumental side project kinda thing, which calls for a lot of crazed death metal drumming

i wonder how it would sound if i programmed the kick and tom parts for the songs using DFH2, and recorded only the snare and cymbals (since i'm a guitarist and can't play drums to save my life)

 

[EtherForBreakfast]

I read that whole Adler interview, thanks for the link... Good stuff indeed. LOG rule, period.

It's not really *that* radical after reading what Chris said. They did one take with everything but the kick rubberized/blanketed/muffled etc and that was the kick track. Then they did the opposite, and composited with the previous kick on top of that to minimize bleed, etc. Basically its like taking the DFHS slider for the kick and killing the AMB and OH mics.

On an acoustic kit I dont know of another way to isolate, unless you have some sick drummer who is capable of mentally playing a tune and only hitting ONE piece at a time and the proper time. That would be super human. Sounds like a logical way to super isolate - DFHS is hardcore wicked when you think about it.

That album does kick a TON of ass.... compared to as the palaces burn its night and day. Same with self titled KSE and end of heartache (production wise).