Recording - February 2011 - 56

Are drums obsolete in today’s digital recording studio? With so many sample libraries and computer plug-ins available, can we dispense with the bulky drum set and just program the part? The answer is a resounding “NO!”
Why the real deal? Anyone who has tried to program a drum machine to play a song the way a human being would play it has surely found out how difficult that can be. Here in L.A. you can always spot a drummer’s car—it has a bumper sticker that reads “DRUM MACHINES HAVE NO SOUL.” You can program in some of the soul, but it’s hardly worth the effort. Here’s why. 1. Speed. A drummer can play a 3-minute song in 3 minutes. Can you program your drum machine that fast? 2. Tempo. Drummers intuitively feel where to speed up and slow down. You can spend hours programming in tempo changes so your drum fills don’t sound lame. 3. Dynamics. Drummers do this easily. Tweaking the volumes of individual hits can be a tedious chore at best. 4. Cymbals. Real ones sound glorious. Digital ones don’t. Real cymbals change timbre depending on where and how hard you hit them. Samples don’t. Drummers use lots of different cymbal sounds, not just Ride and Crash.

And remember, new heads sound better than old heads, especially when recording. If your snare and tom heads are riddled with lots of small indentations or they’ve got a layer of black who-knows-what on them, they might sound a little dead. Then there’s the room. I can’t stress this enough. Drums are loud and they make a lot of sound. Where does that sound go? It bounces off the walls and comes right back to the mic. If your room is small then your drums will sound small and boxy. A bigger room diffuses the reflected sound and adds delay so it sounds more spacious. How big a room do you need? Usually, the bigger the better—something at least as large as a 2-car garage. You want some reflection off the walls, but never slap echo. I always put up a couple of room mics 10–15 feet away—far enough to get a sense of space, but not far enough that you can hear flamming caused by the time it takes sound to get to the mic. Room mics add reality to the mix and create the illusion of depth. Choose mics with an omnidirectional polar pattern if you can. Of mics and men To mike the kit, you can use as many or as few mics as you want. I’ve had good results with 2 overheads and

5. Hi-hat. These are cymbals, too, and the infinite variety of timbres coming from opening or closing them is extremely expressive, and much harder to duplicate with samples. 6. For a long time, it was valid to flat-out ask, “Where is the sample called ‘room mics’?” Now a few sample libraries have room mics too, but you won’t find them on any drum machine I know of. Of course, the downside to recording drums is that you need a good-sounding kit, a good-sounding room, and enough mics, stands, cables and channels on your board to do a good job. Oh, and a drummer. It may take an hour or two to set up and fine-tune everything, but if your drummer is any good it should be well worth it. Let me qualify that. If you are making a demo of a song to give to your band so they can learn it, then a simple boomchick programmed part may be sufficient. But if you want your song to actually sound good, let’s get busy. The setup First of all, make sure the drums are well-tuned and free of squeaks and rattles. Microphones can exaggerate these noises, even when you can barely hear them out in the room. Have some gaffer tape and tissue paper on hand to damp out any unwanted ringing on the toms. Kick-drum pedals are notorious for adding unpleasant sounds that you can’t fix in the mix. WD40 to the rescue. Loose lug nuts can also be a problem. Fix ’em.
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a kick drum mic, but usually I do everything the most difficult way possible. I mike everything. On the kick I use a Shure Beta 52 halfway inside the shell, off to one side, pointed at the place where the beater strikes. An AKG D 112 works almost as well with a little eq. I’ll usually boost around 60 Hz and cut around 100–200 Hz to get the fundamental “boom” without too much low midrange “thud.” Then I’ll boost between 2–5 kHz to dial in the “tick.” The proper relationship of “boom” to “tick” depends on the music you are recording. I’ve always had good results with a Shure SM57 on the snare. Place the mic horizontally, pointed slightly down, with the capsule just inside the rim. You’ll want to add some 10 kHz to make it snap. What else you do, again, depends on the music. You can make a snare dark and dry or bright and splashy. Snare drums actually sound better when the mic preamp clips a little so run your board hot and experiment with that. Over hear For overhead mics I rely on my trusty Fender P-2s but almost any cardioid condensers will do. You can place them 3–4 feet apart aimed at the left and right sides of the kit, or as a crossed pair over the drummer’s head. Align the capsules of a crossed pair so that you

Recording - February 2011

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