Recording shitty drums

[Andrew07]

What do you guys do when you know the drums you're going to record are gonna sound like shit? Tomorrow a young high school band is coming in and the guy's kit really isn't that good (their guitars aren't good either, but they can use mine and my amps).The snare and cymbals sound ok, but the kick and toms sound really bad. His heads are old and dirty, the toms sound dead, and the kick sounds really dead and weak. I know little to nothing about drums, and don't have any drums here for bands to use. I'm fucking dreading tomorrow...anybody else ever feel like this?

[DogpitStudios]

Fucking slap the kid on the head and tell him to learn to take care of his damn instrument... No not kidding, but it should be emphasized to him that if he doesn't take the time to make his drums sound good, then they are going to sound bad. Ya, its funny you bring this up because I'm in this situation right now with a drummer I've been recording all week. They kid has a 7 peice set (3 rack two floor bass and snare) and none of them are even trying to be tuned. He puts duck tape on the resos to deaden the resonation which i think is a stupid idea to start but instead it just makes it sound like trash cans (in a bad way) and he tuned the batters wayyyy to low. Oddly enough he has one of those new evans heads for snare that has the areholes in it to get rid of the bad frequencies, and it sounds like he is getting rid of the good to (and I even like that head). And I have never heard a power stroke bass drum batter sound like a dying cow. The ride is completely overpowering of the kit and all the cymbals don't resonate for more than 0.5 seconds which can be good for studio recording for them not to resonate but not always for metal and not if they overpower the kit. Still We all deal, I trigger most of his kit anyway because the bass drum is just death (bad way again) and the snare makes my ears blead). I think I may cut 1k on the overheads for this one to get rid of some of that snare noise so that I can use mainly the trigger, but thats not even a very good idea.

Really, we all get people like this sometimes, but we deal and life goes on.

Ben

[brandondrury]

Great question, Andrew07.

There is one simple solution to this problem. You are not charging enough money for your services.

It may not be the answer you were expecting, but it's the truth. I know, I've been there. I know of zero local bands in my area who have a decent recording budget needed to work with me who bring in junk drums. This used to happen to me all the time when I encouraged talentless scoundrels to work with me.

There is nothing you can do for this project. You will look like a piece of shit. Post the MP3 on here so we can all laugh at you. (I'm kind of being the devils advocate here. I'm pretending I'm your possible future clients). Seriously, if you slap your name on a project with such a crappy instruments people will hear it and not know who to blame. They'll expect favorite band X type drums and if you can't deliver them, you look bad.

So charge more and cut your losses. You are only making yourself look bad, not learning anything, and ruiniing future business.

If you are afraid to raise your prices, record a great local band for free. Make a deal where they get X amount of days for free and are expected to print up X number of cds.

Brandon

[DogpitStudios]

Sounds like a good idea brandon.

Ben

[brandondrury]

Yeah, this was something I used to deal with a lot. Someone had to kick my ass and explain to me what I was really doing.

I can honestly say that recording terrible bands with no money made me a worse engineer for a whlie.

Brandon

[Andrew07]

I charge $10 an hour AND i even provide them with dvd's and an Xbox.

You can listen to this shitty's band's "sister band" here
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...e-7b055b0f2bca

Sounds like horse shit and I was in such a lousy mood after I recorded "Take a Chance." The drum set was a piece of shit and because they're always in such a hurry they wanted to record with a guitar pod XT. bass was run direct. For those of you who ever considered getting a guitar pod listen to this shit and read Brandon's article. Hopefully they'll let me record real amps when they come in again.

Laugh away. It's truly amazing what a band who isn't tight sounds like. It sounds like it was recorded with a tascam four track with one sm57. I've recorded four great bands and three not good ones, so I guess that ratio is pretty good. I kinda feel like if I work with shitty bands and somehow turn them into something better I will get better at producing. But there's only so much you can do. Like I can say double this and play it higher here or whatever, but I cant make their playing consistent or tight.

[DogpitStudios]

The minute I saw Christian/Rock/Emo I xed out of the box.

Ben

[brandondrury]

Dude, I can't listen. I don't want to be reminded of the time I've had. I can post a few bands I did this way. Just for fun.. One band I recorded had a snare drum head that looked like a the inside cover a high school notebook. He had be drawing all over this head for the past 2 years. Ironically, I didn't see any smash marks from the sticks. This same drummer could not count 1, 2, 3, 4 and then come back in on 1. I swear to god that it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. I don't consider myself to be anything resembling an adequate musician, but I can count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1.

I kinda feel like if I work with shitty bands and somehow turn them into something better I will get better at producing.

The best analogy for this would be taking a pottery class and the instructor gives you a piece of shit...literally...a turd. Now put your hands all over it and tell me how good of potter you are going to make! This is not the polishing a turd analogy. You will never get good recording shitty bands. In fact, the only way to sound good is with good bands. The... wait a damn minute. I just wrote an article on this like 5 daysago....

http://www.recordingreview.com/artic...etter-Bands%21

In my experience 99% of the sound is the band and their gear. The other 1% is entirely mixing. Mic placement and stuff like that is like 5%. As you can see I haven't got this whole recording thing totally figured out yet.

Brandon

[Andrew07]

I am going to have to take back everything I said about this band. They may be sophomores in high school but they knew their stuff really well and were patient and didn't have big egos(unlike the other shitty christian band). They were so nice I even bought them a pizza and turned Star Wars on for them.

I recorded the drums with a few more mics than I usually do and the results weren't TOO bad. I added a Royer121 compressed with a distressor about three feet in front of the kick low, a 4033 the same distance just higher about level with the cymbals, and I mic'ed up all the cymbals individually instead of just two OH's. They didn't play to a click at all and the guitarist played a scratch track with the pod xt on the AC30 patch and it didn't sound TOO bad. I think it's the distortion simulations that sound the most like shit.

Two more questions, though:
What do you guys do when a band fucking invites their cronies or friends to come watch them record? I record out of my house and I get uncomfortable with a bunch of strangers just hanging out.
How do you memorize the band members names? I always introduce myself but I can't ever remember their names and have to wait till they say each other's names

[brandondrury]

Good questions.

Bands always seam to have their little followers with nothing better to do than watch the world's most boring process take place. I record out of my house and you do have to be careful. I've never had a band steal anything from me (that I know of) but you never know about their stupid little friends.

By the way. One time we were going for a monstrous death metal tone. One of the little fuckers that seams to have more free time than sense interrupted me and asked "what if you put a gate on it?". He was referring to the fucking guitars. I had to explain to him that a gate will do absolutely nothing when it comes to setting tone and mics on a guitar cabinets. I still want to punch that guy.


Names
I have a TERRIBLE short term memory. I've never been able to remember names. I just have fun with it. Sometimes I make up names. Sometimes I call the guy "bassguy" all night. Some bands don't call each other by their names and it's very hard to learn their names. There are no rules for this deal.


I'm glad to hear that your project turned out better. Just remeber to give them as many pointers as possible. You'd be suprised how explaining what you need from a band will improve the band and improve your next recording with the band. This has panned out for me several times. The only band that didn't like my pointers was the band that had a drummer who couldn't count out 5 beats.

Seriously, dude. Record a band for free. A good band that you already have heard of and ask them if they want to record for free. It'll pay off very nicely. Since they are well known and playing shows already, your name will be exposed to a bunch of bands very quickly. $10 is an hour is stupidly low. At least get up to $15 an hour. That's really too low, but it's a start.

Brandon