Drum room mics /IR's - far more essential than I thought

[Klosure]

Recently I had an aha moment with drum room sounds/ mics.

I had used rooms before but I only recently desided to get them turned up and use the close mics for the cracks and slap.


It makes much more send now but one of my heavy mixes just jumped out and came alive. I realise how I am treating the drums and separate mics rather than as one instrument (including the room sound).

Pushing it up and into the mix like this means when I add guitars and bass they sit better and feel part of something, vocals sit better on top.


I imagine with time I will get much better at controlling this, such as adding a snare sample, sending it to an IR with some of the other drums (including overheads a little bit).

Of course there is nothing liek the real thing but this experience is teaching me that getting a good drum room sound is essential.



Few questions if I may:


1. If you have a choice, stereo overheads mono room or mono overheads and stereo room what would you go for?

2. Great room, shitty snare, needs sample replacement - how do you go about keeping nice DOOSH to your snare when adding a cracky snare sample (IR reverb?)


3. Kick - room how and what?

 

[Shinozoku]

Usually the primary choice is mono room, stereo overheads.

If you have a shitty snare, that can be, for the most part, rectified by proper tuning. Learn to tune drums, and make sure your snare is in tune. Then adjust the snares on it until you have that nice DOOSH starting out. For a cracky snare, make sure you have an in-phase snare sound in the overheads and then add a close mic on either the top or bottom (try both, individually and at the same time!).

The best kick sounds I've ever heard were close miced. That keep it dry and forward in the mix. Not sure about a room kick sound, but you can give it a try!

 

[Morgan C]

1) Stereo overheads always. You need that spread in the high frequencies.

2) If your snare doesn't sound that great, adding some mono room helps a ton. For example, noone really likes the Metal Foundry snares, but if you send the mono room tracks to just the snare, compress to hell, and have it around the same volume as the close mic you can get some pretty good sounds out of it.

3) I made some snare/tom room samples once that I use on pretty much every mix I ever do, they're fucking badass. However, I've never really got room on the kick working. I try to take a Slate room kick, then make the lows mono and sort of mess with it but it always sounds weird. I usually just keep my kicks pretty dry.

 

[Klosure]

I always have issues getting the size fro the drums and if I am not careful my close mics/samples sound tiny - it seems liek the size comes from other things. Maybe the kick drum not so much (depending on the speed of the song).

Ive been searching through the forum looking at mic placement etc however I never really get overheads, they tend to sound shit unless you lower them in the mix, then they can vanish.


So I turned to looking at room mics/samples, however these work best in slower stuff...

Take Daylight Dies - the snare sound on that I love it.. nice DOOSH to it, sounds like sample with reverb but I am probably wrong (egan?) - it has a sound I have heard used on some american rock (my darkest days for example - same camp as Nickelback)


If you only have overhead information what do you do to create room sound. I noticed that Jens records drums in a smallish room, where is he getting the size from? I heard snare samples with reverb can be added, how do you blend them in without the overhead snare getting in the way (ive tried drucking and eqing but you never get rid of it - besides you almost need it sometimes.



I'd love to get a killer thread going on drums and size cos thats what I always fight over.


Listen to the new Within Temptation album MASSIVE DRUMS but they are not overly loud they almost disappear on some tracks allowing the other instruments to flow over the top.


Evanesance new album another Randy Staub treat with lots of reverb, bit drums.




although drums today have reverb they also have the close mic drums to keep them dry enough to be "crisp" in sound.


Im hearing a lot, but the combination of techniques surprises me.


One thing I noticed though. Listen to Lacuna coils Dark Adrenaline(not the new one about to come out). The whole mix is closer but something about the drums keeps the size - hard to pin t down really.

 

[Klosure]

1) Stereo overheads always. You need that spread in the high frequencies.

2) If your snare doesn't sound that great, adding some mono room helps a ton. For example, noone really likes the Metal Foundry snares, but if you send the mono room tracks to just the snare, compress to hell, and have it around the same volume as the close mic you can get some pretty good sounds out of it.

3) I made some snare/tom room samples once that I use on pretty much every mix I ever do, they're fucking badass. However, I've never really got room on the kick working. I try to take a Slate room kick, then make the lows mono and sort of mess with it but it always sounds weird. I usually just keep my kicks pretty dry.

Ok but 1. This is for left right not fron back correct - you need reverb to give size of depth?



Am I correct in thinking that making a massive snare can define the size of the mix to a certain degree?