Drums

[l.sicilian]

Hi Jay, thanks for this FAQ and for the great music.

Some questions on old drums, did you ever apply any reverb (plate, echo chamber) or delays at all to the drum buss? I know some do, while others use it on snare only, some keep it 100% dry.

In general, how much kick to you preserve on the OH mics? Say you could be high passing from 75Hz upwards...

I understand this can be very subjective and personal, I always love to know what other engineers were doing.

Thank you again.

[Jay Messina]

Originally Posted by hAPIguy

Hi Jay and thank you for doing this!

I'm a big fan of your work.

Can you talk a bit about the way you balance drum overheads, room and spot mics for the rock genre and their treatments regarding eq, compression and maybe even transient designers?

Also, can you try to describe what the pair of KM86's mounted in the Avatar dome sound like and how you use them (if at all)?

Thank you!

I like to position overheads so that the snare will be centered, when the OH's are soloed. If I can't do that with 2 mics, because of the cymbal set up, I'll add another mic so I can get a good shot at all the cymbals, and still get the desired imaging of the snare. Part of a good snare sound comes from those OH's and room mics. I try to get some symmetry from a combination of room mics. Sometimes that means adding an additional mic that I can place off center, so that when I listen to just the room mics, the stereo image is symmetrical.
I do like to print all my processing when recording. I usually compress room mics, however I don't have a set rule for what compressor I use. I have an Audio Designs Compex limiter that I use a lot. One way I use it is to send a mix of the drums to it and add the output (in parallel) to the mix. I don't have a set way of recording drums. It really depends on the drummer, the drums, the room, the moment, etc. You can have all those parameters the same, but sometimes you 'feel' like doing it differently. If you have an idea, in your head, of what you want it to sound like, you can get that result a number of different ways. It keeps it interesting for me.
I can't honestly remember what the KM 86's sound like in Avatar. If I used them, I probably did a lot of compression and maybe just used it for an appropriate moment in a mix, such as a drum break or maybe to give a tom fill some special color.

[Jay Messina]

Originally Posted by l.sicilian

Hi Jay, thanks for this FAQ and for the great music.

Some questions on old drums, did you ever apply any reverb (plate, echo chamber) or delays at all to the drum buss? I know some do, while others use it on snare only, some keep it 100% dry.

In general, how much kick to you preserve on the OH mics? Say you could be high passing from 75Hz upwards...

I understand this can be very subjective and personal, I always love to know what other engineers were doing.

Thank you again.

Sometimes I would add some plate to toms and print it along with the overheads and hat. I usually kept the snare dry.

If I want to get rid of any kick in the OH's, I'll try to do it by covering the kick, in some way. If it wasn't covered, I sometime take some 500cps out of the OH to get rid of the attack of the kick.

[l.sicilian]

Thank you Jay, much appreciated.

Long live REAL music performed by REAL musicians.

[l.sicilian]

Hi again Jay, forgot to add to my last 'Thank You' post:

How high would you high pass the OHs in general, again, on old drums?
I understand this is also very subjective and/or song specific.

Thanks again.

[Jay Messina]

Originally Posted by l.sicilian

Hi again Jay, forgot to add to my last 'Thank You' post:

How high would you high pass the OHs in general, again, on old drums?
I understand this is also very subjective and/or song specific.

Thanks again.

Since U87's pick up so much ambient sound, I didn't want to miss anything by going higher than 30cps.