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

[karatemanjohnny]

Hey everyone,

I'm kind of dissatisfied with recording drums in a small room, with a small ceiling. I put a floor under the drums, and that helps, and I've got the ceiling pretty dead, but I really don't think I can get the same as a nice big room with high ceilings for drums. Artificial reverb isn't doing it for me today.

I just watched the Red Hot Chili Peppers documentary "Funky Monks" and it shows how they rented a big house and recorded it all there. The drums were in a large room. Same with the Metallica documentary "A Year in the Life of Metallica." Drums in a huge, huge room. Very big sound.

I want to blame my digi 002r converters, and I know they are sub par compared to after market converters like lavry/apogee etc., but I don't think they are the real culprit. I think it just boils down to the room.

Any advice, comments?

Thanks,

John

[StuartMac]

My drum room is small as well (16 feet x 15 feet) but sounds pretty good. It has pine walls, which I like the sound of for kit.

Anyway, I use a pair of LDCs in omni for room mics, and at the mix I put them through a Transient Designer with a hint more attack and a lot more sustain, which helps create the illusion of a bigger space.

Worth a try.

[wilcofan]

I always found dynamic mics to hide a room's smallness. Personally I'd avoid LDC's but that's just me.

But I guess I'm not ansering your question, how to make a small room sound big. I just try to hide that it's a small room.

Bob

[Shaman]

My room is also small (20squ.meters).

I recently experimented with a combination of different round wall diffusors and high frequency absorbers to make the sound tighter.

Tip 1: Listen to your drummer...If the drums sound bad in HIS position they probably will also sound bad on the recording...I moved the different panels around in the room while the drummer was playing and listened to his reactions/ comments.

Carpet under the drums made a big difference - especially for the snare sound.

Round diffusors on the walls made the overall sound softer and more pleasant.

Tip 2: You´ll never get a little room to sound like a big one, but you can get it sound tighter as described.

For the rest take the best outboard reverb, you can afford...Lexicon 960 with the wood room preset helps a lot for creating an artificial big room. In my experience all the little derivates like PCM 90, 80 etc. don´t even come close, especially with small to mid room clusters.

It still won´t be the same as a big room - but think for a moment how many big rooms are being closed and how much money it costs a month to keep a big room going and you´ll be a bit happier with your "otpimized" small room setup

[karatemanjohnny]

Thanks guys.

I was thinking that diffusors might be the answer. I even thought about taking the foam off the ceiling and just using diffusors, as well as all around the walls as well.

I'm gonna make some diffusors, for sure. See how it sounds.

[Tom VDH]

I also tracked a drum kit lately in my pretty small and dead vocal room and applied some big sustain in the Logic's "Envelopper" plug-in (kinda daw version of the transient designer), sounds like it was recorded in a huge empty room, lots of punch and natural reverb, defenetely worth a try (it sounds kinda dirty though, won't suit all styles).

Good luck,

Tom VDH

[Shaman]

Originally Posted by karatemanjohnny

I'm gonna make some diffusors, for sure. See how it sounds.

Also try some shelves with all sorts of stuff inside like books, percussion, instruments....they can work great as diffusors...IKEA makes some nice ones......not to expensive too...I went with 6 of their "Billys".

Jules has some experience "finetuning" his small room for drums, perhaps he can share his experience.

I read in some thread, michael Wagner used tubetraps to make his small room tighter sounding. He´ll probably has to say a lot about this topic too...

[jonnyclueless]

The room I work out of has an oversized vocal booth which I use for drums. It sounds great, but it is built for vocals so there aren't many reflections and it is not very big. I end up reamping the drums through a speaker in the bathroom. I almost prefer this at times to having a large room because I have more control overthe sie and space of the drums. And because I am actually micing a room, it sounds great (as opposed to trying to use some cheesy reverb).

[LightningBefore]

Originally Posted by Shaman

For the rest take the best outboard reverb, you can afford...Lexicon 960 with the wood room preset helps a lot for creating an artificial big room. In my experience all the little derivates like PCM 90, 80 etc. don´t even come close, especially with small to mid room clusters.

I have a small room and a PCM90 reverb works great.

[No4PCs]

I cant remember where i did read about this technique.
Put another suspense ceiling in the ceiling !
Means , not of the same size...smaller in size.
Because the sound reflections will beat in the original ceiling, then reflect in the suspense ceiling than come back to mics, expanding the "size" of the room.
Sorry my english, friends.

[Jules]

Try this

Copy the kick & snare tracks and distort the hell out of them with SansAmp plug in..

(What you want them to sound like on their own is some sort of totally whack, dirty industrial / Hip Hop beat - distorted to hell - but hopefully groovin.....)

Then blend this in under the normal drum sound.

The distortion ads - sustain and a room sound / size - far bigger than a small drum room..

I do this all the time on my Alt rock productions.. I am addicted to it..

(if you dont have sans amp distort the copy tracks with some other plug in)

[thethrillfactor]

Originally Posted by karatemanjohnny

Any advice, comments?

Thanks,

John

Try it.

Doesn't hurt to try.

The best sounding drum rooms weren't necessarily wide but tall.

Find a space that's hopefully quiet and empty and bash away.

[Winey]

I have some samples of real nice kick and snare room mics that I can trigger off the drums when needed.
If I'm mixing something that is really lacking space this can really help.
The IR verbs are decent, but never react like mics in a room.
If you have an adjoining room of any kind, open a door and throw an omni out there.
The distance helps even if it's not a very live sounding space.
A 20-30ms delay of the room might help too.

[indie]

You might want to try renting a really nice compressor for drums....distressor, 1176, TG1 for room mic or overhead.
I recorded some pretty big sounding drums at our publisher's small writers "studio", the iso-room is about 10 feet wide, 5 feet deep, and the ceiling height is about 9 feet.
I used a mono condenser overhead through a TG1. That compressor made the little room sound huge...supplemented by kick, snare and tom mics.
Give'er a go and see.

[iode131]

My room is medium size (40 sq meter) but it's a whole: I record, compose, rehearse AND mix in there (don't know, I don't like CR's...)

What I did is treat it as if it was a large CR (very dead front front, heavy bass trapping, good first reflexions management, lively back wall,...)
Then I found a nice sounding spot in one of the back corners to set up the kit. (wooden floor with a small carpet). To add shimmer and life, I hung curved unalite plates on the ceilling above the kit (covering something like 4sq meter).

The kit is very pleasant to play and listen to. Lively yet tight. Of course it's no arena but hey...

Unalite does add some nice HF and very short ambiance. Room mics sound great.

My 2 cents,

Max

[Mike Caffrey]

Try a ton of compression on a couple of mics.

Also, use band new, clear single-ply heads on the toms for every session you really care about. Make sure they're tuned perfectly, with the bottom head only slitghty sharper than the top. Don't tape them or muffle them at all so that they right like crazy.

This will add boom an sustain, especially when picked up by the compressed mics. Solod it might sound annoying, but in the mix, this can make thie kit/room sound much larger.

[BlueRadio]

Here is a magic formula for you-

1. New, well-tuned heads

2. Kill any unwanted ugly "small room" ring with treatment, as you see fit

3. Set up a mono distant mic as far from the kit as you can...if possible, down a hallway outside of the actual tracking room. Use subtractive EQ to gouge any unpleasant frequencies, usually in the low mids...THEN CRUSH IT...HARD!. A touch of tight verb helps here as well.

4. Play your recording through some decent speakers in a garage, church, large living room, whatever good room you can find...set up two spaced-pair omnis, compress them without mercy, and EQ to taste. Pan L/R.

5. DO NOT REVERB THE CLOSE/DYNAMIC MICS. This sounds painfully artifical. Keep them clean, add a tasteful amount of reverb on the room/ambient/re-amped mics.

[Jason Poulin]

I use ambient samples to enhance the close mic'ed kit.




Jason

[fastlane]

here's a trick I learnt recently.

Mix the drum recording as best you can, once done send all the channel into a stereo group. Then create an FX channel using stero delay as the effect. Set the delay ratio to 1/8 or 1/4 (if done to a click) to get a slap back effect. Set the feedback to around 1 and the mix to around 10 (depanding on how "big" you want the kit to sound). The add a little reverb to the fx channel with a high pass filter on it.
Then use the FX as a send on your drum group and apply modestly to get a big sounding kit.
Be gentle though, it'll sound over the top if you use too much of the FX's.

[KurtR]

Here's an idea.

http://www.drumagog.com/shawnpelton.htm

[uncle duncan]

You might try a mic in front of the kit, but only 3 to 5 feet away, so you don't get too much room. Then you could nudge that track back when you mix, - in effect, moving the mic farther away from the drums. PZM's on the back wall also help.

[Screwdio]

I have a hardwood hallway and a tile bathroom near/connected to my home studio. I just throw some omni mics up in there when I am recording drums and blend them with the close miced tracks when I am mixing. Things get real big, real fast.

[knightsy]

Originally Posted by uncle duncan

You might try a mic in front of the kit, but only 3 to 5 feet away, so you don't get too much room.

Do that, and run it through a Distressor set to "Nuke" and smashed 20-30dB. It brings up the reflections of the small room and makes them a feature rather than trying to hid them. Sounds huge too!

[gainreduction]

Originally Posted by Jason Poulin

I use ambient samples to enhance the close mic'ed kit.




Jason

...the only thing that really works.

[vernier]

The previous suggestions of dynamic mics and heavy compression can work .. this recording was made in an 8x10 office with three SM57's, dbx-163, and a Porta 144 cassette recorder.

http://www.jeanettechase.com/uploads/Dangerous.mp3

[Glenn Kuras]

Originally Posted by KurtR

Here's an idea.

http://www.drumagog.com/shawnpelton.htm

War from Front End Audio talks about Drumagog all the time.. Guess I need to dowload it and give it a try.. Thanks for the link.

glenn

[Bang]

Few things you can do here:

1. Diffuse the room with some nice diffusors. Put some bass trapping in the corners but do not put wall absorbers in the room, keep it reflective without a lot of fluttering.

2. Put far room mics opposite the drums in the far corners, keep them HIGH.

3. During mixing, compress the far room mics... a lot.

4. Then try blending the far room mics with some nice verb units. When I work with small drum room mixes, I like Lexicon stuff, even the old stuff works like PCM 70.

5. Get yourself a nice sandwich, I recommend corned beef on rye.

[Musiclab]

Put far room mics up and hit them with transient designer and then into a pair of parametric compressors, slo attack quick release, it'll get you in the ball park. Diffusion in the live part of the room is muy importantooooooooo.

[Space Station]

I have a small room, I use a mono ambient mic with an 1176 on all button mode..works but...Then the cymbals are sometimes too loud.. hmm need a new thread

[Bang]

Thats the problem with all buttons. I'd use 20:1 and just the attack release to tailor it.