EQ Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 17)

H ow does Mike Portnoy— one of the most celebrated skinsman of our time—achieve such monstrous drum sounds? Starting with Awake—Dream Theater’s third foray into the world of modern progressive rock—and peaking with the band’s newest offering, Systematic Chaos, I have become more and more enthralled by Portnoy’s tones. So I decided to finally track down Portnoy and engineer Paul Northfield [Rush, Ozzy Osbourne, Porcupine Tree] to find out how to turn a modern drummer’s sonic wet dream into a recorded reality. After 1992’s Images and Words, the band’s drum sound changed, becoming more distinct on Awake. Scenes From a Memory [1999] was another sonic leap. What can the changes in sound be attributed to? Portnoy: Scenes From a Memory was a turning point for the band because it was the first album that John Petrucci [Dream Theater guitarist] and I produced. Previously, we worked with outside producers who ultimately had the final say in the production of the record—from the shaping of the songs to the final sounds of every instrument. It wasn’t until Scenes From a Memory that my drums actually sounded like I wanted them to sound. The drum sounds on Images and Words make me cringe. Northfield: I have no idea how anybody else recorded Mike, but I attribute his change in sound to his change in approach. A lot of what has an impact is really fundamental—such as drum sizes and his attack. Every drummer has a part of the kit that’s his main focus. Mike plays a lot from the kick drum. It sets up how he comes into a tom fill, for example. Mike, you say you hate the sound on Images and Words. Part of me agrees— the snare trigger sounds terrible. But, at the same time, I love that record so much that I actually like the bad sounds. Portnoy: That snare makes me crazy. A lot of people hold that album in such high regard—maybe because it was our breakthrough album. It must be said that when we recorded that album, triggered drum sounds were fashionable. That was right before the grunge wave hit, and drum sounds on popular albums reverted to being very organic sounding. The change in the popular music scene certainly changed the way we approached recording our music. Was the entire kit triggered on Images and Words? Portnoy: I believe the entirety of what you hear is triggered. David Prater [producer] was a very difficult person to work with. He was the kind of producer who would lock you out of the studio during the mix, and just do whatever the hell he wanted. I made it pretty clear from the beginning that I hated those drum sounds during tracking, but he had just done a popular record with a hair metal band called Firehouse, and he thought it would be a good idea to use all those drum sounds on our album, as well. That kind of sound may work with pop metal, but it was completely out of place with an over-the-top, progressive metal band. But that was our first album for a major label, and we had no leverage. To this day, I love that album musically, but, sonically, I can’t stand it. Did you do any sound replacing on Systematic Chaos? Northfield: No replacing, but I did augment the snare drum to give it a bit more of an explosive quality. Not heavily—because I wanted to preserve Mike’s expression on the kit—but for straightforward backbeats I found I could double the snare with a sample without any trouble. In the case of rolls, though, you can’t double the drums with samples, and still honor the technique. You record with a variety of kits— most of which are enormous. Do you have those monsters set up and ready to go in the studio, with each part of the kit assigned to an individual track? Portnoy: Everything is miked and ready to go. We write and improvise a lot in the studio, so we have to have everything ready and waiting. We can’t have any latency in executing and recording. Northfield: Mike tends to make decisions on which kit to play on the fly, so we set up his kits simultaneously. In the past, that could be a pain, as we were constantly muting and gating tracks, or reassigning faders to different elements due to track-count limitations. As we were using Pro Tools HD this time around, we essentially had unlimited tracks. Explain the miking strategy for the drums on Systematic Chaos. Northfield: I had about 36 mics set up. Everything on the drum set was miked individually—except for the cymbals—so there were a lot of open mics. For kick drums we used AKG D 112s. We used Shure SM57s on the top and bottom of the snare, and Sennheiser MD421s on all the toms. The octobans had SM57s and 58s inside the tubes. We used an AKG C 451 for the ride and the hi-hat. The overheads were AKG C 12s. Room mics were AKG C 414s. I don’t mean to be short in my answer, but the mics and mic placement were nothing special. The sound is good because of the room and the console. How were the mics placed on the toms and snares? Those tracks, in particular, have a lot of body. Northfield: They were about two inches from the heads, and two inches away from the rim. For the low toms, the mics were maybe a little closer to the center, but nothing radical. With a big kit like that, it’s more a question of “Where can you fit it?” But the benefit of being in a good room—one without any radical reflections coming off the ceiling—is that the signal bleed you get from one mic to another isn’t so offensive. What about the overheads? Northfield: I always put the C 12s angled on the sides of the kit. I tend not to do the over-the-head-of-the-drummer approach. The reason is that, although you get a nice pick-up on the snare, the cymbals never really sound that good. If www.eqmag.com MARCH 2008 EQ 17 http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - March 2008

EQ Magazine - March 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Tool Box Dream Theater Nick Drake LO-FI Recording Tricks Guitar Trax Bass Managment Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Tascam Gigastudio 4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Crane Song Avocet Cad Signature Series Mic Packs Waves GTR3 Kjaerhus MPL-1 Pro SE Ableton Live 7 Centrance Micport Pro, Tapco LINK.midi 4x4, Multi-Gigabyte USB 2.0 Memory Sticks Digital Redux Electrotech, Nine Volt Audio Action Drums, Big Fish Audio Hadeeth 2 Room with a VU

EQ Magazine - March 2008

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