Pro Sounding Recorded Drums In Your Living Room?
PRO-SOUNDING RECORDED DRUMS IN YOUR LIVING ROOM. THIS EXISTS.
I heard this last night with my metalliband, The Forgotten Ones. We cut drums for preproduction demos for a six-song EP. Only five of which have drum kit drums on them, the other being a Dead Can Dance-ish thing with hand percussion. Our guitarist is the guy who engineered the drums on the Garda stuff, and what he's rolling with now beats the trousers off of that. Here's what we used:
Ludwig Epic-series six piece, either a 20" or 22" kick (we left the vintage 24" Ludwig in the back room), 10", 12". 13" and 16" toms, stock wood snare off the kit, with the brass DW getting the back room treatment as well. We had another 14" floor on the hi-hat side, but the drummer- you heshers will love this dude, he tears it the fuck
up- found it "distracting". Hats and ride were Paiste Rudes, crashes were Meinl and Zildjian A Custom, china was some broken-ass thing that sounded cool.
Mics were thusly: no front head on the kick, AKG D112 aimed at the beater, MXL R144 ribbon aimed at the shell. Sennheiser e609 on the batter side. DDrum trigger to trigger an expander, but we blended the sound of the trigger itself in versus using EQ to add top. No samples, all natural kick. Everything else was straightforward- Shure Beta 57 on the snare, regular 57s on the toms, modded MXL v67gs for overheads Glyn Johns-style. Now, the floor/ride-side mic here, to do it right (this is important) isn't really an overhead, it's down low near the ride. Don't ask me the physics of why this works, but it does. That and getting the snare mic placement right so that the bleed is actually what makes shit
better. The D112, Beta 57 and OH mics ran through Langley-modded AMEK channel strips.
My bass was a Groove Tubes DI and a POD XT for dirt; it will be re-cut. Same with the guitars-
straight in, to be replaced later. We played through headphones, nothing in the room but the drums, and we're thinking we'll rehearse this way- everything was really, really clear.
He did a quick rough mix with the drums before we left- no EQ, just compression, and they sound like a million bucks. Slow attack/fast release comp on the overheads to bring out the ring/body of the snare. (Try it, you'll like it.)
Save for the channel strips (which he got racked up with a power supply off CL for $350 for all four! You can find these on Ebay sometimes.) it's all shit you can just go out to GC or wherever and buy, nothing esoteric. It does help to have an amazing drummer and really well-tuned kit, I admit. That's a big part of it right there.
Remo Ambassadors for heads, by the by. Yeah, they're thinner and less durable, but they sounded great, especially on really resonant drums like the Epics, which have thin shells of alternating maple and birch. And we took the Superkick II off and put the stock head that came with the kit back on, and it was an improvement! And I
the Superkick II and so do you. But for that kick...
I think plastic beaters on the pedals, but I don't recall. Could be anything, hard rubber, wood?
Yes, there will be clips, but I doubt they're even mixed down yet. I'll post up some raw drums when I get 'em to cut my bass to.