EQ Magazine - February 2009 - (Page 36)

DRUM HEADS Terry Stirling. MATT SORUM’S RECIPE FOR ROCKIN’ POCKETS by Roberto Martinelli In addition to being one of rock’s iconic drummers (Guns N’ Roses, The Cult, Velvet Revolver), Matt Sorum is also an accomplished engineer and producer with his own production company (Orange Curtain) and tracks for Poe, Candlebox, Ronnie Spector, Little Milton, Sen-Dog, and others under his belt. His most recent production project was for Los Angeles “youth rock” band, Drive A—a gig that prompted Sorum to share some miking techniques, recording philosophies, and studio drummer bummers that can help EQ readers track bigger and better drum sounds. LAY DOWN THE LAW “Terry Stirling—Drive A’s drummer—has a lot of chops,” says Sorum, “but I told him to play only what was needed to drive each section of a song. He could have that one fantastic fill, but that was it. When I was young, I do remember being a lot flashier than I am now, and that’s because I learned to play for the song, rather than for myself.” BIG ROOMS RULE “I learned about miking drums from Mike Klink and Andy Johns, who had recorded my favorite drummer, John Bonham. I was inspired by all those stories about how Led Zeppelin recorded in castles, and how bands such as U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded in houses, so we decided to record Drive A in a big house out in Malibu. We put the drums in a large living room with 25-foot ceilings, which was pretty cool, but the problem was that the reflections from the walls made the cymbals sound kind of harsh. I had to go around and place some foam in different areas to compensate.” STEAL MY MIKING METHOD “For the Drive A project, I close miked all of Terry’s toms with Sennheiser MD451s—which I always used back in the Guns N’ Roses days. I double-miked the kick drum with a Shure 91 inside, and a Røde Classic II outside. On the hihat and ride, I used a Røde NT5, and for the snare, I used Shure SM57s for the top and bottom mic positions. To capture the room sound, I positioned two Neumann TM103s in a kind of stereo spread, and a Telefunken 251 to pick up a mono image. In addition, I did a trick I learned from Brendan O’Brien [producer of Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Pearl Jam, Velvet Revolver, and others], which was to position a Telefunken AK47 over the drummer’s shoulder as a kind of ‘effect’ mic. For slower-tempo tracks, I also put a Telefunken AK47 in a hallway that was down a staircase. That was my ‘Bonham’ trick to get a delayed and distance ambience. When [mix engineer] Chris Lord-Alge mixed the Drive A record, he’d bring in that mic on the tom fills to make things explode.” GO NATURAL “I spent a lot of time during the tracking phase getting a natural drum sound, so I didn’t put any noise gates or effects on the drums. In fact, most of the reverb you hear is from the room the drums were recorded in. There’s just some slight compression on the kick and snare, although I hit the mono room mic pretty hard with a Urei 1176 compressor to get the 36 EQ FEBRUARY 2009 www.eqmag.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - February 2009

EQ Magazine - February 2009 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Dave Cooley Low vs. Diamond Hank Williams III Travis Franz Ferdinand Guitar Trax Bass Management Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Apple Logic Pro 8 Cakewalk Sonar Near-Field Monitor Roundup Gadgets &�Goodies Sounds Room with a Vu

EQ Magazine - February 2009

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