Recording - January 2015 - 28

have to take a little nastiness out of the
cymbals at around 4 kHz or so. Again,
play around with them, experiment, and
have fun.

shoulder from behind. It brings out the
drum head sound a lot, but it also picks
up the cymbals way hotter, since it is usually a little closer than the room mics.
Processing...
Okay, so now you have all of these
crazy giant room and overhead sounds.
Sometimes that's all you need, that's it,
done deal... but "sometimes" is actually
"almost never." You will usually have to
process the tracks a little bit. Whether it is

...and more processing
Let's see where we are now. Our tracks
are recorded, EQed, compressed, and all
of the levels are nice, but it still seems like
it's missing something. Why not make it
bigger? Let's add some reverb!
The most important part of adding
reverb to the rooms is the predelay. The
formula for figuring out how much predelay to add, based on the tempo of the
song, is something I knew when I was
younger and had just graduated from college... but I'm older now and we have the
Internet. Find a predelay calculator, any
will do, and find out how long a 32nd

room track by the number of milliseconds
that you've set for your delay time.
Again, this could get you a really crazy
sound, depending on the settings. You can
use that predelay calculator you found, and
actually delay the room to the tempo of the
song. Maybe the room mics will sound
good a 16th note after the rest of the kit
plays? Again, I would start at around a
32nd note, maybe even a 64th note.
Final thoughts
I hope that you've found this helpful,
and will start to record giant drums on
everything you do from now on, so we
can be friends. I know that this is wishful
thinking, but I really love big drums, and
want them to make a huge comeback.
We live in a world where almost anybody can go out and buy a few decent

Okay, so now you have all of these crazy giant room and overhead sounds.
Sometimes that's all you need, but "sometimes" is actually "almost never."
compression or EQ, delay or reverb, the
sound usually needs something.
For overheads, I like using an opto
compressor, and getting 3-5 dB of gain
reduction. This just reels in the sound a
bit, evens it out, and doesn't give too
much of a compression sound. Then it's a
matter of EQing to the room. I know that
in my room at Treehouse Sound, I usually
have to take 500 Hz down a bit. I also
usually try and take as much low end out

note is at your song tempo. For example,
at 120 bpm, a 32nd note is 62.5 milliseconds. So a 16th note would be 125
milliseconds, and a 64th note would be
31.25 milliseconds.
I usually like to start with a 32nd note,
then go up or down from there. A 16th
note usually sounds kind of awkward, but
everything has its place. Then I just blend
the reverb to my liking. (This will take forever. I have become lost in reverb tails for

mics and a few decent preamps for not a
lot of money, and record their albums
wherever they want on laptops... which
sucks for the career engineer like myself,
but c'est la vie. This means that people will
be recording things in lots of rooms not
designed for recording, that might nevertheless have very cool sounds to them.
I ask my cousins repeatedly to move all
of their furniture out of their living room so
I can just see what drums would sound

We live in a world where almost anybody can go out and buy a few decent mics and a
few decent preamps for not a lot of money, and record their albums wherever they want.
as possible without making the sound too
brittle-usually I just cut everything below
100 Hz. I don't pan overheads hard left
and right; that's what the room mics are
for. I usually stick between 50% and 75%
on each side.
For the room mics, I personally love to
crush the heck out of them with a compressor, preferably a Universal Audio
1176 with fast attack, slow release, and
the "all buttons in" setting. I get them nice
and distorted, pan them hard left and
right, and blend to taste. You will probably
28

RECORDING January 2015

hours; it's right up there with recording
feedback as one of my favorite parts of
the job. I'm serious.)
You can also add delay to the rooms as
well. If you don't want to add reverb, and
just want a bigger sounding room, you
can add a delay plug-in directly onto the
room tracks in the first insert slot. Turn the
feedback all the way down, and turn the
wet/dry all the way up. This will make it so
that you will get none of the room source,
and only the delayed room. Since there is
no feedback, you are simply delaying the

like in there. They are not very stoked on
the idea, so I would like to live vicariously through all of your crazy room recordings not done in designed live rooms.
Experiment. Get crazy with it. That is the
joy to recording. There is no right or
wrong way, and there are no good or
bad rooms.
Frank Marra (marra@recordingmag.com)
is a recording engineer at Treehouse
Sound in New Jersey. You can learn more
at www.upinthetreehouse.com.

http://www.upinthetreehouse.com

Recording - January 2015

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