Recording - January 2016 - 32

By Brian Marshak

One producer's tricks for making canned drums sound, well, not canned
"Your drums sound amazing!
Where did you track them, and who is your drummer?
Don't quote me on this,
but I like them more than Brad Wilks' stuff on the Rage discs!"
Sorry, Mr. "Shall Not Be Named" music booking agent, but
I just quoted you.
During our conversation about my band's music, I innocently
played along with him and went on pretending that my drums
weren't programmed, and definitely not 100% consisting of samples. In truth, what I had actually done on the material in question
was to program them on a MIDI piano window with a mouse, plugins, and methods that I will dive into during this article. Seriously.
Reflecting back, I highlight my "white lie" to illustrate the
point that programmed drums, when done well, can be every
bit as good as acoustic drums that were traditionally tracked
in a studio. In addition to that, I hope that you too will soon be
tricking booking agents, A&R people, and fans of your music
with your stellar in-the-box drum tones. So, let's get to it.
Ahem: drum roll, please!
First of all
I think it's important to clarify a couple of things right up front.
1. Well-tuned and well-tracked acoustic drums are amazing.
2. Working in a great room with great hardware can only
help you get great sounds and tones.
3. Booking time in a great-sounding room at a studio with a
nice analog console, a plentiful and tasteful microphone collection, and vintage hardware is amazing.
32

RECORDING January 2016

The first time I was involved in tracking drums at Sunset
Sound in Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to be in Studio 1
with a custom API board and hardware such as a Studer A827, Ampex ATR-100, AMS Neve RMX-16, Alan Smart C2,
dbx 160, and Universal Audio LA-2As and 1176s. I had died
and gone to gear heaven! This was it! I was going to capture
the best sounding drums and performance ever!
Despite my good intentions and organic analog mindset, my
tracking session ended up being a total disaster. I ended up
with garbage tracks, a mountain of beer cans and fast food
wrappers, a migraine, a worn-out drummer, and worst of all,
a Sunset Sound engineer who was burned out and unhappy.
Oh, and I had to pay for that 'experience', too. Not good.
The lesson learned and my point here is that capturing
acoustic drums is an art form when done well, but is not easy!
Certain engineers are marvels for their drum sounds, and they
are in demand because it requires that much skill, knowledge,
and intelligent decision-making. In some ways, having access
to really well-recorded drum samples actually gets you further
along than if you go the traditional route without much knowledge of what you are doing.
In addition to that, not very many people have access to the
drummer, drum kit, drum tuning knowledge, room size and
dimension, acoustics, mic selection, vintage console, hardware,

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - January 2016