EQ Magazine - August 2008 - (Page 30)

DRUM HEADS ROCKING HARD WITH BUS COMPRESSION Fig. 1. The dbx 266XL can be used in stereo mode by pressing the yellow button in the middle. When the button is engaged, the settings on channel one control both sides of the unit. by Michael Papatonis If you love the sound of ’70s rock drums, you should know that one of the main reasons drum tracks from that era sound so head crushing is because of the format they were recorded on—namely, tape. But why does tape make drums sound so good? The answer is tape compression, which occurs when the recording levels are driven hard and the hot signals hit the tape. Saturating tape causes transient signals to get chopped off, leaving a fuller sound because more of the body of the source or room tone is squeezed into the mix. In effect, air is sucked into the sound, the “smack” is chopped off, and the body is turned up. This is part of the secret to John Bonham (Led Zeppelin) and Roger Taylor’s (Queen) thunderous tom sounds. NO TAPE? NO PROBLEM! So you don’t have an old Studer or Ampex tape machine. Does that mean you are S.O.L? Not necessarily. While the best way to get the sound of tape is to record with tape, applying bus compression to your drums can produce a similar sound. The best part? All you need is a hardware or software stereo compressor. What is bus compression? In the case of drums, this technique involves busing (or summing) your drum tracks together by routing some or all of the individual tracks to your stereo bus—creating what is known as a submix—and then applying compression to the submix. Many people apply a small amount of compression at the stereo bus (also called the left/right bus or the mix bus) to glue the overall mix together before mastering, and that’s cool. However, applying processing at the mix bus affects all of the tracks, and that’s not what we are trying to do here. We want to compress the drums independently, so we need to make a submix using a separate stereo bus. SERIAL VERSUS PARALLEL Before you start compressing the submix, you need to decide whether to use serial or parallel processing. Serial processing, in this context, is when you apply compression to the drum submix, and the compressed submix will comprise the song’s total drum sound. In other words, the original drum tracks will not be sent to the mix bus. Conversely, parallel processing means that you keep your original drum tracks in the mix bus, and blend in the compressed drum submix to add some punch and vibe. If you want to keep your drums sounding fairly natural, you might want to take the parallel processing route. However, if the compressed submix is exactly the drum sound you want for your mix, just say “damn the torpedoes,” and use serial processing. I prefer serial processing, as it’s a much simpler technique. On the other hand, parallel processing provides more options when it comes time to mix, such as allowing you to make your compression a little more transparent. Parallel processing also allows you to leave certain elements of the drum kit out of the submix— such as the overheads—that you may not want to hit with the bus compressor. There is no right or wrong here. Trust your ears, and use whichever technique meshes best with your workflow. Note: With parallel processing, it is important to make sure you have virtually no latency on the processed submix, as latency causes phasing problems (or even actual delay) between the submix and the original drum tracks. This is rarely a problem when working with hardware mixers and compressors. Plug-ins, however, inherently have some latency, so make sure you use delay compensation in your host program. SETTING UP AND DIALING IN With the drums subgrouped to a stereo bus, you can now apply compression to the submix. You have a few options in terms of physically Go to www.eqmag.tv. EQTV 30 EQ AUGUST 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.tv http://www.eqmag.com

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

EQ Magazine - August 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Lyrics Born, Fink, David Kahne on Working with Paul McCartney, What a Future with no Record Industry looks like Tool Box ?uestlove Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Cakewalk Sonar 7 Apple Logic Pro 8 USM Mic Round-Up USB Mics Chameleon Labs 7720 Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - August 2008

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