Dunno, toms sound pretty "something done to" to me. Way too nice for a hardcore record.

Actually it is funny, the toms make everything else sound flatter, for their mostrous-ness.

Snare sounds a little/lot better to me, when it is hit in the midst of toms hits. Are you gating the tom mics to not exist other than where they are being hit? If so, you may want to un-gate them and see which one has the good snare bits on it? It may also however, simply be an illusion of where the floortom frequencies just coincidentally add girth where required to the sound of the snare, and only in those specific spots.

Well, the toms don't have obvious loads of EQ or compression happening. They do sound nice and shiny. But I could see real toms really sounding like that, especially with clear heads. Big bottom end happening, but that could be accounted for by tuning/placement. Shiny, but not unnatural. There's no obvious squash, big 8khz boost, artificial reverb or the like going on. So whatever was done was done well. Even if it's too "nice" for the genre, it's not so shiny it sounds out of place to my non-hardcore listening ears that still hear it as more or less like it could be an actual in-the-room sound. And the illusion of what's happening is the important bit. I'm not much concerned with the authenticity of how it got there.

I agree re: the tom/snare relationship. If it means leaving the tom mics wide open, I'd do it. Snare seems more spaceous that way. Unless they're doing nasty things to the OHs, let 'em bleed.

I will have to investigate that about the snare, I am sort of hearing the phenomenon you are talking about in regards to it's relation with the toms. The mics aren't gated, but they are edited and faded to the same effect.

Also, coming back, I think I am going to modernize the kick drum sound a little bit more.. Just a tad bit more of a click. I am kinda wary though, because that Red Scare mix I did sounds like the kick drum is hitting a piece of paper on laptop speakers to me. Luckily, that will not be a final master but they just wanted something to put up and they liked that mix so I just figured fuck it, I don't mind. I am just developing this new sort of crazy because of this shit now, but I don't think anyone else is expecting as much from me as I am so I am trying to chill out and not sweat it.

API 550B is your friend here for that on the kick. The overlapping bands/curves can do some fun things. I'll occasionally set the low band to notch and 200hz, cut a bit of that and boost 75 hz on the low-mid band. Similar experimentation can be fun on the top end, reversing the high mids and highs. Part of that modern kick sound is serious compression that fuxx with the attack of the kick. The 2500 is good for that; adjust the threshold 'til it's squashing 4-6 dB of GR consistently. (Manual makeup gain.) Adjust actual attack time to taste. "Loud", "Old" and hard knee. That'll do it. You may want to start expanding/gating it depending on how nuts it gets.

Noted about the bleed fo sho, dooders.

For the sake of nerding out, I'll let you know: The toms had clear Evans Level 360 deals, they're the best sounding tom heads I have heard. Funnily enough, I made a comment about them when I was in that class (there is actually lots of me and Eyal just discussing bullshit oddly) and Sean Reinert and Eyal are both all about them as well. Sean had them on his kit and his drums sounded amazing. The kit is an Orange County Drums and Percussion set, toms are 16" floor, 12" rack. Snare's a Chad Smith sig Pearl (sounds amazing) that had a beat ass head that I swapped out for a fairly used Aquarian "HI-ENERGY" powerdot style deal that I have on the house snare. Kick's a pretty deep 20".

Toms were mic'd with a PR40 on top parallel to the head about 4 of my little fingers off of the head, situated pretty close to the rim for both. MXL 2001s on the bottom, same position. Snare had a Beta 57 on top and an Audix i5 on bottom. Top angled 45 degrees pointed about between the very center of the snare and the rim, about 4 fingers lengths from the head as well. Snare bottom mic parallel to the head and same distance, aimed more towards the rim however for a little less snare rattle and more pop. Kick was an SM58 in the port, D112 for the submic. Was not an ideal situation, but I have fried both of my ribbons it seems.

That suxx about the ribbons. Is the ribbon itself toast?

Knowing that the toms are PR40s + a condenser on the bottom + clear heads on an OCDP kit, that sound does not surprise me at all. The Chad Smith snare does have a good rep; I've heard them a few times and used one on a metal session back in the day, and the thing was pretty great. I don't recall them being all that expensive, either, if you want to acquire one. Tone again is roughly what I'd expect- I might want to hear the thing ring more, but that's personal taste. I'm somewhat surprised, given the sound, that there was a bottom mic present, but your explanation clarifies that. What were the overheads, if I may ask?

OHs were KSM27s in a space configuration, with a M179 in figure 8 with the capsules perpendicular to the kit a bit below the level of the OHs and a bit in front of the kick. The sound you hear is about 70% KSM, 30% M179.

And yeah, that thing's a really cool snare. It's great for that nearingtrashcansnare sound while not sounding like it isn't a real drum when you crank down the head.

About the ribbons; pretty sure I fried them bastids with PP.

Also of note, the bottom snare mic is not too loud in the mix. However, it definitely is there doing a thing.

Can totally hear the trademark bit of D112 in the kick. And yeah, those toms are tits.

I'd love to try the new 360 Evans shit on toms but I have pledged myself lifelong to clear pinstripes. At least I have one waiting for my snare.

A mix:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... %20Uno.wav

There's definitely a lot of fight betweens the kicks and the bass. I really need to start shoving that beater mic closer to the head, I'm trying to dial it with EQ but it's not getting me 100% where I want to be without sounding fake and nasty. However, I am sure I will come to a fair compromise.

Yarr, that is a familiar battle i run into a lot. Low end living in too many of the same places. Kick seems, IMO, to be a bit too loud. Have you tried cutting a bunch of low end out of it? Sometimes that has worked for me, neuter the kick and it pops out more without having the compression battle between it and the bass pumping and muddying the same master buss.

ALSO, in moving the kick mic around, be sure to play not just with near/far, but also angle, just like it was a guitar cab. Sometimes you can make it do what you want that way. Sometimes it will turn out that it is not low end or high end that you aren't liking in a kick sound, but in fact, mids. And angling the mic seems to tend to affect those the most, IMO/E.

Still getting that olde phase mis-align vibe from the snare. What again was the setup for the drums?

Otherwise, shit sounds good man. What maps?

I can kind of hear the phasing thing with the snare. I feel like though, it is the best snare sound I have got by far. But it is def missing some bottom end or something. What is it that I am doing wrong, I wonder? I suppose it's probably just a mic positioning thing.

Oh well, sent out the mix that will probably be the final today. Didn't fix the snare, but I might as well leave myself some room to grow, eh?

Guitars were 5150 with TS-9 boost into my late 90's or so Line 6 cab with V30s that actually sounds pretty righteous. Fender Tele with buckers and a ESP Eclipse with JBs in the bridge for guits. Bass was my SVT-2 Pro with that Bristol Bomb OD I use for guitar up front into an Ampeg 8x10 that belongs to the band. Cheapy Squier bass with fresh strings, which I would like to remedy in the future. I need to get my bass' input jack fixed, because it sounds pretty awesome.

Yeah, it is definitely a good mix, but i do think that something is fucking with your snare mic/room mic/tom mic/whatever mic interactions, because i keep hearing it on random stuff.

Are you still using Reaper? If so, an interesting experiment would be to with all the tracks playing, zoom way in till you can see the individual up and down wavy signals, grab the main/most-prominent snare mic track(make sure snap-to-grid is disabled), and just drag it tiny amounts backward in time and listen as you move it to how the tone of the snare changes. What you will be doing is simulating what happens when mics are in or out of phase(i.e. the same wave forms hit different microphones at different times and so partially cancel each other out fucking with the frequency ranges that make it out to the monitors), and how you can sort of practice hearing when something is way out, or only a little out, or more or less in, phase.

You may also hear that as the snare gets more in phase, something else starts to get out, a tom, a cymbal, whatever. Phase is tricky on drums, because there are so many ways it can go wrong. It can be a bit like a puzzle game / whodunit mystery.

You can also see pretty clearly when something is a medium bit or a lot out of phase, because say, the snare waves(which will show up as bleed on all the mics, will quite basically, not line up visually, from mic to mic in comparison to each other. You will see a bump, and then a very similar-looking bump on another channel that is just a couple of milliseconds earlier or later. That is the mics being out of phase. If the bump gets early enough or late enough, you will hear it very clearly as much of the signal cancels out.

I am actually aware of all that funnily enough, it just seems I am too retarded to remember to apply it when appropriate. Ended up messing with that a little bit and it did indeed help my snare tracks.

Some mixes in progress of Bog Bodies' songs for this split.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... ix%201.mp3

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... ix%201.mp3

Still some weird things going on here and there, but it should be done soon.

This is what got the tone sounding like so far, I am thinking it will sit really well in a mix with a fat bass:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... 20Bass.mp3

By the way, it is lightly highpassed here but that tone is pretty lean.

For me, i could definitely get along with that as a guitar sound. Lots of space for basses'n'kicks.

What are you using for a cab/speaker? The combo one? If so, is it still the V30?

Aslo, listening again to the two bog bodies tracks, remind me, will there be bass? Or is that a no-bass band? Or, is the bass already there(in some spots i think i might hear it but then i think it is just the low strings on the guitar) and just turned way low?

Friendgetter:

Just used the internal V30, indeed.

And yeah, for the way this thing was recorded/will be mixed I want to have a lot of room for the other guys. The kick drum sounds amazing, but for some reason when I bounce it down out of Reaper it loses volume and turns to thin shit..? I have no idea what is going on with that, I rendered the thing a couple times last night to see what was going on and it kept doing it.

Bog Bodies:

There is bass there, it is just low in the mix.

SO: The guitar was recorded with a bi-amp rig. They're a two piece and he normally runs a Peavey Mark III rig live. He really wanted to use it for recording, so I came up with the idea of the bi-amp setup. It was the Mark III set to where he normally would run but a tad bit darker and my Blues Jr. with all the low end sucked out. Mic'd the bass speaker with an SM7 and the Blues Jr. with the Oktava.

I think I might bring it up a bit, but I was not quite feeling the way it was coming across at a much louder setting.

Listened back again and fixed the kick drum problem and pulled back the highpass on the guitars, sounds better now. This thing is going to sound more or less exactly how I wanted it to. Just ya know, not quite as good.

I am def getting closer and closer though.

The previously shared song, without such an aggressive highpass (I said it was light before but it's definitely because I do a lot of drugs):

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... %20Mix.mp3

Sounds much better without bass obviously, but we shall see in the big picture. High pass is at 65hz.



And our other song:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/137 ... %20Mix.mp3

S'my Blues Jr. cranked with my new (old) Big Muff on the final chorus. Not sure if I am gonna keep this tone or re-record it with the Marshall or maybe use one of my other guitars. Or just generally try something different. What do you dooders think? Highpass here is at 70hz for reference's sake.