On a shoestring project part 25

  This week we saw some solid progress. After moving in to our new rehearsal room, Sebastian getting used to his new drum kit, setting it up and tuning it to his liking, it was time to lay down some tracks. As you might know from past blogs, I had recorded guide tracks ready. So me and Sebastian locked us in to the rehearsal room for few days with my recording equipment.

  Thing about recording drums is that it is probably one of the most interesting instruments to record from sound engineers point of view, but one of the toughest to get right as well. Having that many sound sources it is really hard to capture everything evenly. So why not just put a microphone on everything and have done with it? Well go a head, and if you don't know what you are doing, I bet what you get is a bag full of out of phase signals, and a drum kit that just sounds thin and weak. Now here is a bit of a secret for you, try this out. If you record drums, limit your self first to, let’s say four microphones. Two overheads snare and kick. Try to position both overheads in equal distance from the kick and snare, to avoid phasing problems. But if you want to try some thing else, by all means. Just have a good listen to both microphones individually and together. If they sound good individually, but weak together, the chances are you have an out of phase mics. Try moving one of them at a time and listen again, and repeat this until you get desired sound. Snare microphone aiming at the center of the drum from the side as close to it, but out of the drummers way. Also try to get the angle to the drum right. You don't want to be facing the skin from an 90 degree angle. I actually try to get as much of the actual impact of the drum, so couple of inches above the drum facing the middle sounds good to me.

But mess around, try out different set ups. This is how you learn. Any sound engineering course can only teach you the technical stuff, but in the end it's your own ears and experiments that teach you the most! For the kick drum, insert the microphone in it if you are after that rock punch, move it around and listen where it sounds the best. It has become very fashionable to have two microphones on the bass drum, one inside near the skin and another outside some distance from the drum. But I still believe in the old school way. The sound of rock drums have moved more towards natural drum sound (No more gated and overly reverbed 80s drum sounds, or white washed jeans...) and to me the best sound still is the old school jazz way, snare and kick for a bit of a definition and good over all sound from the over heads. Seriously, next time you record drums, I challenge you to try this instead the 16 microphones and bigger than life tom sounds.
So we had the sound sorted. Next thing is the drummer. When you take on the role of sound engineer (even as a musician) It is very important to make sure the musician is comfortable, that they can hear everything OK. First day we had a small head phone issue, but by the second day we got this sorted and Sebastian laid down track after track like a pro that he is. We had a small issue with booming toms, but as we needed a tight sound for the track anyway, nothing that a bit of fabric could not fix;-).

 And when you are recording, there is a constant battle between technically perfect take and the “feel”. Personally, yeah I like to hear instruments in tune, and reasonably in time, but it is the takes where you can hear the musician really getting in to it, when it almost has a live feel to it, thats what I am after, and thats what gets me in any good recording. I have recently been listening to a band called the Thousand Watt Stare. They are still recording their first album, but they have few tracks on their Myspace page. This is a great example of some tracks that just have amazing “feel” to them.
  Oh yeah, and let me just say this: I spent two days listening Sebastian play the tracks through, just the drums. And this is another reason every one in a band should do some recording. When you play together, you do hear them, but you don't get to appreciate the finer points of them until you hear them on their own. Now I know much better what he plays on the tracks, and this will improve my playing in the band. Also let me just say this without blowing our own trumpet, Sebastian is a sonic genius on the drums ;-)
  Next we are recording the bass and as I write this I am waiting Tomek to arrive and get started on recording on his brand new Thunderbird! (Photo) This is a real rocker. But more on the bass next week :-)