De-fluffing the sound of a kick drum

[SweetDan]

Herein lies an attempt to "de-fluff" the sound of a kick drum, endowing it with more attack, crispiness and punch. Did it work? You be the judge...if for no other reason than my ears are tired and I'm not sure exactly what to listen for anymore.

Raw* exports from the drum bus:

1) drums from the original recording

fluffyDrums.mp3

2) the newer recording

maybeNotSoFluffy.mp3

See the comment in Recording Challenge #2 which describes the original recording's set-up and the suggestions to make it better. The suggestions I actually implemented were to:

- wad more of the beach towel used for muffling up against the kick beater-head
- insert the kick mic deeper into the drum; in the newer tracks the capsule was about halfway into the body of the drum (13" deep shell)
- move the single overhead mic from it's original position back a few inches toward the player's right shoulder (I tried moving it behind the player (me!), but I found the sound of the snare started to get more and more lost, especially the cross-sticking)

Separate, individual raw* mic tracks are over here:

fluffy overhead
fluffy kick

not-so-fluffy overhead
not-so-fluffy kick

(BTW, I figured out why nobody records real drums anymore - even if you can play the darn things halfway decently, between moving mics, recording then listening back to takes, moving the drums or the muffling around, etc., you'll spend 4x or more the time you'd spend working out your guitar tones...sheesh!)


*raw = no eq, comp, reverb...no effects/processing other than a quick, rough level matching on these tracks

[Greg_L]

I think the new muffled kick track is better.

One thing is for certain...you get a lot of everything in that overhead track. Which also means you get a lot of stuff you might not want. The low end is overpowering and the highs are crazy crispy. If it were me, I'd roll off a lot of the low end in the overhead and let the kick mic track do that work instead.

[SweetDan]

Thanks for the feedback.

Isn't it usual that you'd pick up some of the kick with an overhead mic, regardless of the position? And that at mix time, if you had a separate mic for kick anyway, you'd roll off most everything in the low end up to the point where it started to negatively affect the toms or snare sounds?

More generally, how do you learn to hear "good" sounding drum recordings vs poor ones? How do you learn what details to focus on? Like, for guitar tones, if I've learned nothing else from The Tone Thread, I've learned what a harsh, "fizzy" sound is...maybe I haven't learned how to always avoid it, but I've learned how to identify it. What are the equivalent sounds-to-avoid for drums?


EDIT: starting to answer my own questions looking back through threads here...though I'll have to not get lost in the rabbit hole -- gotta go to work!

https://therecordingrebels.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=671

[Greg_L]

Thanks for the feedback.

Isn't it usual that you'd pick up some of the kick with an overhead mic, regardless of the position? And that at mix time, if you had a separate mic for kick anyway, you'd roll off most everything in the low end up to the point where it started to negatively affect the toms or snare sounds?

It's not unusual to roll off some low end in the overheads if it fucks up the kick track....if you want that punchy kind of kick sound. We stick mics in kick drums so we can hear them. If you're still letting the overhead provide everything, then why mic the kick at all? And just listen to the tracks. Which sounds better for the kick? The mic'd track, or the overhead? I'd say the mic'd track, so let's hear it. Turn it up and/or carve out some of the mud in the overheads. There's not much good stuff happening in the overheads anyway, say, less than approximately 200hz. Single out the 100-200 range and listen to it. I bet it sounds like boxy clunky floppy garbage. Why would you want that? Your best low end from the kick usually, if it's tuned well, comes from like the 40-80hz range. That's good thump in there. Real low end. Then the slap/attack is usually somewhere up around 2.5k-3.5k, maybe a little higher. Almost everything between the extreme low end and the slap attack is poop. Almost, not always, but there's often a lot of crap in a kick drum track in the midrange. And you can gently massage that stuff out because that's where all the other stuff you actually want to hear will live anyway. I really hate carving out EQ to fit things together like a puzzle, but sometimes you just have to do it. And when you're limited to just two drum tracks, you need to do whatever it takes to make it work.

More generally, how do you learn to hear "good" sounding drum recordings vs poor ones? How do you learn what details to focus on? Like, for guitar tones, if I've learned nothing else from The Tone Thread, I've learned what a harsh, "fizzy" sound is...maybe I haven't learned how to always avoid it, but I've learned how to identify it. What are the equivalent sounds-to-avoid for drums?


EDIT: starting to answer my own questions looking back through threads here...though I'll have to not get lost in the rabbit hole -- gotta go to work!

https://therecordingrebels.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=671

As you learn how things fit together you start to hear where the good stuff is and the bad stuff is. There is no good or bad drum recording because that stuff is subjective. My drums would sound terrible in a smoky jazz mix, wooly roomy jazz drums would sound like shit in a punk rock mix. It's all relative and it all depends. John Bonham's legendary drum sounds sound great in Zeppelin tunes. They'd sound like dogshit in modern rock mixes. The main details to focus on IMO is....does it sound like drums? Does the snare sound like a snare? Do the toms sound like toms? Does the drum sound and recording fit the type of song and mix you're making? That kind of basic obvious stuff that often gets overlooked because people are focused on the wrong things. If the drums sound good then they're good.

[vomitHatSteve]

I feel like a major step is to hit the drum harder!

It is an improvement, but I bet you'd see a sea change if you wailed on that kick a little.

[SweetDan]

Check it out:

condensor_sample.mp3

Since this one is more mixed than the raw tracks above, it's not a fair comparison, but I hope this is improved even if I'd left off the processing. The major changes (at tracking time) were:

- I hit the snare and kick the kick harder; maybe not a lot, but enough I can hear a difference; [mention]vomitHatSteve[/mention] - how much harder do you think I could hit these things? I'm not really a drummer, you know...
- switched the overhead mic choice to a condensor (Blue "Spark", with the low-cut switch engaged) instead of an SM57
- I also moved the overhead mic closer to the drums (1 1/2 stick lengths vs. 2 originally)

In doing some test mixing with the newest takes, I felt I could be more aggressive in sculpting out the nasty/muddy frequencies. (Additionally, [mention]Greg_L[/mention]'s suggestions up thread gave me some ideas to try out with EQ.)


EDIT: oops, I meant to include this smalls screen shot of the EQ on the OH/kick tracks; I don't have one from the original, but though it did have EQ, it was much more tame

kickAndOverheadEQ.jpg

[Greg_L]

Check it out:

condensor_sample.mp3


Since this one is more mixed than the raw tracks above, it's not a fair comparison, but I hope this is improved even if I'd left off the processing. The major changes (at tracking time) were:

- I hit the snare and kick the kick harder; maybe not a lot, but enough I can hear a difference; @vomitHatSteve - how much harder do you think I could hit these things? I'm not really a drummer, you know...
- switched the overhead mic choice to a condensor (Blue "Spark", with the low-cut switch engaged) instead of an SM57
- I also moved the overhead mic closer to the drums (1 1/2 stick lengths vs. 2 originally)

In doing some test mixing with the newest takes, I felt I could be more aggressive in sculpting out the nasty/muddy frequencies. (Additionally, @Greg_L's suggestions up thread gave me some ideas to try out with EQ.)


EDIT: oops, I meant to include this smalls screen shot of the EQ on the OH/kick tracks; I don't have one from the original, but though it did have EQ, it was much more tame

kickAndOverheadEQ.jpg

I think that's an improvement for sure. The kick has more punch and clarity to it. I think you're still lacking some attack, but baby steps. The kick can sound great on it's own but get lost easily once you pile in the instruments, so watch for that.

[vomitHatSteve]

- I hit the snare and kick the kick harder; maybe not a lot, but enough I can hear a difference; @vomitHatSteve - how much harder do you think I could hit these things? I'm not really a drummer, you know...

That is a substantial improvement on the kick tho.

Work that leg out! Never skip leg day!