EQ Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 40)

DRUM HEADS HOW TO RECORD TRIGGER-READY DRUMS by Jeff Anderson A new band called Seed started cutting rhythm tracks for their first major record at Sound Logic, my studio in Indiana. As the future mixing engineer, I thought I’d stop in during a tracking session to see how things were going. There was a huge Tama drum set miked up in the studio, and the tracking engineer was Scott Rottler—who is known for tuning a kit and getting stellar drum tones within a very short time. I was excited to hear how the drum tracks sounded, so I eagerly opened the control room door, and was assaulted by the most hideous, boxy sounds I’d ever heard. I took Scott aside, and asked, “Are you okay? What’s with the drum tones?” He replied, “Come back in an hour or so. You’ll see.” Exactly 60 minutes later, I opened the door, and out came some of the best-sounding drum tracks I’d heard in a long time. What gives? “The main reason the drums initially sounded so boxy and harsh is because they were tuned to serve as triggers,” explained Rottler. “I always intended to replace the original sounds with samples.” Of course, that answer only made me wonder why Rottler didn’t just use traditional drum-trigger pads, rather than acoustic drums tuned to sound awful. “I want to capture the full sound of the drum kit,” he said, “because I rely on the room mics to add the gloss and polish, and the triggered samples to contribute the velocity and tone of the individual sounds. So the drums that are going to be triggered need to be in tune when they’re picked up through the overheads and room mics (see Figure 1). I’m using a beautiful-sounding AKG C12 in front of the kit, and a Neumann U47 behind the kit to pick up all of the room tones. By working this way, I don’t have to deal with the overhead and room mics picking up the tick-tick sounds of the drummer hitting trigger Fig. 1. The overhead mics are handled pretty traditionally to pick up the cymbals and the overall drum sound. pads. Also, the drummer is way more comfortable playing his own kit.” TRIGGERS TO THE RESCUE Relying solely on a miked acoustic kit can be a challenge. For example, Seed performs quite a few metal songs, and many speed-metal players aren’t consistent enough with the way they hit the drums— especially when they’re using two kick drums. Triggering drum samples offers a relatively easy solution to some common drum-attack problems. “It’s just not possible to get the same tone and timbre out of each kick drum— especially in certain blast beats, where the drummer is playing two kick drums very fast for a section of the song,” says Rottler. “Even if the kick drums are the same model, with the same heads, and both kicks are tuned the same way, it will be very hard for the drummer to apply an equal amount of pressure to each drum—which is the only way to get a consistent tone. It’s the same for fast tom rolls. It’s nearly impossible for a drummer to always hit each tom with equal power, and, as a result, the drums can sound weak.” TRIGGER PREP Rottler’s preparation begins with tuning the drums in order to get perfect samples for triggering later on. He does this half by ear by hitting notes on a piano positioned next to the drum kit, and half with a dynamic mic plugged into a guitar tuner. “We’re going after great drum sounds for the sampling session,” he says, “so I mic the kit as I normally would, using Sennheiser E604s, E609s, and an AKG C 414 for the tom mics, AKG D 112s for the kick drums, and an AKG C 451 on the bottom of the snare with an E604 on the top. Then, we spent quite a bit of time having the drummer hit individual drums. When the source samples were completed, I adjusted everything to capture drum sounds that would be more conducive for triggering. I lowered the mics so that they were about a finger’s width 40 EQ MARCH 2008 www.eqmag.com 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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