Recording A Big Drum Set: Opinions and/or Suggestions

[brandondrury]

As I said, I always compress later. Unless you are an experienced engineer working in an isolated control room while the drummer beats the shit out of the drums, I don't think I would ever want to monkey with compression.

It's tough to say if you'll want more attack or if you'll want less when it comes mixing time. So I'd recommend none unless you just LOVE the way it sounds. This, of course, is an accident more than anything.

I've never used a Behringer compressor or Paris. I just know that I'll take using plugin compression everytime over a $2,000 hardware compressor set poorly. Of course, a $2,000 hardware compressor set perfectly will when everytime. I'm not sure where the Behringer or Paris sit in that situation.

To be honest, I don't compress the kick drum by itself that often anyway. I usually hit the entire drum buss with compression.

Brandon

[In10city]

Well I will put those suggestions on my 'to do list' for my next experimentation day. I'm trying everything this time BEFORE I hit record. I always submix the drums into 2 tracks and bring them to the main song file where all the other instruments are recorded. I can easily compress the right and left drum tracks in either project.

[brandondrury]

I always submix the drums into 2 tracks and bring them to the main song file where all the other instruments are recorded.

Is this done real time or do you get to listen to it beforehand with a little mixing / guessing before you bounce the tracks?

Either way, this sounds like a nitemare for mixing. You are basically stuck guessing as to what the mix will call for. If that's the case, all that crap I said about the attack on the kick drum is much less important.

I hate to hear that you've done all of this work to have this "bottleneck" at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes limitations can be a positive thing, but I couldn't imagine how in this case.

Being forced to render down to 2 tracks on drums is a crappy way of doing this. For relatively little cash, there are methods I think yield "more effective" results. Maybe your style of music won't be effected by this. The Beatles made it work.

Brandon

[In10city]

The recording package allows me to automate everything as I bounce down to 2 tracks so I can program volume levels for each track as it bounces. Once I have it as 2 tracks, it's pretty easy to go back and tweak individual facets of the automation and re-bounce. I generally re-automate the drums once the rest of the instruments are added depending on how the sound changes.

We only have 16 tracks of simultaneous playback and they run out pretty quick with a 6 person band using keyboards, flute, mandolin, guitars (acoustic, electric, 12 string) stereo bass (our bass player has some pretty outragous effects processors and insists on stereo), and 5 part vocal harmonies. Not every song has all of this going on at once but there's usually not room for me to eat up 6 tracks of a project for drums.

[brandondrury]

Hmmm.

Once I have it as 2 tracks, it's pretty easy to go back and tweak individual facets of the automation and re-bounce.

How does this work? Does it keep the original tracks?

stereo bass (our bass player has some pretty outragous effects processors and insists on stereo)

This is NEVER good sign! There are probably 3 bass players that do cool stuff with effects. The others just feel jealous of the guitar player, which has NOTHING to do with bass playing. Oh well.

I see these bass players all the time that think that chorus on on this hard rocking GnR style song is really going to add something. Ironically, most bass players that are big on effects have piss poor timing.

Brandon

[In10city]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

How does this work? Does it keep the original tracks?

I open the current song file we are working on and then select "Save As" and rename it "current song Drums". Now I'm in a seperate file and I can screw with all the scratch tracks in this file and it won't affect the tracks in the original file. The Paris systems records every file as a wav file and attaches a Paris file to the wav file to tell the computer how to play back the file.

I generally bounce all the instruments down to just left and right to clear up the editor window. Then I'll have a click track on 1, left and right scratch song tracks on 2 and 3 and the rest open for all the drum tracks I want or need. Ocassionally I'll use a few extra tracks to record chimes and cymbal washes or bongos, congas, DM5 triggered effects and/or shakers so I won't make extra noise getting from one thing to the next during the recording.

Once I get all the recording done, I can open an automation window and automate pan, gain, and effects for each track for real time playback. The automation is saved in that particular project and available for editing later. I'll bounce all the tracks down to just left and right using the automation to control the volumes, pan, effects and then bring those two files back into the main project file. From there, we'll dump all the scratch tracks and record final versions into that file to synch with the drums. Once everything is in there and automated, I can easily re-automate the drum files and re-bounce them. I can also bounce all the instruments as they are automated, bring those files into my drum file and then re-automate the drums based on that playback.

I guess it's like a long and drawn out game of Ping Pong.

[Starcross]

As a band member and co-engineer with In10city, I'm going to chime in here a little.

To the defense of the bass player:
1. He doesn't ALWAYS insist on stereo for recording, only when the particular effect he's using is only evident in stereo (for example, ping-pong delay) and has in fact over the past couple of years become much more willing to compromise when necessary.

2. He has a very very good ear for tone and is very good at combining subtle effects for a very pleasant end result. Now, how much of this result may be heard when mixed in with the rest of the band is still up for debate in some cases, but as has been often stated on this forum before, if you make the original recorded signal sound as good as possible, it leaves less to have to tweak/EQ/effect later.

And now, back to regularly scheduled drum talk...

[brandondrury]

Alright, so the bass player isn't a total moron. That's good news. Unfortunately, bitching about the bass player needing 2 tracks doesn't help our situation much.

If it was me, I would avoid submixing the drums as much as possible. Maybe it would be possible to recording everything but the vocals, and really it mix it well. Then add the vocals on top of that mix. Of course, there are a million things I would do to guitars or whatever based on what the vocals were doing.

Man, it's really difficult doing a real mix in this fashion!

Brandon

[In10city]

Originally Posted by brandondrury

Man, it's really difficult doing a real mix in this fashion!

If I've learned anything, I've learned that!

[brandondrury]

So I guess you are going to stick with the Paris system?

Is there any way you can sync two of them together maybe? (I'm trying this method before I recommend you get a REAL recording rig). I bet you could pick up a second Paris system for pennies on the dollar.

Brandon