Whether you’re Alex Van Halen, Ringo Starr or you have your own home grown garage band, recording and mixing drums in the modern DAW is no easy feat, writes Greg Bester.
I’m pretty sure I’m not alone when I say that my recording and mixing techniques when it comes to drums have evolved through many incarnations over the years and pretty much change every few projects or so. This is probably due to the fact that I’m still learning (have no qualms about that) but as time goes on I, just like many others, focus myself to refine and rework my techniques so as to strive for better sounding recordings.
Most of sound engineering/music production is a long journey of trial and error where we turn, push and twiddle our way towards a better way of tackling problems and taking our craft to more creative heights. It becomes quite clear very early on that the frustrating truth is that most of this stuff cannot actually be taught through a book and even if it could, it doesn’t make a difference until our ears catch up and can actually hear it.
No matter how technology progresses and no matter how many people get home studios there will always be the barrier of training your ear through constant hard work and careful objective listening. These two concepts along with humility coupled with a keen willingness to learn are essential ingredients to achieving excellence in the field.
Of course, knowing the fundamentals and even a knowing them a little more is crucial to a better understanding because, at the end of the day, despite audio being a bona fide science that can all be communicated with mathematics, careful execution of the fundamentals is the name of the game. Fortunately, you don’t need a PhD in mathematics to become a competent mix engineer because we were born with our ears to decode these pressure waves and to help us be creative instead of worrying about the minutiae of the little picture. For in audio, it is the big picture that counts.
In the past, being an audio engineer was an esoteric endeavour where a carefully selected aspirant would gather skills under a mentorship in a professional environment and eventually, after making lots and lots of coffee, succeed his master into being a fully-fledged sound professional.
In South Africa mentorship programs are few and far between which results in a lot of us learning this stuff on our own or going to audio college, but as my experience was later to reveal to me, many of the industry secrets that you do learn along the way as a career professional are simply well thought out and carefully executed fundamental concepts that are easily overlooked or sometimes entirely forgotten. One piece of advice? Always jump in the deep end and do the most challenging or intimidating projects you can, and always take opportunities to learn from professionals with more experience than yourself. And remember:
Professionalism is an attitude, and a skill set – not a platform – Tim Halligan, www.thewombforums.com
Everything counts
The sound of the drums has always drawn my attention more than any other aspect of recording. It is indeed my favourite part of the album production process and nothing quite satisfies me like the sound of well recorded and well mixed drum sound.
I’m sure from your own experiments you’ve discovered that getting that particular drum sound is a lot harder than you’d expect and requires a huge amount of trial and error to achieve even “acceptable’ results. In the case of drums, once you get in there, dealing with multiple microphones and phase issues, controlling the broad dynamic range onto disk/tape at the risk of distortion or clipping, you have the undesirable task of meeting the expectations of yourself and your clients by manipulating them during the mix phase into sounding larger than life, or at least suitably so to serve the material.
Now, not all drums are required to sound larger than life. Some drum sounds are best left natural, or at least mixed to be perceived as such, provided they were recorded sufficiently enough to do so. Something tells me that an improvisational jazz record would not benefit from extreme EQing and heavy compression. Or will it? And what about those instances when the drums need that larger than life sound and bold, captivating energy? Is there one single idea or secret to it, or is it a combination of things that gives the mixed representation of the drums that certain dynamism and magic? In the most sober of senses, the answer is simple:
Everything counts.
Your sound is only as good as your source
Most of the substance of a good recorded sound (and this goes for just about anything) begins at the point you place the microphone in front of the source. Finished and klaar.
There is no such thing as an “acceptable’ sound that you are willing to commit to tape so it can be manipulated into a “better’ sound later. Take my word for it. Set your goals high.
The caveat here is that, unfortunately, the sound you capture at the source is what you are stuck with and should not be viewed as a “starting point’ but the first shot at achieving whatever sound you’re going for. This is achieved by having the best microphones possible, placed in a well thought out manner to capture the drum kit in its entirety, coupled to good microphone preamps and finally (in the case of the DAW) the best possible digital audio converters and studio monitors you can afford. This may seem daunting as not all of us have access to the likes of Neumann, DPA, Neve, Lavry or Klein and Hummel, but there is always a way to achieve great results with modest gear. Will it sound better than Steely Dan? We can try, but probably not. Will it get your project across effectively? Yes, with the right considerations.
Hands down, the best way to start improving your sound is by buying the finest matched pair of condenser microphones you can afford. The reason for this is that while upgrading your hardware (computer, mic pres, outboard gear, converters, etc) may occur at regular intervals, a good pair of microphones will serve you for a lifetime and supply you with the quickest way to a better sound you can rely on.
Of course, good quality microphone preamps and digital audio converters are essential to achieving excellence as well but the range of their quality is narrower than that of microphones and most decent specimens that are available now in your local pro-audio shop are entirely usable. After all, the top shelf specimens are usually way out of most aspiring engineers’ budget. That being said, it’s probably a good idea to invest in at least one top quality DA converter (like the Benchmark DAC-1; +/– $1 000) and some decent monitors because they are the last stop before your ears and therefore it is critical that these are representing the audio faithfully.
Lastly, and probably most importantly, a well-treated monitoring environment is completely mandatory if you want to know that what you’re listening to is verbatim. Anything less is a lie so careful attention to treatment and interference at the listening position is paramount. But, alas, that is another article.
Don’t underestimate the room!
Drums benefit immensely from a good sounding room. It is for this reason that recording the drums in the best sounding room you can get access to is a good idea. Generally any obvious ambience considerations in the production are best left for the producer but suffice it to say that the room shouldn’t have many major resonances or dips in the frequency spectrum, particularly in the low end.
Typically drums in modern pop/rock are recorded in a large, bright, wooden floor space, on a carpet, with baffles placed to control the amount of room sound that enters the close microphones. Room mics are then placed in such a way that the drum kit is picked up as a whole and the ambience of the room is captured to separate tracks. If space and time permits, I generally start with the overheads or room mics when getting sounds because I like to first hear the drum set’s sound as a whole before adding close mics.
Often, finding the right place to put the drummer in the room is a listening exercise and the only way to do this is by the process of elimination unless you are familiar with the room. You might have to move the entire drum kit a few times to different portions of the room before you come to a conclusion that a specific spot sounds the best. All that’s required is to listen to the drummer play each time and make a call based on what you hear. It’s simple concept, really. You are basically listening for what you envision the mics are going to hear, place them there, and then actually listen to them. It’s the only way to ever know that you are capturing is what you want before you press record.
Join us next issue for the continuance of this column.
