EQ Magazine - February 2009 - (Page 37)

crunchy sound I like. And because I fear the ball getting dropped in the end, I called Chris before he mixed the Drive A record to let him know that I wanted the drum sound to remain as natural as possible. Thankfully, he thought the drums were tuned well and sounded great, so he didn’t overEQ or over-process things.” LET DRUMMERS BE THEMSELVES “I believe that to get the best performance out of a drummer, you have to make the drummer feel good. If that means he or she likes playing with the front head on, then that’s what you should do. But I’ve had some runins with name producers who tend to like certain techniques. Bob Rock, for example, took the head off my bass drum, and we got into a bit of an argument, because I said I wanted the head left on in order to mic the front head for added resonance. Mike Klink likes to isolate the kick drum by building a tunnel of blankets around it. I like how the kick drum sounds in the room, because you tend to get more low end. Some guys have even built a kind of box around the hi-hat in order to keep it from bleeding into the snare mics. Of course, most drummers hit the cymbals so hard that no amount of baffling or boxing is going to keep the cymbals from bleeding into the other mics.” ALWAYS ENVISION THE MIX “When I do a session, I like to track drums with the final mix already in mind. In other words, I don’t like to put stuff on tape that doesn’t sound right from the get-go. That’s what they had to do back in the day— before multitracking and DAWs. Drummers almost had to ‘premix’ themselves back then, because it wasn’t like you had unlimited tracks of individ- ually miked drums to process and tweak. The drums had to sound right in the room. I heard that Ringo used to put his wallet on the snare drum to dampen it during Beatles sessions, but when I talked to him, it turned out it was a pack of cigarettes. Still, the point is that he was thinking about the final drum sound as he was playing.” FOR ROCK, MAPLE IS KING “I’ve never gotten into the dynamics of different ply thicknesses for drum shells, but I can say that, for rock and roll, maple drums are the best. I also like the maple reinforcement rings that appeared on old Ludwig sets. The rings put more wood against the drum skins, and they also dampened the sound in a very natural way. I’m a Ludwig endorsee, and I talked to the company about bringing those rings back, and now they’re on the Legacy Classic Series drums.” Warm, Vintage Tone The Introducing Garnet Electrostatic vacuum tube microphone Nine variable polar patterns Warm vintage microphone tone with vacuum tube circuit and output transformer JSM elastic suspension shockmount protects from stand rumble, subsonic vibrations and external shocks Soft start power supply included violetusa.com www.eqmag.com FEBRUAY 2009 EQ 37 http://www.violetusa.com http://www.violetusa.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

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.