Recording Drums - A Journey

[Felix Neumann]

Hi dudes

I´d love to discuss about Drum recording in general with you guys. linked with related problems and achievements, maybe we can exchange our knowledge and experience here.

As I began recording music in general, it wasn´t usual to programm drums for Metal, so it was natural and a matter of honor to try capturing the drumsound of a real kit. As I found the sneap forum and realized, that a lot of guys are working with samples, programs, ssd & stuff, I dived in to enhance my fund of experience (especially because I started earning money with some productions = saving time).

Now I´m here, made my experience with programming in recent years and realized the following...I HATE IT!!! Fuck yeah, I hate it!

I wanna hear the pulse of a talented human being again. I´m so sick of hearing those artificial drum fills! This is about my beloved music..METAL! Goddamn how impressed I were, as I heared Death´s ITP the first time. THIS IS IT! A good drummer is so precious.

It´s time to put some passion and effort in drum recording again! Let´s help each other out, dudes. I´m willing to help, if someone has questions about tracking drums. And I for my part have a lot of questions, because I´m far beyond being satisfied with my own drumsound. It´s a journey.


What is you story and experience about recording drums? What were the first steps? How much microphones do you need to capture a "good sound"? And..how often do you change the drumheads? Got some nice pictures of your miced drumset in the room and audio clips made there? Feel free to show it here!


Cheers,

Felix

 

[Morgan C]

Recording real drums is such a PITA, lol >< If you don't have a whole bunch of mics and a proper room and all that, it might be worth just hiring out a proper studio for the bands that you actually get a decent drummer. Then you can take advantage of their gear, and for the shitty drummers you get just program them and save you hours and days and WEEKS of mic'ing and tracking and slapping and editing and sample replacing, for a worse sound.


Try and coach drummers to hit the drums better for recording. While I'm not a very good drummer, at all, and my drum sound isn't great (I'd probably blame this on my shitty gear :/ only so much you can do), I've reached a point with my playing that sample replacement simply doesn't make a difference. If I take samples from my drum, and replace them on the snare, or kick, it sounds almost exactly the same as the raw track, because I minimise bleed while I'm playing, and hit hard and consistently. When you can't even set your gate right because the hihat is louder than the snare in the snare mic, you're pretty much doomed.

 

[Felix Neumann]

When you can't even set your gate right because the hihat is louder than the snare in the snare mic, you're pretty much doomed.

That´s absolutely true. Though It´s possible to place the hi-hat on the right or to use a certain bit of replacement for the snare. And exactly that´s why I´m glad to have drumagog. The snare is the only element I usually replace (60%) with an own sample to avoid exactly this problem, you´ve mentioned.

shitty drummers

Haha that´s one good reason, to disclaim real drumming.

 

[Jackal_Strain]

Oz's trick about cranking the hi-hat in the drummers headphones have saved my ass so many times! I'd say 80% of all drummers hit their hi-hat too hard and their snare too soft.

 

[Felix Neumann]

Oz's trick about cranking the hi-hat in the drummers headphones have saved my ass so many times! I'd say 80% of all drummers hit their hi-hat too hard and their snare too soft.

+1000

It´s important that drum teachers tell their students to "destroying the snare - stroking the hi-hat" (In the interest of all enginers may met in the studio) But unfortunately this is rareness.

 

[Jackal_Strain]

I'm so fucking glad that the drummer in my band both knows how to play really well AND sets his ego aside and listens to advice from people with more knowledge in a recording situation.
I love my little drummer pet

 

[MetalJonesy]

For me, the cymbals need to be of high quality, especially the hats. i can deal with the kit, but its the cymbals that are inevitably gnna be goin on the recording as you'll no doubt do some sampling of the drums. I find this is what lets alot of real drum recordings down, the fact the right cymbals havent been used in combination with the right mics and placement.

 

[dcb]

in my opinion a great room is key to a great drumsound. the drums become alive in a breathing room, that in the end interacts with the drummer.
recording drums in a small booth is cool for 70s style funk, where you want that dry sound.

well, if you dont have a great room, here is what i do to at least have a mix between "real" performance of a human AND samples :
use slate room on snare / toms and blend this with your "real" kit. makes your snare sound 1000 times more expensive.
so key to great sounding drums is : thaa roooomzzz !

also lately i got rid of real kickdrums for metal and used a roland kick pad. pro : no bleeding into room / overheads.

btw. : for my bands next album im currently looking for great drumrooms. i love huge sounding kits.
any recommenadations preferrably in europe ?

 

[MetalJonesy]

+1 for the room aswell!

 

[Winston Wolf]

come on,programmed drums are not that bad.when done properly.
it's just not many ppl bother to get em right,
i hate those machineguns too.

 

[MetalJonesy]

true, most of my stuff is programmed drums, and i've even tricked some engineers who've been in the industry for years on a few occasions!

 

[GeertSamuel]

Guys. It's not about if you tricked engineers in the industry or something like that. It's about the feeling, the talent and all that stuff.
A lot of drummers' performances are 90% programmed and replaced nowaydays, that with todays standard, it's easy to trick engineers, because they have lost sense of what's the real feel.

So gtfo if you want to defend programmed drums...I still love you guys tho..

But there is NOTHING, I REPEAT, NOTHING that can replace the feeling, or the awesomeness of a real drummer ripping it up vs midi drums.

t´s important that drum teachers tell their students to "destroying the snare - stroking the hi-hat" (In the interest of all enginers may met in the studio) But unfortunately this is rareness.

When I was 18 years old, and I think it was about my 4th drumlesson, my teacher stopped me and said...

"You're hitting your snare like a homo"......

That cured me..



Anyhow I'm now trying to get everything together for the Messe upcoming days...after that I'll post my drum setup on recording

 

[Felix Neumann]

For me, the cymbals need to be of high quality, especially the hats. i can deal with the kit, but its the cymbals that are inevitably gnna be goin on the recording as you'll no doubt do some sampling of the drums. I find this is what lets alot of real drum recordings down, the fact the right cymbals havent been used in combination with the right mics and placement.

Oh, I absolutely agree here. I have bought the Peart Export drumset for about 500 Euros and a Sabian Cymbal Set (only ride & Hi-Hat) for goddamn 800 Euros (!) It´s possible to change the drumsound in thousand different ways, but the cymbal is damned to remain how it is.

But there is NOTHING, I REPEAT, NOTHING that can replace the feeling, or the awesomeness of a real drummer ripping it up vs midi drums.

+1000000000000000

Imagine, you´d wake up in the morning, you go in the city to buy THE new Iron Maiden CD. You are at home, full of expectations you press play, you listen and realize...Oh, Nicko was replaced by a programm. FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

 

[MetalJonesy]

hah ain no way am i defending programmed drums dude! haha, all my actual mix and recording work is real drums, only time i ever use programmed drums is for pre prod really and only ever with my own songs aswell! i love mixing and dealing with real drums

 

[Felix Neumann]

in my opinion a great room is key to a great drumsound. the drums become alive in a breathing room, that in the end interacts with the drummer.
recording drums in a small booth is cool for 70s style funk, where you want that dry sound.

well, if you dont have a great room, here is what i do to at least have a mix between "real" performance of a human AND samples :
use slate room on snare / toms and blend this with your "real" kit. makes your snare sound 1000 times more expensive.
so key to great sounding drums is : thaa roooomzzz !

also lately i got rid of real kickdrums for metal and used a roland kick pad. pro : no bleeding into room / overheads.

btw. : for my bands next album im currently looking for great drumrooms. i love huge sounding kits.
any recommenadations preferrably in europe ?

I think, ROOM is a good keyword! Thanks for your tipps, dude. I consider asking an acoustic specialist/acoustician, how I could set the room perfectly. I´ll post some audio clips of my drumsound and pictures of my room. Maybe some of you can give me tipps. I´m very corious about what you think.

 

[Felix Neumann]

hah ain no way am i defending programmed drums dude! haha, all my actual mix and recording work is real drums, only time i ever use programmed drums is for pre prod really and only ever with my own songs aswell! i love mixing and dealing with real drums

It´s pretty okay using programmed drums for some (not very talented) bands, when the fact of time is sitting in the neck. I have to admit, I also sometimes used both techniques in one song:

I programmed kick and snare -the cymbals I recorded live afterwards. It worked pretty well, how you can hear in this song:

http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7195761

Kick and snare are obviously tight as hell! Cymbals give the natural feel. The snare in the part beginning at 2:10 is live recorded, too.

But this isn´t my goal. I want to record a real drummer entirely. Though it was interesting to try some different techniques

 

[ze kink]

I honestly prefer micing up a real drumkit so much more, even if the drummer isn't quite that tight. I have to admit though that the stuff I've done so far doesn't need to be that tight either, so I don't have to edit (as in polish turd) so much. However, I'm pretty sure that whenever I'm eventually doing a "core" band, I'll probably start to think different and even consider programming the stuff instead of spending hours on editing acrobatics.

I still do have DFHS and S2.0, which both I use for demoing and such. But for more serious solo stuff; since I play drums a bit too, I prefer to record myself with real drums. I've gone quite crazy lately with slicing and processing my drum tracks to hell and back so the end result is still quite far from natural.

What I haven't yet tried but probably will eventually, is recording cymbals and drums seperately.

 

[professorlamp]

Well if you want to share your knowledge im right here

I'm getting my friend in so i can 'test' my new equipment on drums (I finally equipped myself with a decent interface and a couple of mics)
So my room is basically the average nightmare , a square with an 8 foot ceiling. There isn't much flutter at all though and it sounds pretty dry. However I'm struggling how to find out if my room is 'good' or not, is there anything in particular I should be looking out for?

edit: forgot to say, I dont write epicly composed masterpieces with a 16 piece kit with a gazillion effects, Im usually in the domain of prog/punk music and usually quite raw, just thought i'd say that so that people know what I'm aiming for

editedit: fuck it I'll say the stuff i have for micing and how im gonna use them
Audix d6 (kick)
Rode NT5s (ohs)
sm57 (snaretop)
audix i5 (snare bottom)

Im hoping the toms will shine through enough in the overheads :zombie:

eventually I'll be getting tom mics but money is slim being a student

 

[GeertSamuel]

Another valid point...
To what would you rather look?

This:

Or this?:

 

[Jarkko Mattheiszen]

I love tracking real drums. I don't care if it won't sound as super tight as your everyday metalcore bands (although I do enjoy working with that stuff, too), it's just always more fun. Here's a pic from the session I finished this monday: