How Hard Should Drummers Play On Recordings?

[brandondrury]

How Hard Should Drummers Play On Recordings?

I threw together a super quick mix this afternoon to sort of demonstrate the difference between hard hit drums and softer hit drums. We were discussing just how hard a drummer should smash the drums during recording. My experiences have told me that the harder, the better. A drummer who crushes the drums is going to come out with a great recording. At least this is what I was expecting.

The time I've spent with Malcolm Springer, Michael Wagener, and various engineers at big studios going for the aggressive modern rock type of drum sound has led me to believe that a drummer should crush the drums. Malcolm Springer was HUGE on this. The hardest hitting drummer that I knew was smashing them and Malcolm basically said “Is that all you've got? Are you some kind of pansie? HIT THEM DRUMS!”. Malcolm definitely wanted extremely hard hit drums for his modern rock mixing style.

Wagener didn't really make a big deal about it either way at the recording workshop, but he had just finished an album with that drummer and the drummer knew exactly what Wagener wanted. It was obvious by listening to the overheads that there was quite a bit of skin in those overheads.

Audio Example
Download It Here

The Test
Okay, there is nothing scientific about this. If you want scientific test that shows once and for all just how hard a drummer should play, try a test yourself. You'll discover there are a billion factors.

I threw this together quickly with a barely in tune guitar. The drums are DFH Superior. I programmed a very simple beat with the mouse. I didn't worry about making anything natural. There is no groove to this. It's all to the grid.

I used my Fender Strat with a Duncan JB Jr humbucker in the bridge through a MXR EQ pedal (with the 2 super deep bands (I think 31Hz and 62Hz) completely nuked and a sad face with a peak of 3db at 1Khz through my Rivera Knucklehead. The Knucklehead had a gain of about 2, lows on 0, mids on 10, highs on 0, presence on 0, focus on 0, and volume on 10. I mic'd it up with a 57. I hadn't used a 57 in a while. I forgot just how aggressive the 57s sounded after using my “smoother” Royer R121 for so long. (Really, the 57 and the R121 would be perfect blended 50/50. Either of them may be a little too much this or too much that on their own without doctoring On my next big project, I'm sure I'll be using both). The 57 ran into a Trident S20 preamp and into a Mytek converter.

The riff plays 4 times. On the first and third times, the drums are being “played” super hard. On the second and forth times, the drums are being played quite a bit softer.

My Thoughts
The difference was more subtle than I had expected. I had expected the high velocity drums to have much more “crack” in them. I figured the lower velocity drums would be quite a bit more boxy. This really wasn't the case.

I recommend putting your Media Player on loop for this one and do some real listening. When the first bar jumps in, you don't notice all that much (except your ears have to adapt to my crappy mix). You probably won't notice bar 2 getting smaller. However, you will notice that bar 3 jumps out at you. At least this is what I've experienced.

The big thing I noticed was the lighter hit drums sounded smaller for this particular modern rock type of recording. They just had a smaller penis. I'm not sure that any other genre besides hard rock and metal would need that extra “penis size”, really.
I figured that it was just an issue of the louder drummers getting compressed harder. However, when I started giving the lighter hit drums some gain before the compressor, the bleed from the cymbals got noticeably louder. I was worried about that crash ride being a little too “honky” or whatever in the 1-2Khz region anyway and bumping the snare on the lighter hit drums really made that problem worse.

This seams to be the big lesson. It's not so much that super hard hit drums on a tremendously recorded kit sound all that much different from medium hit drums on a tremendously recorded kit. It's more of an issue of managing cymbal bleed within the close mics. Obviously, I'm compressing these drums pretty damn hard. In genres which don't call for as much compression, we may have been able to boost the close mics a little more on the lighter hit kit. Of course, this is a big problem in itself. Relying too much on close mics is the first step to sounding like crap. How you define “too much close mic” is up too you, but I like my drums to sound alive.

My Conclusion
In non hard rock situations where cymbals aren't getting pounded all to hell, there could be tonal reasons to play a little softer. It's really an issue of taste. However, if big and power are adjectives that describe what you are looking for, this particular case says that I need to continue to tell my drummers to beat the hell out of the drums for any “big penis” drum project.

[thesilentdrummer]

Interesting. The difference, from my point of reference, was, as stated, much subtler than I imagined. I do hear a good amount of attack loss, though, and the drums sit a little further back in the mix when hit softer. In my rock applications, I am looking for a little resonance with more attack. Crushing drums has made this easier for me.

[brandondrury]

I think the real issue in the samples is our definition of "soft" and "hard" playing. It's an issue of perspective, I guess. One guy's "soft" is another guy's "crushing".

In this case, I knocked down the velocities quite a bit, but I don't know if that is what I would call "soft" or not. It's hard to tell by a little midi velocity bar in Cubase.

I know in my experience with real bands, that you can certainly hear quite a bit of boxiness and muddiness enter the drums as the drummer plays softer in spots.

Brandon

[aramaic]

Hey guys, being a drummer and having done plenty of recording over the years I thought I might share my experiences.

I think its a little more complex than just "soft" or "hard" hitting. Good drum sounds are a combination of lots of things I think, starting with the room.

Example - I recorded in a studio that predominately made ads (Mc Donalds, Coke etc so it was a great studio). Drums sounded crap because the room was set up for flat vocals. No real room sound at all. Then a few months later recorded in a cool studio with a great drum room where the ceiling was VERY high and there was lots of glass and tiles (the room was fairly small though). Drums sounded awesome. So, big (but not overly) sounding room is always gonna help.

Next would be the kit and tuning. Crap kit = crap sounds. No exceptions really. You can put new heads on a crap kit and make it sound marginally better but not by much. Having said that new heads are essential for recording. Tuning... I'm not much good at tuning and I never really have been. I think its probably one of the hardest things to do as a drummer. Lots of people - from engineers and producers to other drummers (and even guitarists!!!!) - have tried to tell me that they can tune drums but most of them were full of shit. Tuning drums is very very hard. However, my technique is just to tune each drum to its size. You start with loose heads and tune each lug (opposites) a few turns each until the head seems not too tight and not too loose. It should sound like its not choked but not flapping either. The snare I usually tune as tight as it will go. Kick drum - beater head very loose (almost flappy) other head mid tightness. I try to put as little muffling as possible in the kick as well.

Technique is the most important thing though I think. Watch some of those drumming videos - Dave Weckl, Steve Gadd and co. and they look like they're just cruising. Not really bashing the kit at all. What they are doing is putting all their energy into the technique. And that is to snap the sticks against the heads of the drums. They don't smash their sticks INTO the drums. They get resonance and volume with the snap. The stick hits the drums head hard and pulls away very quickly (its all in the fingers and wrists not the forearms and shoulders). I've seen so many drummer literally dig their stick into the snare drum and it kinda almost causes a press roll effect. Now, you just cannot get a big drums sound with that kind of technique. And its the same on every drum and cymbal. If the stick - or pedal - isn't "snapping" then you're either not getting the right volume or you're getting a choked or "blurred" sound.

As far as micing and compression etc. I'm really not sure about that stuff but I would say given all the above it would make these things much simpler.

Cheers.

[brandondrury]

Thanks for you input, Aramaic, but this is a thread about how hard a drummer should or shouldn't play. It wasn't intended to be an end all guide to recording drums where we just happen to forget tuning, heads, sticks, room, compression, EQ, drummer intensity, etc. We are all very aware of there being a huge number of factors. In this particular case, we've chosen to discuss drummer intensity alone.

Watch some of those drumming videos - Dave Weckl, Steve Gadd and co. and they look like they're just cruising.

Those are the last guys I want to sound like. That may be part of the issue here in the drum pounding debate.

Having said that new heads are essential for recording.

Just another example of there being no rules: I read in the last EQ magazine that Rush used 2 month old drum heads for the entire recording. Weird.

Brandon

[aramaic]

Sorry but I thought you were taking about hard and soft playing and what gets the best sound? Well in my humble opinion neither hard nor soft paying gets the most "true" sound out of the drums. I guess that's what I was trying to get at.

Is my post in the wrong thread/forum?

As far as sounding like the guys I mentioned, are you saying that you would rather stay away from that "style" of drumming or that drum "sound"?


And yeah I guess if you want a more "dull" drum sound then use really old heads. Putting new heads on drums is like putting new strings on a guitar.

Anyway, delete the post if you think its not appropriate.

[brandondrury]

As far as sounding like the guys I mentioned, are you saying that you would rather stay away from that "style" of drumming or that drum "sound"?

It's probably more of a style thing than necessarily a tone thing, but the two pretty much go hand in hand.

Is my post in the wrong thread/forum?

I wouldn't say it was in the "wrong" thread. It was more out of left field I guess. It's not really hurting anything. It's kind of like having a discussion on the difference between discussing EL 34 tubes vs 6L6 tubes and then a dude jumps in saying that you need to turn your guitar. Well, that's obvious, but we were wasting our time discussing some minute detail that definitely wouldn't matter if the guitar was indeed out of tune.

And yeah I guess if you want a more "dull" drum sound then use really old heads. Putting new heads on drums is like putting new strings on a guitar.

I generally agree. I'm big on new guitar strings and new drum heads. I was suprised that Rush used old heads....very surprised.

[thesilentdrummer]

yah, you have definately made valid points, but this was purely on the basis if crushing drums gets a better sound than softly hitting them. Like Brandon said; not so much wrong place as not picking up on the assumptions made.

I like what you said, though. I actually have my drums tuned pretty much to what what you described. Cool stuff, definately useful, but when discussing nuances, you pretty much assume the core stuff is covered well.

[maxpidge]

Technique is the most important thing though I think. Watch some of those drumming videos - Dave Weckl, Steve Gadd and co. and they look like they're just cruising. Not really bashing the kit at all. What they are doing is putting all their energy into the technique. And that is to snap the sticks against the heads of the drums. They don't smash their sticks INTO the drums. They get resonance and volume with the snap. The stick hits the drums head hard and pulls away very quickly (its all in the fingers and wrists not the forearms and shoulders). I've seen so many drummer literally dig their stick into the snare drum and it kinda almost causes a press roll effect. Now, you just cannot get a big drums sound with that kind of technique. And its the same on every drum and cymbal. If the stick - or pedal - isn't "snapping" then you're either not getting the right volume or you're getting a choked or "blurred" sound.

loud is just loud, learn to mix!!!!!

[maxpidge]

would you tell terri bozzio to hit harder and forget technique?