EQ Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 31) METAL put a Sennheiser MD 421 on the kick drum and a Shure SM57 on the snare— might not produce the nuances of sound the band wanted. We also decided to craft sounds from the source. If Syn was unhappy with a rhythm-guitar sound, for example, we’d go to a different amp head, or a different speaker cabinet, or add a Tube Screamer to the signal chain. We wouldn’t just reach for the EQ, or manipulate a compression plug-in. There was a lot of purity in the crafting of sounds. Which recording medium did you choose for the album? Archambault: We recorded to Pro Tools, but the band wanted to use it more as a tape machine, rather than solving problems with mouse clicks. There was very limited plug-in action during the sessions—I think we used a total of three. The band really wanted an organic sound. Gates: We’re a spur-of-the-moment group. We’ll certainly have ideas and melodies in place when we’re in the studio, but when you hit the Record button, we’re often flying by the seat of our pants, and we wanted that spontaneous energy reflected in the final tracks. How did you record The Rev’s drums? Archambault: The Rev has this amazing custom DW kit—two kick drums, seven toms, and a really wide variety of cymbals. So we had to customize our engineering decisions to make sure we were capturing all the nuances of his performance. For example, it’s a little bit frustrating trying to get two kick drums to sound exactly the same, because there are so many variables that can make each kick sound different, from the exact spacing of the microphones to the sonic characteristics of the mic cables. So we ended up using three different microphones. One was a Sennheiser MD 421—which is kind of your stock, go-to kick-drum mic. We also used a Shure SM91 cardioid condenser to capture some attack—as The Rev plays those kicks pretty fast—and an AKG D112 to supplement the SM91s with some lowend oomph. Each kick drum got the same mic arrangement, and all the mics were submixed to a single track so that we had one track for each kick drum. During the submix, the fader for the SM91 was MIXED set at 0dB, the 421 was at –5dB, and the D112 was at –15dB. What about the overheads? Archambault: We found that using Neumann U67s—our usual default mics for overheads—didn’t capture every single cymbal. For example, there would be a chime over his right side that we weren’t hearing as prominently as a crash up front over a tom. So we put up two additional overheads, positioning two Coles 4038 ribbon mics about ten feet over the kit. These kind of became room/overhead mics, and they pretty much got what we needed, but we added some AKG C 451s as supplemental “spot” mics to ensure we captured his intricate cymbal work. That sounds like a phase nightmare. Archambault: The biggest issue with the kit was getting the phase correct. It definitely came down to following old-school mic placement, such as adhering to the three-to-one rule [Editor’s note: This is a strategy for positioning multiple mics that typically prevents one microphone from interfering with the pickup of another. http://www.mil-media.com
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