Original instrumental song - comments appreciated...

[Trem]

Cool sounds Endrik, is that GarageBand that you did the drums with? I didn't know about GarageBand or that it had drums. No phasing issues layering 9 tracks? Was it all done inside GarageBand?
Tape saturation is like the thing that can make it go from hmmn, to Wow, i could not get cymbals to sound good to me, or crisp with the right amount of sizzle and sustain till i tweaked on it with some tape saturation, some of them have overdrives in them as well, they work especially well for getting those fat thick kicks. And after all is said and done, jizzing the whole kit with a bit of it too.

[Endrik]

Jani, you have to mess with the cymbals as much as with the drums to get them sound good. Different "room" tracks, panned to different places, you can experiment with verbs and overdrives too. With those more advanced programs which have bleed option it's much easier of course. Because good sounding cymbals are in most of the tracks used to record the drums, even if they are really quiet, but when everything is mixed together the overall effect really changes to whole picture.
Real, live recorded cymbals can sound "fake" as hell too, as cheap as a simple sampler machine. Just watch some of the videos on youtube how some of the extreme metal bands record their drums. The drums are triggered, so there's no bleed. Then the cymbals are usually crap, made out of crappy alloy, too bright, tiny sounding, no sustain etc. Often they are hit wrongly too, which makes them choke. But if you are someone who gets the primary drum sound out of the OHs and use plenty of room mics the the cymbals sound huge and "real" of course.

[Endrik]

Cool sounds Endrik, is that GarageBand that you did the drums with? I didn't know about GarageBand or that it had drums. No phasing issues layering 9 tracks? Was it all done inside GarageBand?

Yep, everything was done in the GarageBand, they have plenty of drumkits + you can purchase an extra drum jampack too. I guess they sound ok. But the most important is the work you do yourself. Just programming the beat in a single track results a really lame sounding drum track.
I use GarageBand because it's in my laptop which easy to carry everywhere, I don't bother going to studio for every idea that pops into my head. Besides I think I can manage most things as I was at some point pretty heavily into electronic music, so programming isn't that hard for me.
With samples there's usually no phasing issues that I care about. I'd start worrying when the phasing actually starts really "cutting" the bigness out and makes everything sound tiny and nasally. I don't really have phasing issues when I record real drums either as most of the sound comes from the OH's in Glyn Johns position where everything is absolutely perfectly in phase.

[RacerX]

the Glyn Johns position

I see you've mentioned this a few times; I had no idea what this is so I googled it; here's a good instructional for those - like me - who are curious:

http://www.blaxploitation.com/drums/glynJohnsMethod.pdf

[Trem]

Just watch some of the videos on youtube how some of the extreme metal bands record their drums. The drums are triggered, so there's no bleed. Then the cymbals are usually crap, made out of crappy alloy, too bright, tiny sounding, no sustain etc. Often they are hit wrongly too, which makes them choke. But if you are someone who gets the primary drum sound out of the OHs and use plenty of room mics the the cymbals sound huge and "real" of course.

I'm not sure if your talking about home type recordings or just extreme metal bands in general, but some of that is out of necessity as it's the nature of the music. When downtuned guitars and wall of sound type things come into the picture it's not about trying to get a john bohnam drum sound. It has to be able to cut thru so it is the nature of the beast. I found as in the case of the song i am working on being in that vein of music i had to cut out a lot of the body of the cymbals and reduce or it just turns to mud. Stuff has to crack and get out of the way for what follows. I was reafirmed when i found/read that seemed to be the case when experienced producers of that type of music do the same. Also i found bleed an annoyance due to the nature of it, in superior i finally turned down and even off completely some of the bleed just because when sculpting each drum tone from a sample and trying to make it sound more like what you want for your mix, i've found it hinders that. It's like chasing your tail, get the snare right, then start messing with the toms and the snare changed.
Another way to get bleed back i started messing with busses and getting a mixed drum an the snare sent to another track and lightly mixing them together in parallel and sending them back out, trying to keep the tone of the individual drums and have them seem like they are bled together,.. just trying random ideas. But in general with fast metal a bunch of bleed is only going to be the opposite of what your trying to achieve. Have to be more objective, opinion bases on weather it's someones cup of tea does nothing the explaine the why it is that way.

If i was doing a general rock type song i think i would approach it in a totally different way and would welcome it for a fatter more organic sound. It will be a different process for the material your working with. I'm totally newb to it all so i am soaking information from whatever and wherever, i welcome insights and am interested weather they produce country music or a britney spears album, i'm all ears if to know the how and why. I'll probably never produce house or techno music but i've read articles on doing it and why things are done just because you never know. I want to understand automation and parallel compression and ducking a bit more and it seems these techniques are use in that type of music a lot. There's knowledge and tricks and reasons for things to be learned from every avenue.. soak it up.

[Trem]

I see you've mentioned this a few times; I had no idea what this is so I googled it; here's a good instructional for those - like me - who are curious:

http://www.blaxploitation.com/drums/glynJohnsMethod.pdf

Ah that is cool nice find.

When i started this venture i had to ask myself, well what kind of drums sounds do i like? I always was just most impressed by performance than the actual sounds of a recording of something guitars included. I never cared about Eddie Van Halens tone as much as his playing. Coulda been a 4 track garage demo i would have thought it was killer anyway.
So starting to explore "Drum Sounds" in detail and literally what the fuck are dummers doing anyway, it's all magic to me, so i started checking out the drum sounds i thought stuck in my head that i guess i liked a lot. So i thought well, Dave Lombardo, Neil Peart, John Bohnam, whoever played on Jeff Beck Blow by Blow, Bozzio, older Judas Priest Stained Class era, Ufo, and of course Kieth Moon. Which brings me too i found and have watched this so many times now.

[RR0849]

By fake I mean that it doesn't sound like what I hear when I'm in a room with a drummer. I guess the biggest difference is that the samples are perfectly isolated and that no matter how you try to recreate leakage there will be things missing. Drums tend to resonate and make noise even when they are hit. This is a problem even when recording real drums as the whole micing process (placement especially) can make such dramatic changes to sound. You start to get phase effects going etc. I run into this a lot when recording guitar. I put a mic in front of the cab and the sound coming from it sounds fake and I move it around until it's as close to what my ears hear in the room. I do need to combine sounds from 2-3 mics for that normally.

And of course two cymbal hits never sound the same and with heavy metal drumming they are often still ringing/moving from an earlier hit when hit again causing all kinds of different attack sounds.

But you know all this already.

Ride cymbals are easier but hihat is another big issue especially if wanting a real fat and metallic sounding hihat.

For the record I hate modern metal drum sounds ala most of Andy Sneap productions. It seems to take away everything I find cool in drums/drumming but that's just my opinion.

Back to tweaking. This is lots of fun!

[Endrik]

I'm not sure if your talking about home type recordings or just extreme metal bands in general, but some of that is out of necessity as it's the nature of the music.

Nah, I don't believe in that. I don't care what kind of music it is. The same way I don't believe that you have to use guitar A and amp B for this style and guitar C and amp D for that style. I believe in capturing the energy and the feel of the musician in the best possible way. You can make a death metal recording with big bounding drums, it just requires work and of course a drummer who can really play. These days drummers bother less and less about controlling the dynamics of their playing which makes it really hard to record them and that's why everything is only close miked or triggered. Can't get a big sound with close miking.
To me a lot of the metal recordings these days sound just as over-processed and over-polished as some of the mainstream pop records, I just can't hear genuine energy on these things.

[Endrik]

I see you've mentioned this a few times; I had no idea what this is so I googled it; here's a good instructional for those - like me - who are curious:

http://www.blaxploitation.com/drums/glynJohnsMethod.pdf

Yep, I usually position the OHs exactly 1 meter from the snare and prefer to use big headed cardioid condenser mikes (specially U87s).
By the way, Bonham didn't use a snare mic in that combination (I think he never ever used a snare mic in the studio, he wouldn't allow any engineer to put mikes near his drums as he wanted to control the levels by himself), only 3 mikes in Glyn Johns combination, two OHs and a kick mic which was also a condenser and about half a meter away from the kick. That's the way how you can get a huge kick drum sound, the closer you put it the less resonance and bigness it captures.
There's a similar technique called the recorderman method too.

But these techniques are bad when the drummer can't control the dynamics. It sounds good only when the drummer can play and his playing is balanced and bottom heavy which means kick drum, snare and toms are hit really hard while the cymbals are played in a much gentler way, specially china cymbals etc. which can ruin the whole mix if you beat the crap out of them.

[RR0849]

Without checking I would think Steve Albini uses similar methods. Some of his drum productions are really natural sounding to my ears.

[Endrik]

Albini uses all kinds of old school methods and refuses to record to anything but 2 inch tape. His prices are also extremely affordable. He pisses off a lot of people in the industry simply because he's showing the middle finger to big business record labels and doesn't rob the musicians. What an asshole, he dares to believe in artist's integrity.

Btw. he also likes to record the whole band playing live, it's like how all the cool New Orleans rhythm'n'blues records were made.

[Trem]

Nah, I don't believe in that. I don't care what kind of music it is. The same way I don't believe that you have to use guitar A and amp B for this style and guitar C and amp D for that style. I believe in capturing the energy and the feel of the musician in the best possible way. You can make a death metal recording with big bounding drums, it just requires work and of course a drummer who can really play. These days drummers bother less and less about controlling the dynamics of their playing which makes it really hard to record them and that's why everything is only close miked or triggered. Can't get a big sound with close miking.
To me a lot of the metal recordings these days sound just as over-processed and over-polished as some of the mainstream pop records, I just can't hear genuine energy on these things.

I agree on that in a lot of ways, it's true to some extent and a lot of it is trends as well, but i also do like some of that machine precision when i want to hear it. I still think it's true that some sacrifice has to be made in that type of music, weather you agree or not, i mean you don't listen nor have you tried to record it i'm imagining, so give it a try and see what you think. Try it with the drums tones your talking about do a bunch of far miking and see just how muddy it gets. It ain't gonna work, imo. Like in your track, the drums sounds great sounds exactly like it's hitting the vibe of the piece and the keys as well, but it is also afforded that by the nature of the music, the whole thing is drums, if you tried to start adding a bunch more instrument tracks your going to have to cut frequencies all over on them to fit, at least that's what i think. Anyway i was just enjoying the conversation for some peeps to talk about this shit as i'm starting to get into it. I get that this isn't the place for much objective opinion on this stuff. I think Frost from Satyricon is every bit as exciting to listen to as Neil Peart for different reasons. At 41 i have always tried to evolve and not get stuck in only what i liked 20 years ago, i still love that too, but i know people are less forgiving of anything that's not in their comfort zone. Doesn't make it crap or irellevant tho.

[Endrik]

Just recently I helped to record drums for an agressive technical metal tune with 7 string guitars, double bass and all that crap. The drums were in a rather small but good sounding room. The mic set-up was the usual close-miked thing but I put OHs in the recorderman position, then we opened all the doors, forming a longer corridor to which end we put a tube condenser room mic. Then we put one condenser as a distant kick mic, about half a meter away from the kick drum and then formed a sort of muting corridor with carpets and all kinds of things between the kick and the mic so it wouldn't take a lot of the hi-end shizzle frome the cymbals in, as it was a small room. It sounded great, it had all the attack necessary for metal but also the bigness from the OHs and room mikes. The key is to cut out the noisy muddy parts in the room tracks and boost the freqs which where the kick and snare attack is.

Gene Hoglan who plays a lot of blast beats and all the fast shit prefers to use more old school open tunings, bigger drums and hitting them hard instead of triggering. And from what I understand the only drum sound he has been totally satisfied with was the one which was recorded by Mike Frasier, the dude who has mixed a lot of big drum sounds and has done records for Aersomith, Metallica etc. which are notable for the usage of room mikes.

And since I mentioned Metallica, Black Album has huge wall of hi-gain guitars, fat bass sound and a bunch of other things going on but still the drums sound incredibly huge. They used about 40 mikes, a lot of them for the room sound. Close mikes, a couple of tracks with samples (from the same drum recording, the best sounding snare and kick hits for consistency) + huge room sound. And not only that, they also put huge subwoofer speakers one the sides of the kit during the recording where the same drum sound - mostly kicks - was coming out (it's a cool trick for creating a really live sound, recording while a bunch of speakers are blasting out the same thing in the recording room). Then they used a subharmonic synthesizer for some of the kick tracks, it creates a big low-end booming sound, it's usually done with a lot of hip-hop records. All that was mixed together, and not only was the mix big, heavy, fat and tight but it was also spacious, wide and very panoramic, just shows how mindblowing mixer Bob Rock can be.

[RR0849]

I've heard about that subwoofer trick in the past too but can't remember who was using it. Def Leppard maybe.

Here's another instrumental with more shredding...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXRADjXlb-8

Same drum machine but I did some tweaking to the sounds including recording the output from my stereo with a SM6 in the room and then putting that recording as a room sound track. Seemed to add a bit more realism and certainly sounded better than the software reverb effects alone.