B
buhzie2
Guest
Hey, first time poster here... Had been looking around the forum for quite some time decided it was time to join!
**Edit: Oops, think I might have posted this in the wrong sub-forum... sorry. Probably should have been under Production tips...***
Advance apology for the long post... sorry, I just want to be as detailed in my description as possible...
Anyway, I'm mixing drums for my good friend's band and I'm having some issues. The sound they are aiming for is similar to The Red Chord, Carnifex, etc - modern death/progressive metal.
I'm recording in a finished basement - wood floors, carpet under the drums, drop ceiling (about 7'6" high), and I've controlled most reflections around the room with Audimute acoustic blankets and some rockwool acoustic panels. Not the best sounding room, but it's fairly dry and free of reflections.
I'm doing my best to do without drum replacement. I really want to try my best to stay away from sampling the snare. The kick is the only thing I'm sampling, as I had tracked the drums with a mic and a trigger track and I like how it's sounding. I'm using samples of the actual kick from the kit.
I recorded with a spaced pair overheads (audix adx51's), a mono room mic (akg c2000b), beta 57 snare top, i5 bottom, 57 hi hat mic and akg c1000s ride, audix i5/d2/d4 on toms, and d6 on kick. I've done my best to get phasing between mics all aligned. My mic placements were all textbook and proper.
The snare and overheads are probably my biggest issues right now.
The problem comes in when I am working with the snare sound. I tuned these drums meticulously - a big pearl vinnie paul sig snare - medium-tight tension - sounds REAL fat and big. I have a pretty good amount of hi hat and other drum bleed in the top snare, even though I used a hypercardiod mic and positioned it as best as I could out of the pickup zone of the hi hat.
When I gate/expand the snare, I can get fairly pleasing results - not too choppy, but enough to tame the bleed and leave the sustain of the drum. Occasionally some hi hat and cymbals peek through when they're in unison with the snare, but there's nothing that can really be done about that.
When I compress the snare (quite highly, as I need the consistent dynamics for an unsampled snare), I get really unpleasant bleed coming through the gate. It pops through and the only way to get rid of it is to have such a fast closing gate that I lose all tone from the drum and am left with just the transient attack. Plus, using the Dominion transient shaping plugin, I tend to add so much attack that I lose all the body of the drum. Adding any more sustain brings out more bleed.
Also, when I go to add some sparkle and clarity to the snare and overheads (eq, harmonic enhancers, etc), it becomes a muddy mess. I'll side chain the snare to the overheads, but it compresses the overheads around the snare hits too much and leaves everything sounding muddy and undefined. I'll use a reference track just so I don't get lost within my own mix, but I can't get anywhere even close to the sparkle and shine of most recordings. Nothing fits together and it's frustrating the hell out of me!
I'm gonna do my best to get my best mix down uploaded to here soon, possibly tomorrow, so that it's easier to hear what I'm dealing with.
These modern, fat, huge drum sounds seem so unachievable. Something like the sound from The Contortionist () would be amazing... As far as I can tell, the snare seems almost 100% natural. I love this drum sound. I realize that my sound will be individual and replicating a sound is not realistic and not exactly desirable. But I like to base sounds off of something to begin with.
Any response would be amazing. I've read through many posts here and I feel like it would be great to get some customized feedback, and not just re-reading the sticky post of the drum recording guide...
Thanks!
**Edit: Oops, think I might have posted this in the wrong sub-forum... sorry. Probably should have been under Production tips...***
Advance apology for the long post... sorry, I just want to be as detailed in my description as possible...
Anyway, I'm mixing drums for my good friend's band and I'm having some issues. The sound they are aiming for is similar to The Red Chord, Carnifex, etc - modern death/progressive metal.
I'm recording in a finished basement - wood floors, carpet under the drums, drop ceiling (about 7'6" high), and I've controlled most reflections around the room with Audimute acoustic blankets and some rockwool acoustic panels. Not the best sounding room, but it's fairly dry and free of reflections.
I'm doing my best to do without drum replacement. I really want to try my best to stay away from sampling the snare. The kick is the only thing I'm sampling, as I had tracked the drums with a mic and a trigger track and I like how it's sounding. I'm using samples of the actual kick from the kit.
I recorded with a spaced pair overheads (audix adx51's), a mono room mic (akg c2000b), beta 57 snare top, i5 bottom, 57 hi hat mic and akg c1000s ride, audix i5/d2/d4 on toms, and d6 on kick. I've done my best to get phasing between mics all aligned. My mic placements were all textbook and proper.
The snare and overheads are probably my biggest issues right now.
The problem comes in when I am working with the snare sound. I tuned these drums meticulously - a big pearl vinnie paul sig snare - medium-tight tension - sounds REAL fat and big. I have a pretty good amount of hi hat and other drum bleed in the top snare, even though I used a hypercardiod mic and positioned it as best as I could out of the pickup zone of the hi hat.
When I gate/expand the snare, I can get fairly pleasing results - not too choppy, but enough to tame the bleed and leave the sustain of the drum. Occasionally some hi hat and cymbals peek through when they're in unison with the snare, but there's nothing that can really be done about that.
When I compress the snare (quite highly, as I need the consistent dynamics for an unsampled snare), I get really unpleasant bleed coming through the gate. It pops through and the only way to get rid of it is to have such a fast closing gate that I lose all tone from the drum and am left with just the transient attack. Plus, using the Dominion transient shaping plugin, I tend to add so much attack that I lose all the body of the drum. Adding any more sustain brings out more bleed.
Also, when I go to add some sparkle and clarity to the snare and overheads (eq, harmonic enhancers, etc), it becomes a muddy mess. I'll side chain the snare to the overheads, but it compresses the overheads around the snare hits too much and leaves everything sounding muddy and undefined. I'll use a reference track just so I don't get lost within my own mix, but I can't get anywhere even close to the sparkle and shine of most recordings. Nothing fits together and it's frustrating the hell out of me!
I'm gonna do my best to get my best mix down uploaded to here soon, possibly tomorrow, so that it's easier to hear what I'm dealing with.
These modern, fat, huge drum sounds seem so unachievable. Something like the sound from The Contortionist () would be amazing... As far as I can tell, the snare seems almost 100% natural. I love this drum sound. I realize that my sound will be individual and replicating a sound is not realistic and not exactly desirable. But I like to base sounds off of something to begin with.
Any response would be amazing. I've read through many posts here and I feel like it would be great to get some customized feedback, and not just re-reading the sticky post of the drum recording guide...
Thanks!
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