Re-amping drums...putting air on samples.

[bdunard]

Today I was doing an overdub to a drum track that was programmed in BFD. The keyboard player was playing back the song before the overdub through his leslie (off his laptop) so he could check a part. The leslie was mic'd and up in the control room. I thought wow, it adds a nice bit dimension to the drums and a bit of natural compression. The leslie obviously doesn't pass full bandwidth but I then started to wonder...could there be something to this. Coud this be a bit of a glue without adding compression? I have in the past played back drums through headphones and mic'd them to create an effect. But has anyone "reamped" drums to add air, depth, and take some of the edge off? Any pointers to this...I plan on experiementing but would love to hear input. I have always like the sound of drums off axis during playback...alot of time I like them blaring in the control room and listening to them in the hallway. There just seems to be a natural sound to the highs. A friend of mine was engineering at Johnny Cash's studio recently and told me that John (his son) hates unatural reverb so they built this room with speakers and some mic's. I think I may take some tracks there and see what that does to the drums. If I get a chance to do that I will try to post here. I'm rambling a bit but I would love to hear about your experiements with this.

[Exsanguis]

I've never "reamped" programmed drums, but have done the 'place a speaker on a snare drum and mic the bottom' trick to reamp crappy sounding snares, or to just add punch. Learned that one from Rich Costey, who is no stranger to great snare sounds. Playing programmed drums through a room sounds good, definitely couldn't hurt. Let us hear the results!

[crypticglobe]

I used to do that ALL the time with more inferior drum sample machines. I used to have an old Roland R-8. I would program drums... get them as real as I could... then... set up some speakers in a room in stereo about where the drum kit would be. I would then mix the drums to sound as much like an actual kit as I could. Then, I would put mic like I was mic-ing a kit... oh's and rooms and record them back in. It can be very convinving. Lot's of times guys would ask me who the drummer was on those recordings...

Now... with BFD, I really don't find the need to do that. I think the combination of the OH's and the 2 room mics will DEFINITELY give you what you are looking for. Use the BFD ALL or Ultra so you have all the mics out the mixer and then solo up the room sounds. I think you will be quite please. If not.... yes... using only the dry signals and re-amping them can work quite well as long as you use speakers that can get loud and accurate enought to make the room respond in a similar way to what it would with a live drummer.

enjoy...

[allencollins]

I would think if you need to reamp samples then you may just need to
find samples that are more of the sound your looking for.

You could also reamp them in a makeshift echo chamber. I used to mic up my tannoys with some 414's in my bathroom and record an ambient track. It sounded killer (sometimes). Then I'd add a limiter to the trax and they really slammed hard. Kinda like a good ole bonham joey kramer 70's drum sound.

[bdunard]

Originally Posted by crypticglobe

Now... with BFD, I really don't find the need to do that. I think the combination of the OH's and the 2 room mics will DEFINITELY give you what you are looking for. Use the BFD ALL or Ultra so you have all the mics out the mixer and then solo up the room sounds. I think you will be quite please. If not.... yes... using only the dry signals and re-amping them can work quite well as long as you use speakers that can get loud and accurate enought to make the room respond in a similar way to what it would with a live drummer.

enjoy...

I guess I should clarify that the drums sound convincing to me I just have always liked the sound of drums in a different room. If I can figure out how to upload some .mp3's I will try to post what I am going after. Thanks for the replies.

[allaccess]

I just reamped drums into the drummers cavernous living room the other day to get a big roomy atmosphere to add to what was (and was not) recorded. Sounded great! I actually wound up making 2 passes with the mics in different places and added them together to get a bigger sound...

I've also reamped drums through actual amplifiers into rooms to get some crazy sounds too. Love the bathroom trick, used that as well... Another fun one was a kick track that had no sustain in a ballady song. Put it through a 1x12 combo facing a marching drum; miced it and added it to the original sound and it was pretty sweet...

"air" around a drum sound can be so important to the vibe of a track, and I find it fun to do things like reamping for drums. It can be very organic...

Ryan Hewitt

[Hashbrown]

What about recording the kit fairly dry in a big room (optional room mic)
Then sending the mix down to a huge PA system in the same room (8kW PA with subs)
and micing that up with a stereo pair.

Its a weird question, cause who has an 8 kilowatt PA in a huge room to track drums in?
I do, so i was wondering if anyone has done this before.
I'll be trying it out fairly soon.