Aug31

Written by:Rip Rowan
Thursday, August 31, 2000 6:00 PM

When recording rock rhythm tracks, I prefer to have the band all play together. That way the drummer and bass player are hearing all the cues they need to make performance decisions. For example, when a drummer doesn't hear the loud guitars he's used to hearing, he'll back off and won't play hard enough. Then you add in the guitars and wonder what happened to the energy in the drum track. I also like to attempt to get a keeper rhythm guitar track whenever possible. The guitar that's cut together with the bass and drums will have the raw energy of live performance.

For this record we wanted to get a natural, versatile drum sound. The goal was to capture a "studio" drum sound - tough and slightly larger than life, but not overly gated or processed, and with a nice dose of real room sound.

Drum Setup

The drum kit was set up in my main tracking room, which is L-shaped and connected to a hallway. The L-shape and the attached hallway provide some variance in the reflections - some short, some long, some simple, some complex. The room has a wood floor with rugs. Equipment cases and shelves provide some diffusion.

This is a room with character. It seems to be a goal in some schools of recording that tracking should be done in a room that is somehow sonically neutral (whatever that means). Not as far as I'm concerned. To me the worst problem is recordings without character. In particular, when recording rock drums, I really prefer a live-room sound. I like to be able to hear the whole kit breathing and speaking. That's why I don't overdamp my tracking room. I'd rather hear too much room sound than not enough.

For this recording session we used my session kit, a 4-piece Tama Rockstar kit with Zildjian cymbals and a Yamaha Custom Birch snare. The toms are outfitted with Remo FibreSkyn III heads which, to my ears, have a far more natural sound than the typical plastic heads. I also use large toms tuned low when recording rock. Small toms sound great live, and work fine on some kinds of music, but for rock, I prefer a big tom sound.

As for brands of drums, as far as I'm concerned, any decent tom or kick drum, properly maintained, can get a good sound on tape. The real exception is the snare. Snares are magical instruments that need lots of loving care and attention... and even then, some simply never make the cut no matter what you do to them. We had five snares on hand to audition, including Yamaha, Pearl, Tama, and DW models, and decided that the Yamaha was our favorite. It had less character than some of the other snares, but it sounded great. Don't get me wrong. I like snare drums with character. But a quirky snare drum can get really out of hand in a mix. Take a look at the EQ work we had to do on the Four Mile Mule project and you'll see what I mean.

When you compress and limit a snare drum, you lose attack in order to beef up the body. If the snare has ring, then the more you compress and limit, the more amplified the the ring will become. Since we were doing some serious rock and roll I knew I'd be using a lot of compression and limiting - maybe distortion - on this drum mix, and I wanted something that would sit nicely in the mix no matter how badly I tortured it. And thus the Yamaha snare.

Mic Setup

I used a fairly typical mic arrangement for rock drums: Crown CM700MPs overhead in an X-Y configuration, Shure SM57 on snare and rack tom, AKG D12E (the Brick) on floor tom, Shure SM81 on hi hats, Audio-Technica AT25 on kick. Sometimes I will use a mic under the snare, to get a more "snarey" sound if the snare is too dark. But the Yamaha snare had plenty of snare sound and a strong attack, so we didn't use a bottom snare mic.

In setting up mics for a rock tracking session, I usually take the same approach: a pair of overheads as well as a mic on each drum. If I know I am going for a particular funky sound, then I might take a different approach. On this project we were going to cut a dozen songs at a sitting, so I wanted a versatile configuration. So I used the tried-and-true approach.

The overheads are either a spaced pair or X-Y. Spaced pair mics offer more separation in the mix, whereas an X-Y configuration will offer a more focused and tighter sound. When using either, I make sure that the snare will be "centered" between the mics. This keeps the kit sounding balanced. On this project I knew we'd want to err on the side of natural and focused, so I chose the X-Y configuration.

The 57 on the snare usually goes under the hi hats pointing at the center of the snare and aimed directly away from the bottom hi hat. This reduces hi hat bleed, which can quickly be a problem if I need to boost the treble on the snare. The tom mics are aimed toward the center of the drum and mounted approximately 2-3 inches away from the head. The hi hat mic will go over the hats aimed toward the far side of the hats. This minimizes bleed from the snare.

Preamplification for the kit used the onboard preamps of my Mackie mixer for the overheads, hi hats and tom mics. The kick was preamplified with a dbx 576, with just a little limiting and compression. The snare was miked with an ART Pro Channel and amplified until I got a nice tube-limited sound. The slight distortion fattens and thickens the sound. Remember, in this approach the snare mic is only used to beef up the overheads, so if the sound of the snare mic is somewhat exaggerated, that's OK. I do not usually make EQ decisions when miking the drum kit and all mics were recorded flat.

Drum Mixing

When dialing in the drum mix, I start with the overhead mics full-up and usually completely dry - no EQ, reverb, gates, nothing. When I start like this, I'm pretty much guaranteed a fairly natural drum sound. The typical sound of a dry, flat overhead pair on drums is "natural to a fault." So I then start adding in the close mics. But I EQ, gate, and compress the close mics so that they fill the in the spaces. So if the kick is a little wimpy, rather than jacking up the bass on the overheads (which would tend to muddy up the sound of the whole kit) I'll create a fat kick mic sound and dial a little of that in.

I usually start with the just the overheads. I then EQ (and usually compress and gate) the kick and add enough kick mic to beef up the sound. Now I listen to this three-mic drum mix for the snare. Is it ringing? Is it too dark? Not meaty enough? After I think I've identified the direction in which the snare needs to change I'll EQ and compress the snare mic and add a little in. Then I'll usually EQ the hi-hats and add them in for a little extra sizzle, and gate, compress and EQ the toms if they need a little extra meat.

To hear how this all builds together, take a listen to the overheads by themselves. You'll notice that while they seem boring, they sure sound "real". You can hear the whole kit. Now add in the kick. I already had a good sounding kick. Miked with the AT Pro 25, I usually will roll off some bass below 40 Hz until the kick sounds "tight", and I may also pull out some low-mids so that the kick isn't too "thick".

For this song in particular I wanted to get extra slap - I really wanted to hear the attack of the kick drum - so I provided a pretty serious presence boost around 4KHz. Remember that this track isn't supposed to stand on its own - it's supposed to augment the overhead mics. Listen to the kick track and get an idea of how it sounds soloed.

Now I add in the snare. The Yamaha snare was nice and punchy, with a little ring in it. A couple of notch cuts with the Waves EQ pulled the ring out, and a smooth presence boost pulled the snare forward in the mix. Note that for this snare, the EQ did not need to be overly radical.

After the EQ comes the compression. For a snare like this I prefer to use the Renaissance compressor. I typically get about 6 dBs of compression at an approximately 4:1 ratio, then drive the limiter hard until just before the signal starts to break up. Driving the limiter hard makes the snare meatier, but you have to make sure you don't remove the attack completely. Finally I added a little Arboretum Hyperverb to provide some extra "space" on the snare. You can listen to the snare completely dry and after EQ and compression to get an idea of the effect I'm going for.

Putting the Drums Together

When mixing drums in Cakewalk, I dial in the sound I want, then submix the drums to a stereo track. This frees up CPU resources for further processing. Also, since Cakewalk doesn't have a proper submix bus layout, it allows me to use a Renaissance compressor on the entire drum submix, something that I almost always do. After dialing in the drum sound, I'll drop a Renaissance compressor on the master outputs and get a few dbs of compression and a few more dbs of limiting. This results in even more weight and volume on the kick and snare.

Remember this is a drum mixing approach I take for in-your-face rock drums. This is not a drum prescription. There are many applications where you'd want much less compression and limiting, and fewer open mics. When you compress and limit the drums as much as we're doing here, they fill up a lot of the available space.

For this arrangement, we wanted a dry, tight, almost overly focused drum sound on the verses, and a larger, thicker sound on the choruses and the bridge. The purpose of this arrangement was to keep the verses sharply focused in order to emphasize the grandness of the chorus. To achieve this effect we used very little reverb on the drum track, and created a dry drum track for the entire song. Then I cut out the bridge and chorus to another track where I ran them through a Cakewalk FX3 room simulator and another Renaissance compressor. I added enough room effect and compression to start to approach a Bonham-like size, but I didn't want the transition to be distracting. I think the result works: the verse drum track is tight and focused, the chorus and bridge have more meat, and yet the transition doesn't call attention to itself.

Almost all of the drum tracks for this record were recorded in a single long session. John Jay is a beast who does not tire, and he delivered the goods on 12 songs in essentially one sitting. Between John Jay's excellent performances and the drum kit we used, we got an exceptional drum sound on this record. Since it is loop-based, "Everything's a Lie" is probably not the best example of the drums that we recorded - for a more compelling example download "Facelift" from MP3.com and check out that sound.

Bass Tracking

The bass was recorded with a Fender Jazz Bass over an Ampeg SVT amp and Ampeg 8x10 cab. We miked the cab about three feet back with the AKG D12E. When working with a bass amp - especially one as massive and loud as an SVT full-stack - I will ALWAYS get a direct sound as well. A loud amp loads a room, making the entire room resonate. Strange and unfriendly sounds can result unless your room is designed to handle extreme bass SPLs. In this case we were driving the SVT well into distortion, so it was LOUD.

The bass direct sound was preamplified with a Joemeek VC6Q "British Channel". This is a great preamp for direct guitar and bass applications. For recording I used just a little compression, to add sustain to the notes, and rolled off a little high end to keep the bass from sounding too metallic. On mixdown, I added a Waves Renaissance compressor to get just a little compression and limiting.

When mixing the direct and amplified bass tracks, there is always delay between the direct sound and the amplified sound. If you're not careful, the two sounds will be out of phase with each other, which really messes up the tone. Even a little phase shift can affect the tone. Therefore I will advance the amplified track and line it up to be coincident with the direct track. The result is a larger, more focused bass tone that stays in control better.

Another factor to consider when recording a bass amp is settle time. Cabinets resonate. Speakers continue to vibrate for a moment after the signal stops. Amps also continue to put out signal after the input signal stops, especially when overdriven. And loud amps cause the room to resonate. The combined effect is a lack of definition - it takes a moment for the entire system to fire up, blurring the attack - and even longer for the entire system to get quiet, slowing the release. Notes lose definition and the important "black spaces" between the notes become filled with nonmusical garbage.

For this application I really only wanted the distortion and attack characteristics of the amp. I ended up using EQ to cross the two tracks over at around 200 Hz so that the direct track provided the bass below 200 Hz, and the amp, lower in the mix, provided the "edge" above 200 Hz. You can really hear the amp on the bass track to "Everything's a Lie", but the bottom end is tight, not boomy.

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