Drum wars? The biggest drum sound ever????

OK, Nickleback, Creed, Train etc - big American FM rock / Pop blockbuster rock acts recently got into a 'who's got the biggest (natural) drum - room sound' competition a while ago....

You know the type, take quasi hip hop rock beats recorded with huge drum room ambience ala Led Zeps "Kashmir", add a dash of croaky tobacco auctioner vocal & add slabs of Dual Rectumfryer powerchords on the choruses...

I am doing a track sort of like that right now... (but hipper! )

I realised:

the drum patterns are critical, simple / hip hop with funky grace note rolls

So is the drummer, a hard 'rim hit' everytime is ideal to 'spank' the room sound

Running the snare through a Sans Amp really helps exaggerate the 'ragged hip hop / grace note' sound

I compressed the room sound with 2 x Distressors to be nicely in rythem with the track....

I also recorded single drum hits to perhaps trigger later...

So anyone got any tips or tricks?

[Rab]

Snare through a PSA1 is the baby - try the hats as well for a really trashy sound. The other standard trick is to trigger an 808 or 909 kick with your acoustic kick... adds huge weight. If you've recorded the session against a click, try just dropping in a totally quantised part (as you're in Pro Tools this is easy)... unless the drummer is really swinging this seems to tighten up the track.

Rab said - "try the hats as well for a really trashy sound. The other standard trick is to trigger an 808 or 909 kick with your acoustic kick... adds huge weight. If you've recorded the session against a click, try just dropping in a totally quantised part (as you're in Pro Tools this is easy)... unless the drummer is really swinging this seems to tighten up the track."

Ahhhhhhh! now we are getting to the good stuff!

you reminded me of the old 'sub tone' (60hz) trigger now!

I like that 'totally quantized' suggestion.... I WILL try all your suggestions and get back to ya!

Thanks!!!

Rab said - "try the hats as well for a really trashy sound. The other standard trick is to trigger an 808 or 909 kick with your acoustic kick... adds huge weight. If you've recorded the session against a click, try just dropping in a totally quantised part (as you're in Pro Tools this is easy)... unless the drummer is really swinging this seems to tighten up the track."

Ahhhhhhh! now we are getting to the good stuff!

you reminded me of the old 'sub tone' (60hz) trigger now!

I like that 'totally quantized' suggestion.... I WILL try all your suggestions and get back to ya!

Thanks!!!



P.S See mostly my usual style of acts play faster so there is no room for such trickery...

[Robotnik]

Copy your room mics to another track and pitch them down an octave: instant big room sound for a little room.

[DirkB]

Learnt from Elliot Scheiner (and using it myself ever since):

cut 300Hz on everything but the snare, especcially on rooms and toms.
Boost carefuly in the 30-70 region.

Huge tracks without the mud and some nice space to boost the bassguitar .

Good luck,
Dirk

P.S. I'm a drummer and I have two favourite room-type references:
- Tool, Aenima (Danny Carrey)
- Dave Mattews, before these crowded streets (Carter Beaufort)
Both wicket and different

[JYoder]

Don't forget gating and triggering the room from the snare. Tons of stuff you can do with that after it's gated (compress,sansamp,ampfarm,chorus),. Good for the explosive thing, particullarly for fills getting into choruses and bridges or wherever you just need a little more.

The band in at the moment say I have captured a great "Catherine Wheel" drum sound... I paniced as I remember them as an 80's band, but they are refering to their recent works..



Pitching down room mic's

Cutting 300hz

gating

ALL very cool tips!

Dig it!

[Steve Smith]

Originally posted by Rab
The other standard trick is to trigger an 808 or 909 kick with your acoustic kick... adds huge weight.

I have a couple samples that I made that use the attack of an acoustic kick and the body and decay of an 808/909 kick.. really cool, lots of punch and intital hit with all that body and decay... I f=generally use pretty dead acoustic kicks for this and then use SR to layer it underneath the "real" kick.

While we are taling a bit about SR.. the other great use for it in modern "loop based" rock is to have the kick of the loop trigger off the kick drum that is in the kit.. makes the drummer "feel" totally locked to the loop without making it toto mechanical with beat detective..

[Bang]

when it really comes down to it, the easiest way to make huge ass drums is to take one day and make some great samples. I have a sample of my drummer hitting his black beauty ludwig in a gymnasium and I put a U47 about 15 feet back and squashed it hard with a dbx 160 and a little bit of spot mic. Adding that into a mix really makes a huge difference. As for kicks, I've tried the whole "add in 909 808" thing and it never feels right for the kind of stuff I do which is hard rock. Instead, I like using samples of stuff slamming against stuff, like a ball against a wall... OR a simple mic on the beater side of a kick drum with a hard wood beater SLAMMING THE head. Sample that and add a few of them to layer the real kick. Done and done.

Of course the manlier way is to set up two additional room mics dedicated to kick and snare ambience, gate em and trigger one from the close snare and the other from the kick and toms and squash both mics good. good shit, I like this thread.
Steve

"While we are taling a bit about SR.. the other great use for it in modern "loop based" rock is to have the kick of the loop trigger off the kick drum that is in the kit.. makes the drummer "feel" totally locked to the loop without making it toto mechanical with beat detective.."

Can you give us a fuller explination of that last part please? I cant quite understand what you suggest....

[Steve Smith]

Ok, say you are creating loops in a program like reason, that lets you split the loop componets into diffrent tracks,and the drummer is playing along with the lop( ie: same or similar kick pattern for example ) take the kick sample from the loop, and use sound replacer on the kick drum from the kit, printing the effect to a seprate track... bingo, the lopp and the drummer are "in sync" without actually having to be in perfect time. For alot of stuff, I am not really concerned with the middle of the bar, but the downbeat being locked solid really makes a difference all the time.

make sense? I am oft not the best at explaining things that I am thinkin...

[stealthbalance]

[quote]Originally posted by Jules

the drum patterns are critical, simple / hip hop with funky grace note rolls

-------------------------------------------------
hi jules !
here is a suggestion that i do as part of my mix prep everytime. it only tales about 10 minutes but i find well worth it. in pro tools , i just solo up the snare track and drag every grace note and buzz rolls to a new track - that way all the feel and swing flavor is totally controllable , and now i can balance and process it anyway id like. especially for rock stuff that has no loops , this is the one element that give the drums a playfulness and loopish sort of feel , and wont let the drums sound like dumb 1/4 note stiff timing. you can turn it way up and its cool - no more 15 minutes trying to set the snare gate just right.
my 2 cents
s

[Meriphew]

I like to layer or stack drum sounds to get thick results.

[toledo3]

Hmmmm. There are thousands of great drum sounds, that sound totally different from one another. I guess the most important thing is sussing out what direction you need to go in for a given song, and ultimately thinking about how far or close the drums are going to need to be in the mix. Not that you can't manipulate that effect with reverb or room mics, but you may make some different decisions if you think about that arrangement issue ahead of time.

All of the suggestions have been cool. I would chime in with the classic "re-amp through p.a system". As I happen to do rehearsal in part of my building, I have a few p.a's handy. Set it up in the parking garage the other night, bwahahaha. I also have a bank vault that get some good reverb with the p.a. It's cool in just a regular room as well.

[smoothmoniker]

doing a similar track myself right now. The drummer had a great suggestion. He had several snares that were "paired up", meaning they sounded great together. So we tracked him with a throaty, mid heavy "Radio King" snare, then I got a sample of his yamaha maple custom, with all of the crisp snap on the high end. Together the sound is massive. It's a great pairing with the acoustic/808 kick idea. Between the kick and the snare, you've now destroyed everything between 40hz and 4k

happy tracking.

-sm

[Meriphew]

Originally posted by toledo3
I also have a bank vault that get some good reverb with the p.a.

One of my old bands used to rehearse at the old Wavelab studio in Tucson where they also had a vault that a friends band (Sidewinders/Sandrubies) used as a rehearsal room. I always thought that was cool.

[Jax]

If you have a drum machine handy, try programming a cool beat/pattern into it, but keep adding other drum sounds that feed the groove until it can't accurately play back all the sounds. I did this once with a DR-550, loading up on a funky-goth-shoegazer type tom/snare/kick beat until it sounded like a fire-breathing Beast trying to pull itself through a swamp!!! YOWWWEEEE!!!!!


ps- Might not work with all drum machines, but the DR-550 ****s things up in a cool way. The trick is to not wander too far away from the main pattern, but still confuse the machine!

(nothing personal, just wanted to put that smilie here)

[bassmac]

Reason, Loops, Drum Machines, Triggers, Samples, Sound Replacer... No thanks.

I'll take a good drummer in a good room with three well placed mic's any day.

[Bang]

Originally posted by bassmac
Reason, Loops, Drum Machines, Triggers, Samples, Sound Replacer... No thanks.

I'll take a good drummer in a good room with three well placed mic's any day.

That looks good on paper but the amount of options you have with that limited number of mics is quite low. I'd much rather have a kit mic'd with 12 mics in a nice room, at least I'll be able to pick and choose a bit more. Plus, samples aren't a bad thing, nor are they cheating. There is no cheating in this game, its all about getting things to sound good. Most commercial releases have drum samples. Its all about mixing them in tastefully.
Steve

[smoothmoniker]

bassmac:

Crappy Drumer + Reason, Loops, Drum Machines, Triggers, Samples, Sound Replacer = crappy drum track


Slammin Drummer + Reason, Loops, Drum Machines, Triggers, Samples, Sound Replacer = disgustingly hip

You can never rise above the level of the raw material, but a seasoned studio drummer who knows how to deliver a sound that front ends the proccess becomes a dangerous thing.

I'm with you. Give me the drummer, give me the room. But also give me the toys.

-sm

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by DirkB

cut 300 Hz on everything but the snare, especially on rooms and toms.
Boost carefully in the in the 30-70 region.

Another thing you can do is pull a wee bit of 800 out of the snare mike and boost below 100. Finally, pay close attention to the low-end in the overheads. I've seen too many people mindlessly high-pass them and totally wimp out what had been a big sound.

[Steve Smith]

Originally posted by bassmac
Reason, Loops, Drum Machines, Triggers, Samples, Sound Replacer... No thanks.

I'll take a good drummer in a good room with three well placed mic's any day.

Not on the type of music Jules is asking about you won't. I do like the minimalist thing, btw...
just not on these productions.

[bassmac]

I know - I’m with you guys.

It’s just that I was kickin’ it at the beach yesterday with a iPod full of Led Zep. So my ears are a little spoiled I guess.

Let's be glad JB didn’t have Reason to play along with.

-

[mwagener]

Try this to fatten up the kick:

mult the kick to another channel (or copy the track in a DAW), delay that channel by about 18 - 22 ms, cut off everything above 150Hz, boost 50 or 60 Hz by 4 - 5 dB and phase reverse that track/channel, mix to taste. The kick will get a big low end boost but won't add a lot of level since the two events dont' happen at the same time. The formula to figure out the frequency affected most is f = 1/time (or Hz = 1/seconds, or in this case 1/0.02 s = 50Hz)

[Bang]

Originally posted by bassmac
I know - I’m with you guys.

It’s just that I was kickin’ it at the beach yesterday with a iPod full of Led Zep. So my ears are a little spoiled I guess.

Let's be glad JB didn’t have Reason to play along with.

-

Led Zep is great, but its a totally different sound. Today's sound has much more impact from each drum. The zep sound is full of room and bigness, the drums are one instrument. Todays drums are much more defined, with kick snare and toms ultimately driving for punch and consistency. Not to say that some songs don't call for that larger then life big ole Bonham sound, its just somewhat rare.
Steve

[Jax]

Originally posted by mwagener
Try this to fatten up the kick:

mult the kick to another channel (or copy the track in a DAW), delay that channel by about 18 - 22 ms, cut off everything above 150Hz, boost 50 or 60 Hz by 4 - 5 dB and phase reverse that track/channel, mix to taste. The kick will get a big low end boost but won't add a lot of level since the two events dont' happen at the same time. The formula to figure out the frequency affected most is f = 1/time (or Hz = 1/seconds, or in this case 1/0.02 s = 50Hz)

Nice! I'm definitely gonna try this one. It's simpler than most of the other suggestions mentioned so far. That's probably why I like it.

[Jax]

Besides the drumming of Matt Cameron being the biggest factor to his Soundgarden sound, I still wanna know how the hell they got such killing drum sounds on SuperUnknown. Especially on Black Hole Sun. Sheeziss!

[cajonezzz]

ok, my current goto for cool loops/support of drums (I'm a drummer too..)

ohead or full drum mix to Line Six delay modeler . Set to LO res delay, one repeat in time with the track. Print the return full wet. Nudge back to line up with the original track. Bring in to taste.

use this same technique on perc tracks and or single mic drums, print and nudge....use grid at 16th note and move around to create interesting "loop like" grease for tracks.

[Nutmeg II.]

Got good results with a small sized set (Sonor Designer Maple Light 20"x14", 12"x10" and 14"x12").
You wonder? Me too!
But the key was to use a ddrum 4 se. We used the overhats and room mikes and blend some of the direct sound under the ddrum samples to make them life up a bit.
Try matching the tune of the drums with the ddrum.

Ddrum has some hugh tom samples! Had a linecheck at a hiphop festival and when the drummer hit the toms the pa was close to blow up!

To get a big kick I try not to muffel it and tune it to a tone (lets say 60Hz).
But if you want the ipackt of a muffeld kick go with that and ad a second infront of that unmuffled and tuned to a tone (tune from low to high and stop when it starts to resonate when the main kick is stroked). The second kick trick could be heard on the Rage Against The Maschine Albums.