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Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately? 
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Simethicone
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Post Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
It looks like I have a session coming up in the reasonably near future for a friend's band. Genre is stoner/sludge metal. He wants to track the shells and brass separately for options at mix time. Now, this is kinda the opposite of how I wanted to track it, which was comparatively minimal- kick/snare/mono OH for the main kit sound, stereo room- it's a big damn wood room- and spots for the toms. He's done this before, apparently, and is a capable drummer so I don't doubt it would work. Sounds like a pain in the arse, though, and time-consuming to boot. Has anyone else here tried this?

Thoughts- advantages, disadvantages, cool things I can do, like smashing room mics on the way in? It's a proper room, and is nicely reverberant. I might be able to snag an old '70s Yamaha console- I want to say it's an M1516- for use on the session, which could be fun. Assuming, of course, it works.

I wanted less studio fuckery, he wants more studio fuckery, and it's his record- and if it turns out to suck, we should know pretty quick and set things up in a more normal fashion.

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Sat Jan 16, 2016 9:17 pm
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Winston Wolf
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Post Re: Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
Ah yes, the mythical "i need more options in mixing" beast. No, more than likely, you need to commit to a concept and a sound right now, and work towards it. More options in mixing, is much more likely to result in an unfocused mess. I have done that enough times.

Unsurprisingly, i think it sounds like a terrible idea. :red:

I have overdubbed cymbals once and fucking hated it. Thinner brass with a lighter touch is, IMO/for me, a much easier way to make the mixing part easier.

If that is what the dude/customer wants then so be it i guess. IMO, the dude/customer is not always right though.

Has he given you any indication via sample audio what type of a sound he is chasing? Does he legitimately want that separated sound? Or is he theorizing that he might get something different from the arrangement than he is likely to?

In any case, i would advise tracking with full cymbals and full drums at least once to get your basic tracks. Record them as you please, fully. Then overdub shells by them selves, so as to allow their level relative to the cymbals to be later adjusted cleanly(if it truly must be so). Then at least you will have a more or less natural sounding drum sound with the ability to adjust something later. Cymbals recorded on their own, IMO, is a terrible thing. I think that people have gotten too used to it as a concept because maybe a lot of people are writing songs with drum machines these days. IMO, a drummer should want not to do it that way. If he is a good drummer, he should just play it right.

I don't envy your position of having to find a non-dick way to put that though. :lol:

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Sun Jan 17, 2016 10:18 am
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Simethicone
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Post Re: Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
That's where I'm at as well. These days, if I have options, I tend to delete them. Yeah, I'll listen first to see what sucks/rocks, but I find it's largely a waste of tracks. That's one of the problems with options- people feel the need to use them, just because they are there. This is generally a bad idea. I've been through that myself, as you have doubtlessly heard many times over the years.

Re: sonics, I know what they're looking for, which is the sort of mid/late '90s oversized sludgeguitars with glossy production thing. Which, unfortunately, makes the overdubbed brass seem like a realistic, if somewhat impractical, option. I think the desired effect could be achieved with a conventional drum recording. Also, agreed on the lighter brass. At least he has the sense to know his usual hats/ride are too heavy and loud, and has stated this. I think he has a Zildjian K ride kicking around (probably preferable to a Paiste Rude ride for recording porpoises), and IIRC some K hats are available at the room we'd be using. That could mitigate things a bit. The idea, as presented to me, was that the shells could be compressed/EQed/gated with greater control were the brass overdubbed. (I gather he's demoed things this way before as an experiment as well.) Seeing as I've recorded the drummer before and know his skill level, I don't see why this would be necessary. It would be easy enough to dial in a good sound on the way in- hence my attempting to procure a decent console for this- and go from there. It's the anti-option option. I figured this is why we'd be recording in a large room with no samples, rather than the place they'd originally planned on going to, where the drums are stuffed into a booth and replaced with an old DM5 as a matter of course.

I'm willing to try it, even if only to prove a point, and have mentioned that we'd know pretty early on whether it sucks or not and the drums should just be recorded in a conventional manner. Seeing as it is mercifully only an EP, getting a safety recording of normaldrums probably isn't an issue. But we'll see. Chris from Garda is planning on assisting here as well, and he's more diplomatic/a better negotiator than I am. At least the guy's a friend of the band, whom we've known for years, so that helps. I think he's really overthinking this, though.

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Sun Jan 17, 2016 6:17 pm
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Walrus meat
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Post Re: Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
To me, this is also seems like a weird/counterproductive way of going about getting something that I imagine he/they want to sound "natural". I definitely get the perspective, but I think that appropriately mic'ing a traditional drum take would be way smarter/easier. :red:

Honestly, I would say good room/well tuned toms should be all that it takes to get a gnarly, big drum sound. Mic'ing the bottoms of the toms would probably be a fine idea as well, granted inputs/CPU usage isn't an issue. I assume big, resonant toms is the desired aesthetic? Dynamics on top, condensers on bottoms could be really righteous, one could easily gate the tops and let the bottoms run wild. I have done this before and it actually worked really well. :idk:

More than anything really, I would try to figure out a way to convince homeboy that is kind of a maybenotsogood idea. :red:

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Sun Jan 17, 2016 11:04 pm
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Simethicone
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Post Re: Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
That's kinda what I'm thinking myself. Re: tuning, I doubt that's an issue as all the kits I've heard him play are invariably well-tuned.

I don't have enough mics to mic the bottom of the toms though! Not unless he uses two rather than four. :? As it is I may be borrowing an Oktava MK-319 from a friend/former bandmate just so we can have a stereo pair of 'em, with the drummer supplying the other. Then at least we'd have pairs of those and NT5s. We have a shitload of 57s though. :red:

Given my preferences, I'd probably go more for something like what's presented in this thread. An ersatz version of that setup would be easy enough to accomplish- MK-319s as OHs, NT5 on snare, SM7B in the kick, Blue Baby Bottle as front-of-kit mic. In a large, reverberant room, that should sound pretty manly.

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Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:25 am
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Winston Wolf
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Post Re: Okay, so... Recording drums and cymbals seperately?
I dunno. I would still have him overdub just the toms. That has been done a bunch in the past to work around limited mics/channels and can sound a thousand times more natural than trying to go cymbals alone and toms/shells alone. 90% of the time that i want more "flexibility" on a drum sound, it is just the ability to boost the racks or snare without pumping more cymbal/hat into the compressors. Overdubbing toms allows them to be compressed however the fuck you want, but because you have already tracked the cymbals with a drummer actually playing the drums the way drummers play drums, you have a nice pleasant natural performance to base on.

Mainly, i am just suggesting that rather than recording kick+snare+toms only, then cymbals only, do kick+snare+CYMBALS(i.e. everything but maybe toms), then just toms(and maybe the snare). Tom/snare bleed in the cymbals is not a problem, IMO. The problem can be having too much of the reverse.

If there are concerns that maybe the drummer won't be able to match hits well enough to avoid obvious doubles on the toms and snare between takes, then i would suggest that this is also the problem with the original plan to try to do things completely separately, i.e. that the two performances are likely to be too dissimilar to each other for the thing to sound "right". Or like one drummer played it.

However you wind up doing it, i am curious to hear the results.

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Mon Jan 18, 2016 11:58 am
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