WE've heard great snare secrets. How about TOM secrets?

[macleod]

Originally Posted by al1

A good trick to speed up a mix and put an end to annoying tom spill is to sample the toms (of the players kit) then trigger them using drumagog (after making a multisampled gog file), with a touch of compression eq and reverb it fits because the overheads will fill out the natural clarity of the toms with the drumagog providing the punch.

I used to religiously cut out the spill in between each Tom mic fill, which could take the best part of a day for a 4 track EP, Drumagog (although cheating a bit) is the way to go for me now! I highly recommend it (and no I don't work for them).

I hate this attitude. Obviously using sample replacers is good if you are trying to salvage a bad recording but surely this thread of tom secrets is about getting a great tom sound that will not need to be replaced. I would rather we talked about how to get that killer sound.

K

[seb37000]

I hate this attitude. Obviously using sample replacers is good if you are trying to salvage a bad recording but surely this thread of tom secrets is about getting a great tom sound that will not need to be replaced. I would rather we talked about how to get that killer sound.

Well, we're all cheating in some way, if you really want to stay "true" just put one mic in the room where the band is and put that on c.d with no mixing.
Any way I hate sound replacing, it sounds so fake, I just cant stand those sounds anymore....where has the art of recording gone too ???

[blackcatdigi]

Originally Posted by Dot

Get a well-tuned kit where everything's balanced and it actually sounds good standing in the room. From there you can use any number of mics in any number of positions through any number of preamps and it'll sound good.

Yes.

There are a lot of excellent drummers who don't know how to fully tune and select snares, cymbals, drums, ect for just the right balance in the studio...for the song.

There are always exceptions, but I have to agree with this. The drummers who are really excellent tuners are (IME) usually not that great as players. OTOH, the really great players range from OK - pretty good tuners, but they're generally not fantastic at it.

Honestly, I don't really value tuning as much as a drummer that just knows how to 'hit' the drum. I think it's remarkably easy to demonstrate; Most everyone here has had the experience of an OK drummer playing a kit and it just sounds kind of lame. Then a really great drummer sits down, plays the same kit and BOOM! Sounds freakin killer...

Tone is in the bone.

And, as I've mentioned here before, I'm also really not a fan of the current trend of uber-resonant drums, heads and tunings and resonant enhancing HW; I like for drums to 'speak', and then get the hell out of the way.

BTW, I'd be interested to hear some examples of drum recordings by the various people chiming into this thread. While I'm sure there are some that are going to sound killer, there are surely those who's recordings are not really anywhere near what most of us would consider professional standards - and some just downright amatureish, and yet who don't hesitate to share their "secrets".

Good idea:
Here's a clip of a line check right before 'spinning some disk'. Drums are 70's 3-ply maple Slingerlands, original (dullish) bearing edges, 'broken in' pinstripe batters, clear ambassador resonants, 609s on tops of toms (13X9" rack, 15X12" as floor), midas pres, touch of eq, no dynamics (other than on the room). Also, I didn't even bother to tweak the tuning; They sounded alright in the room, so I just went with that. I'm the idiot hitting the drums on this.

Sounds reasonably decent, and (judging from the ruffs) I'm sure it will mix up just fine.

Forgive the sound quality (it's all I have laying around th house at the moment; the file is 128kbps MP3, imported into PT to cut, then re-bounced as a WAV; I don't have the 'mp3 option' on my little home PT setup). But hell, you can hear some toms.

[Protools Guy]

Casey -

Thanks for this. They sound great. Very natural and warm.

I'm wondering if I'm boosting too much high end in my tom's eq to get the snap/attack out of them.

[warhead]

Originally Posted by Dot

(after chiming into the thread) BTW, I'd be interested to hear some examples of drum recordings by the various people chiming into this thread.

Various meaning anybody but you? Everyone else's credibility in this thread is called into question, except yours.

Nice.

War

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by Dot

BTW, I'd be interested to hear some examples of drum recordings by the various people chiming into this thread. While I'm sure there are some that are going to sound killer, there are surely those who's recordings are not really anywhere near what most of us would consider professional standards - and some just downright amatureish, and yet who don't hesitate to share their "secrets".

Here's a link to a song in the MP3 section from a band I tracked/mixed/produced recently. The majority of the tom sound was derived from the FOK (MD421) and overhead (SM81 + MXL 603) mics with very slight supplimentation from the actual close tom mic (e604.) No plugins were used during mixdown. There's not that many toms played in the song, but this is an example of what a more "natural" tom sound might be. Whether it's good or "downright amateurish" is up to the listener to decide!

http://gearslutz.com/board/showthrea...weird+lil+song

Having a good drummer in a good room who knows how to tune is hardly a "secret..." Perhaps you'd like to share some of your tracks with us, Dan?

[cstanley]

i like the sennheiser e604's, what do folks think of the
new(er) e904's?

-carl

[chrisso]

At the moment, software like Drumagog is not capable of reproducing the amount of tonal variety or degrees of volume (velocity) a human drummer can produce playing a real tom.
Therefore, for me, sample replacement will always be a compromise.

It's somewhere to go if you're not happy with your sounds. Not somewhere to go on every session.

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by chrisso

At the moment, software like Drumagog is not capable of reproducing the amount of tonal variety or degrees of volume (velocity) a human drummer can produce playing a real tom.
Therefore, for me, sample replacement will always be a compromise.

It's somewhere to go if you're not happy with your sounds. Not somewhere to go on every session.

Assuming what you're looking for is tonal variety and degrees of volume.

In a lot of modern rock/pop production, it isn't. It's good to know that you can ADD that kind of consistency later on. If you have to result to augmenting with samples, it's not always the engineers fault.

Plus, I'd rather have 127 velocity layers from a great player than 1,000 velocity layers from a bad player.

That being said, you shouldn't breeze thru your work as an engineer during tracking just becase you know you can .gog it afterwards. I don't think anybody's implying that, tho...

[Einstein]

Originally Posted by slaves666

I always track individual hits at the end of a session, of every piece of the kit, in case I need to receate something.....I almost always make a drumagog file for the toms, that way I have no cymbal bleed, and I can get the loud. Also, phasing issues are o.k. due to the fact that they are the same toms hear in the OH and Room mics.

I do this too, but I've found it's best to do at the BEGINNING of the session when the heads are fresh and right after you've gotten them tuned properly. I like to compress the holy crap out of toms to make them go BOOOOM, and when you try and cut them out, you paint yourself into a corner if you want that boombastic compression going on. What happens is you have to choose between cutting off the decay of the tom, or having a small bit of cymbal bleed that ends up sounding like a funny quick splash if you start abusing the hell out of a compressor.

I never claim to be an expert, but that's my two cents.

OH, and get PLENTY of samples if you do this. Don't slack off on the toms. This is a big pet peeve of mine on a lot of drum sample libraries. The more velocities you get on your tom samples, the more natural they're going to sound in the mix itself.

[chrisso]

Originally Posted by AlexLakis

Assuming what you're looking for is tonal variety and degrees of volume.

I can see the argument with regards to bass drum and snare. In modern rock they generally hold down a consistent beat. I think toms still need to have a reasonable dynamic range.....and some different tonalities.
Kind of like hi-hat. A hi-hat doesn't groove in any kind of music without some tip and shaft timbres and some louder and softer notes.

[AlexLakis]

Originally Posted by chrisso

I can see the argument with regards to bass drum and snare. In modern rock they generally hold down a consistent beat. I think toms still need to have a reasonable dynamic range.....and some different tonalities.
Kind of like hi-hat. A hi-hat doesn't groove in any kind of music without some tip and shaft timbres and some louder and softer notes.

I agree with you about the hi-hat, but I'd say that in many or most modern rock/pop productions, the toms can easily pass with having even less dynamic range than the snare (or bass drum even.) Many modern rock or pop songs only have a couple of tom hits throughout the entire song. For this, a single sample is all you need sometimes. Sure, if you're riffing on the floor tom during the first verse or whatever, you're gonna want a couple of different hits...It all depends on the song really. Sometimes, for very expressive parts, only real toms will do.

[chrisso]

Yeah, that's reasonable.

[Chris]

How about tips on getting toms to punch through a distorted guitar heavy mix?

[Brad McGowan]

Transient Designer allows you to give the toms some nice punch.

Brad

[mardyk]

I use an expander to attenuate the bleed in between hits. Much smoother than gating I think. Try Waves Renaissance Channel. It has a great expander section.

[Led]

Yes expanders I prefer over gates for toms. The other day we were short some mics and I used acouple of beta58a's on toms (ayotte kit, hide looking heads, funny high rims) and they sounded damn nice and punchy with a nice slap also. Through Al Smart pres. Pretty good for a 150 buck mic.

[VictorQ]

I can't believe nobody mentioned this little 'secret'... Now I'm not really for gated toms... Since I've learned to record them properly (using mics and placement as described in this thread) i haven't gated tom, only a bit of expander (dbx 904 or ntp 179-160... yum yum). But here goes:

If you hard gate the toms either use a look-ahead gate (does that even exist?) or duplicate the track, slide it a couple of milliseconds to the left and send that to the side-chain/control input of the gate. That way it won't cut off the initial transient of the tom hits.

So there you go. Remember TUNING and you won't have to worry about these things... That's probably the reason why no-one mentioned techniques like this.

[Thebassist]

Another big up for tuning and new heads. I've worked repeatedly with this great Memphis drummer with the mojo for tuning, taping crap to the heads, wallet on the snare, all types of tricks. He tunes the toms an octave apart near the tonal center of the project, and has the funkiest looking little kit with two splashes for hats. The small hats cut back bleed, and all the hard work he puts in up front makes mixing a breeze. And he hits the drums real loud, and consistently. This mofo is so bad, years ago we put a click up behind him (he got the count off, no click through the tune,) and he was locked up on the 3rd chorus!

The moral to this story is,

If it don't sound good hitting tape, you're never going to fix it.

I learned the hard way years ago to spend the extra time getting great drum sounds on the front end, rather than futzing around with bandades in the mix process.

Oh yeah you can use gates too.

[brendondp]

Okay, here's a list of what you NEED, and a list of what's HELPFUL.

NEED:

1. Consistent, balanced drummer.

2. A room with as few comb-filtering artifacts as possible.

3. An appropriately tuned kit.

HELPFUL:

1. New heads.
Can we stop with the "new heads are essential" thing? Some of the greatest records with the greatest drum sounds, y'know, the one's everyone starts threads on ("How do I get that great Motown drum sound...?") were recorded with the heads that were on the kit from the last session. And maybe they were un-dented.

2. Tuning each lug to the same tension.
Helpful, but certainly not essential. Drum kits (with the exception of tympani and certain manufacturers specific lines) are not designed to produce A440 pitch or anything close to it. The variables of what makes a great drum/tom sound are too many to be reduced to tuning all the lugs to the same pitch. It's a great place to start, but many drummers I know (myself included) then detune one or more lugs to arrive at the final sound. And, yes, this is dictated by the song, the kits shell composition, the bearing edge, the heads, the sticks, the player... oh, and the room.

3. Tuning the bottom head higher or lower.
Helpful, but again, not essential. If you're only listening to what the lugs are telling you then you're not listening to what the rest of the kit and the room are telling you. Ever tuned a tom to perfection to find it sets the snares off like nobodies business? Every room and kit is different and requires different approaches. I used to get so pissed off tuning toms, kick and snare at the practice room to only then retune at the venue or studio. I also used to get pissed off tuning drums off the stands only to have the tuning change once they were mounted back on their stands.

4. The "right" mic.
I haven't said anything about mics because like many have already mentioned, the room, player and song come first. If the Shanghorn MD Ten Billion XD Tom Mic works for you on every occasion with every player, congrats. I can't imagine that Joey Jordison and the late, great Elvin Jones requiring the same approach to miking so recommending One Mic To Rule Them All is a little redundant.

5. The "right" placement.
Again, it's good to have some places to start. But just because sticking Mic X in position Y last time resulted in sound Z, doesn't mean that repeating that formula with yield the same result.

6. The "right" head.
Too many variables and personal preferences. Having said that, if you're recording Joey Jordison, (and if you are, lucky you) then I hope you're familiar enough with Slipknot's material and most drums heads in general to know that calf-skin heads probably won't cut it.

The fact, or so my experience tells me, is that making a kit sound good is a exercise in lateral thinking and listening. If you're looking for a formula I guarantee you'll get yourself pretty dissappointed before long. The room, the kit, the bearing edge, the shell composition, the head, the stick bead shape and weight, the drummer... oh, and the room (again) will present too many variables to allow a rigid approach based on the mechanics of the physical object.

An open mind and the ability to learn make drum tuning so much easier.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

bdp

[Thebassist]

Dude

I heard Elvin Jones used Drumagog on A Love Supreme. With Vintage Warmer in PT.
Anybody know what summing box they used?

[brendondp]

Originally Posted by Thebassist

Dude

I heard Elvin Jones used Drumagog on A Love Supreme. With Vintage Warmer in PT.
Anybody know what summing box they used?

No summing box...

Bounced down inside PT and burnt to MP3 on CD.

bdp

[Thebassist]

With beat detective and of course plug delay compensation. At 192.

[beesting]

Originally Posted by thethrillfactor

A little subharmonic sub synth on the racktoms and a more on the floor toms to give the bottomn sustain on a subwoofer.

interseting! hadnt thought of that. i assume the synth is pitched to the toms? sine wave? must give it a try...