drums in a small room - but sound like a big room?

[jeronimo]

Originally Posted by heisleyamor

here is my drum sample...Ask me for my chain if you're interested...I'm not too proud of the chain, I try to be more proud of my ears than my recording gear.

Edit: I'll try to post a dry track later...but just reply if you want to know what I did for reverb, ambience or whatever.

Sounds great to me, what chain did you use?
And what snare did you use in this recording?

[jeronimo]

Originally Posted by JazzPipo

Here are some pictures of the recording room with the kick setup.... I decided to make a bass tunnel after the photo

Your room doesn't look like 10m x 12m x 4m...

[Han]

Originally Posted by JazzPipo

Here are some pictures of the recording room with the kick setup.... I decided to make a bass tunnel after the photo

Try this: put your drums close to a wall or in a corner, put an ORTF pair of LDC's (neutral sounding) in front of the kit, but aimed at the opposite wall/corner. So you'll record the room and if the room sounds good you'll have a huge drumsound.

Add a little room or small plate reverb on the snare in a way that it doesn't sound like a reverb, but just blended with the snare.

[it's a Pleasure]

FWIW, I've got the option of recording drums in my big room (approx. 20'x12' w/ 12' ceilings) or in my booth...it's roughly 9' by 8' ish...really low ceiling.

I generally go for the small room. They are both great for different reasons. Trying to get the small room to sound like the big one is almost impossible...I would just embrace the benefits of the small room if I were you.

One thing about my small room however, is that the dimensions were roughly modeled after Mitchell Froom's room (which was modeled after the small booth at Sunset Sound). So...it could just be the room itself...

The latest go-around w/ drum micing was something like this: spaced pair of gefell m300 SDCs above kit, 57 on snare, d12 inside kik, subkik outside and a 441 above toms aiming more or less at the snare. The key is the 441 for sure...squash the bejesus out of it. no reverb needed.

another option is to put a pair of omnis up next to the SDCs and squash them.

take a day, buy a drummer friend some beer and just experiment for a while.

[JazzPipo]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

Your room doesn't look like 10m x 12m x 4m...

As in it looks bigger? The photo is a bit deceiving it really isn't that big, around 20-25m2...

[JazzPipo]

Originally Posted by Han

Try this: put your drums close to a wall or in a corner, put an ORTF pair of LDC's (neutral sounding) in front of the kit, but aimed at the opposite wall/corner. So you'll record the room and if the room sounds good you'll have a huge drumsound.

Add a little room or small plate reverb on the snare in a way that it doesn't sound like a reverb, but just blended with the snare.

I'll try that one this week when the drummer comes back for another session. What struck me most of the current setup is the bass buildup on the room mic's. probably because the mic's are to close to the wall. I think you're setup will have less a problem with that... soon to find out...

[jeronimo]

Originally Posted by JazzPipo

As in it looks bigger? The photo is a bit deceiving it really isn't that big, around 20-25m2...

No, it looks smaller, and 10 x 12 is 120 square meters bro. You're probably wrong on those dimentions.
I would say your room looks like 5 x 5 or 6 x 4.5 or something around this.
We're talking about meters here right?

[JazzPipo]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

No, it looks smaller, and 10 x 12 is 120 square meters bro. You're probably wrong on those dimentions.
I would say your room looks like 5 x 5 or 6 x 4.5 or something around this.
We're talking about meters here right?

You're right... my mistake. Wishful thinking It's around 25m2 (meters) so around 6 x 4,5... The more reason to post on this thread though

[Han]

Originally Posted by JazzPipo

I'll try that one this week when the drummer comes back for another session. What struck me most of the current setup is the bass buildup on the room mic's. probably because the mic's are to close to the wall. I think you're setup will have less a problem with that... soon to find out...

Hi pass filters can be very handy.

[heisleyamor]

Originally Posted by jeronimo

Sounds great to me, what chain did you use?
And what snare did you use in this recording?

chain isn't impressive...once again, I try to use my ears more than my gear...

I used a Yamaha 5 piece kit (with yamaha steel snare) > SM57(snare), Beta 52 (kick), 2 Samson C02 (overheads...upgrading soon but amazing for the price), SM58 on toms (probably 80-90% replaced with steven slate tom samples..overheads picked up toms pretty well too), SM7b (room) > Presonus Firepod

I used Steven Slate Drum Samples as a tool on the snare and bass drum (about 60%) and the snare sound was pretty close to my original snare sound through the overheads so it blended well. I used a little bit of convolution reverb on the room mic to make the room sound even bigger and compressed the hell out of it with Waves SSL G Buss Compressor...used Waves Rverb (plate) for verb on everything...URL Strip for EQ on snare and Waves REQ on some things...and Izotope Ozone on the overheads (used the tape saturation preset but tweaked a little bit) ... made hi-hat/cymbals stick out a lil more and have more stick definition...I had sends from the kick, snare, and toms to use steven slate room samples to add even more ambience...For the final drum track I used VoxengoAFTapeBus to add a lil more of an analog feel and then used PSP Xenon as a limiter just a tad...i think that pretty much sums it up...sorry for my terrible writing skills haha

[MarkRB]

Originally Posted by Mike Caffrey

If 30 feet x 36 feet is considered a small room, then I'm in a small room.

The ambience is just from compression on room mics.

Nice sounding room!

At a stretch you can delay the room mic(s) a little but that does bring up other issues like phasing/flamming but can work if used sensibly.

There is a little production place near me that has a tiny live room, maybe 10 x 12 but when I've done drums in there they always sound lively and pretty good. The walls are rough stone and there is a drape hanging across the ceiling so there aren't any serious standing wave problems.

[norman_nomad]

Originally Posted by Mike Caffrey

If 30 feet x 36 feet is considered a small room, then I'm in a small room.

The ambience is just from compression on room mics.

Damn! Now that's a nice room sound.

Also.. ceiling height plays a lot into room dimensions... I'm assuming over 10ft ceilings here?

What compressors were you using on the room mics?

[sweetmojo]

Bringing this back from the dead! Curious too about the height of Mike's room. we're building a 550sq.ft (50 sq.m) live room and, unfortunately, height is about 11 feet (3.2 or something like that, meters). Wondering how that would affect the sound and the "bigness" factor.

[Mike Caffrey]

I don't know the height of my room. It's not exceptionally high.

I think cubic volume can translate in to a big sound and sound can distance from the drums.

You can also get a small sound out of a big room by close miking.


I think that would seem intuitive in the sense that in a really small room, like an iso room, you can only close mic, so close miking = small room sound. However i think that's not why close miking sounds "small". The difference between small and big has a lot to do with the balance of the close/direct sound compared to the room tone and the decay.

I'm against the idea of delaying tracks to create ambience. It does create it a little - by taking the middle of the tone and placing it where the tail would be so that what we perceive as sustain is now louder. When you compress, or more specifically peak limit - or clip, which is why distortion sounds good - you change the balance between the close and the room tone. Decay tails that would normally be too quiet to be heard are now audible. That's why the transient designer can sound goos and also Tchad Blake's technique of compressing tom ring which feels like room decay tails.

[aermotor]

It's definitely not your converters making it sound bad, come on now people...

My room is quite small and I can get great sounds. You can't expect gigantic sounds from small rooms all the time. Room mics are key.

[HangArt]

And what methods you suggest, for avoiding cymbal bleeding from room mics? What cymbals, mics, placements, eq, comp...?

[Mike Caffrey]

That's very easy.

If you want the cymbals louder than the snare in the room mics, have the drummer hit the cymbals harder than the snare. If you want the snare louder than the cymbals, have the drummer hit the snare louder than the cymbals.


The balance of the sounds in the room a controlled at the point of creation. There's no way around that.

[Beardhead]

Perhaps it helps not to deaden the cealing but instead to take the mikes up to the ceiling so they work like pzms.
just an idea. did that once with a 2m ceiling and seemed to work fine.
Claus

[washingtonirving]

Hey guys,
Just thought I'd weigh in here as I've just taken on a small studio. The live room is 15'x10' with a 7' ceiling. I spent the whole of yesterday with another engineer (I play drums too) in there experimenting with mic techinques/combinations just so that we know that we can nail it as more clients start coming in.
Here's what worked (really well I might add) for us. The main trick seemed to be to use tight sounding close mics and try to put them at angles where cymbals etc were off-axis. I do mainly pop/rock/alternative by the way.
So..
B52 on the kick. Started with a D112. Didn't work for us and I'm not really into the multiple kick drum mic thing personally. Which I could afford a 47fet!
57 on the snare top. Started with a Beyer 201 which was ok but the 57 sat in the mix better.
Beyer 201 on the snare bottom. Worked really well. Very isolated sound. Pointed right at the snare wires in the middle.
Calrec CM654C on the hats.
421s on the rack and floor.
I usually use Coles on the overheads but with a 7' ceiling it just didn't work so we did the following. A 414 about 8-9" directly above each of the two crashes on the opposite side of the drummer (me!) and then another Calrec CM654C on the ride. We also tried Neumann KM184s on the crashes but they sounded too harsh.
Then we put two Coles in front of the kit pretty much against the back wall (about 8' in front of the front of the kick drum) but with foam baffles on the wall directly behind them so we were hearing the delay between the close mics and the coles a little more than just 'room'. For rooms we also tried Royer R122s and SE Geminis but the Coles worked the best. We then put a Royer R122 in the corridor with the door ajar, This sounds GREAT. We also tried a 414 which sounded slightly harsh with the acoustics of the hallway.
Now for the wild card! I wanted to put a single mic above the kit and then really thrash it with a Distressor just to blend in and see how well it worked. We started off with an old ball and biscuit which sounded really cool but a little but too lo-fi for general drum recording. We then tried a Neumann TLM103 which was really nice but a bit too hi-fi! Then, in a fit of madness we decided to try an SM7B. Sounded GREAT. Really great.
With just the close mics it sounded (suprisingly) really dead. Then with a tiny bit of room and a tiny bit of corridor the whole sound came to life nicely.
Anyway, that's it from me. Good luck!

[washingtonirving]

Hey guys,
Just thought I'd weigh in here as I've just taken on a small studio. The live room is 15'x10' with a 7' ceiling. I spent the whole of yesterday with another engineer (I play drums too) in there experimenting with mic techniques/combinations just so that we know that we can nail it as more clients start coming in.
Here's what worked (really well I might add) for us. The main trick seemed to be to use tight sounding close mics and try to put them at angles where cymbals etc were off-axis. I do mainly pop/rock/alternative by the way.
So..
B52 on the kick. Started with a D112. Didn't work for us and I'm not really into the multiple kick drum mic thing personally. Which I could afford a 47fet!
57 on the snare top. Started with a Beyer 201 which was ok but the 57 sat in the mix better.
Beyer 201 on the snare bottom. Worked really well. Very isolated sound. Pointed right at the snare wires in the middle.
Calrec CM654C on the hats.
421s on the rack and floor.
I usually use Coles on the overheads but with a 7' ceiling it just didn't work so we did the following. A 414 about 8-9" directly above each of the two crashes on the opposite side of the drummer (me!) and then another Calrec CM654C on the ride. We also tried Neumann KM184s on the crashes but they sounded too harsh.
Then we put two Coles in front of the kit pretty much against the back wall (about 8' in front of the front of the kick drum) but with foam baffles on the wall directly behind them so we were hearing the delay between the close mics and the coles a little more than just 'room'. For rooms we also tried Royer R122s and SE Geminis but the Coles worked the best. We put this through a Smart C1 comp and gave the little teeny squish. We then put a Royer R122 in the corridor with the door ajar, This sounds GREAT. We also tried a 414 which sounded slightly harsh with the acoustics of the hallway. This hall mic went through a Distressor and was slammed pretty hard.
Now for the wild card! I wanted to put a single mic above the kit and then really thrash it with a Distressor just to blend in and see how well it worked. We started off with an old ball and biscuit which sounded really cool but a little but too lo-fi for general drum recording. We then tried a Neumann TLM103 which was really nice but a bit too hi-fi! Then, in a fit of madness we decided to try an SM7B. Sounded GREAT. Really great.
With just the close mics it sounded (surprisingly) really dead. Then with a tiny bit of room and a tiny bit of corridor the whole sound came to life nicely.
Anyway, that's it from me. Good luck!