http://soundcloud.com/geoffhodsman/repu ... d-cadavers



I did it mostly because it's one of my few drum recordings with a room mic. I have much interest in use of them lately, so I revisited this since I don't have enough time to record more stuff. I think it sounds both more raw and more refined than before.

Mics were a CAD pack I borrowed in '10 because I didn't have my own mics yet, save for the AT2020 room mic, and the snare had an i5 on top and 57 below. Actually, I suppose that means the CADs were just the kick and the one tom that got hit... oh yeah, and the overheads.

GnarlySheen played the lead...

The snare, it is round yet punchy.

I'd be curious to hear a with/without room clip or a section of naked drums with/without to see what it's doing at those tempos. Color me intrigued re: room mic and fastmetal.

How's the room being treated re: compression and EQ?

Also- what's the guitarmap here?

Sure... http://www.mediafire.com/?tv0jbw01451enkz

Room mic comes in at 0:39.

It's my basement, which is long with a slightly low ceiling, a mixture of drywall, tiles and mirror, with plenty of shit lying around.

A little dubious as to how much the mic actually helps the recording...

Oh, and the guitar map was a Boss SD-1 into Poulin Legion.

Room treatment is just ReaComp, and a hi pass to lose any lowlows.

Yeah, I get what yer saying- you're not really hearing it.

IMO in order to be really effective, it's gotta be real present in the mix. Destroy it with a compressor, distort it possibly; filter the hell out of it. Don't be gentle. Turn it into a reverb. Expand it down if that'll work to accent snares and toms (harder with metal). Deployed in that manner you can totally make it into something that sounds hideous on its own, but bring it up under the kit... Try like 20:1 or greater compression ratios or a limiter, make it nasty, pumping and ugly. Attack/release dependent on the material.

Alternately, use the room(s) in place of the kit sound you'd get from the overheads- probably more effective with heavier stuff where you can use the OHs more as spot mics for cymbals. They're a ton of fun but you have to sneak 'em into the track in a way that makes sense in context. Don't be nice with it unless you want realism.

If you can track down the drum recording article from TapeOp #76, that had some good stuff on room mics and where to place them. That one had the Kurt Ballou article; I gave it to a friend.

I really want tape op, but they don't seem to do canada. I will commence a search for said article though.

That is teh suckage. I love the interviews/articles with people who are totally off my radar. I'm kinda surprised they don't have an online back issues archive.

If I'm remembering the right article (and I think I am 'cause of who I gave it to) there's a ratio of distance between the front of the kit, the mic(s) and the wall that allows for easy-ish altering of the perceived size of the room.

There's also the method of "smack it around and swear at it a lot until it works", which in real-world applications is about as useful as things that have been properly scienced-out, at least as far as recordingstuff is concerned.

Blazzow. Said article from said issue, courtesy my scannermerizer(the image is just slightly wider than this forum allows, rightclick>view image will show the rest of the words on the rightmost edge) :

Chris achieves victory, TapeOp = best magazine. (runners up are Mental_Floss and Archaeology.)

Re: rooms, mid/side is cool. Spaced pairs are cool. Mono is cool. Massive compressed/distorted effect mic is cool. The room in general is cool, rock it however you can.

A couple comments re: that article- my bassist and I watched the Classic Albums episode on Never Mind The Bollocks whilst drinking much bourbon and setting up his home studio whatnot last week. That whole series is good stuff; watch it if you haven't. Much of it's on Youtube.

Second, re: the kit through a PA- Soundgarden's Superunknown and Tool's Aenima as examples. Not only are they total crap albums from terrible '90s bands with miserable production, but the rhythm sections' playing and the drum sounds are hammered garbage as well. They would have been greatly improved with George Lynch solos, straight eighth-note beats in 4/4 and the bassist doubling the root of the rhythm guitar throughout.

...Superunknown is one of the greatest rock vocal records ever. Performance and production is immaculate. Listen to the room, overdriving the mic pre, etc. So so well done. Digression.

Chris dude, you rule.

I actually started a whole drum recording project of nine tracks on Thursday, and I tried a room mic but wasn't feeling it was offering enough goodness, and the snare seemed to be lacking, so it was the ol' mics above and below the snare instead of a room. But hey, how about I have a read of this thing and see if I can do a room sound for whatever project comes up next. I muchly prefer when someone in a magazine tells me how to do it, then me spend a whole day moving mics around until I stumble upon the answer.