Drums Drums Drums
As planned, Tim, Mark and I headed to Dirty River Studios in Walthamstow to record drums over the weekend. To say we were drenched is perhaps an understatement.
The Saturday proved to be pretty stressful. With all of us being music technicians, we ended up in a scenario (as Mark put it) of too many cooks. In other words, we all had our ideas on the mic placement with only four preamps on a Digi002. I had hoped for eight and be able to close-mic everything for a very tight sound, but we were resorted to using overheads and not a pair of anything (i.e. only one U87, one Samson, one AKG) and a kick going into the 5th line input - so we had no control over the gain.
Perhaps it was just a mix up on intentions, so I just sat away from it, let Mark do his thing and made the tea instead. We did quite a few takes on about three songs once everything was up and running but it was difficult to tell if what we had was any good. Tim was pretty tired by this point. But at least we had everything miced up for the next day.
I took the sessions home to have a listen on my own speakers and we pleasantly surprised how good the room sounded. My main concern was that there was too much emphasis on the hats and the rides and not enough depth with the tom drums. I didn't feel I could control the sound... that being said, running a Neve compressor for the drums on 'Dead On Red' sounded beautiful, while 'Too Late' and 'Get It Right' didn't quite have the depth I was looking for.
On Sunday, another early start and I spent the 90 minute tube journey haphazardly trying to explain to Mark what was wrong with the recordings and how a different placement might help... but that being said, I hadn't had enough time to hear it with fresh ears to really know what was wrong - which put Mark in an awkward situation of not knowing what he should do about it.
Still, we got in a little earlier and we managed to dig out a Focusrite preamp for putting the kick through. Still limited to five channels, Mark re-arranged the mic array to give more emphasis on the floor tom and less on the cymbols. Once we were all happy with the sound, Tim got much more into the songs. The sun came out and we were all in much better and relaxed moods. Five hours later, we had recorded drums for seven tracks, including the two I wasn't so happy with the day before.
I took them all home, but suddenly freaked out that the drums sounded more flimsy than the day before. Time for lots of plug-ins on everything. Actually, the drums for 'Too Late' needed very little plug-ins - just a little compression and some help from my Plate 140 reverb. 'Lovers And Politicians' needed more work and I've spent all of this afternoon trying to get it right (ironically, partly what the song is about - getting things right). It's very focused on the Toms, so I used some heavy multiband EQs on these but then found the track was just drowning in bass and not enough sparkle of clarity. It's an awesome sound if live, but I often forget that my speakers are a bit weird with bass and as long as the velocity is there, the bass should take care of itself. So I EQed each channel to bring everything out a little. I feel a lot happier with them now.
Still have a lot of work to do for the drums (not to mention some edits required) on the rest of the tracks, and I'm desperately trying to get hold of Mark Osborne to do some bass for me, but in the meantime I got my work cut out for me.
The Saturday proved to be pretty stressful. With all of us being music technicians, we ended up in a scenario (as Mark put it) of too many cooks. In other words, we all had our ideas on the mic placement with only four preamps on a Digi002. I had hoped for eight and be able to close-mic everything for a very tight sound, but we were resorted to using overheads and not a pair of anything (i.e. only one U87, one Samson, one AKG) and a kick going into the 5th line input - so we had no control over the gain.
Perhaps it was just a mix up on intentions, so I just sat away from it, let Mark do his thing and made the tea instead. We did quite a few takes on about three songs once everything was up and running but it was difficult to tell if what we had was any good. Tim was pretty tired by this point. But at least we had everything miced up for the next day.
I took the sessions home to have a listen on my own speakers and we pleasantly surprised how good the room sounded. My main concern was that there was too much emphasis on the hats and the rides and not enough depth with the tom drums. I didn't feel I could control the sound... that being said, running a Neve compressor for the drums on 'Dead On Red' sounded beautiful, while 'Too Late' and 'Get It Right' didn't quite have the depth I was looking for.
On Sunday, another early start and I spent the 90 minute tube journey haphazardly trying to explain to Mark what was wrong with the recordings and how a different placement might help... but that being said, I hadn't had enough time to hear it with fresh ears to really know what was wrong - which put Mark in an awkward situation of not knowing what he should do about it.
Still, we got in a little earlier and we managed to dig out a Focusrite preamp for putting the kick through. Still limited to five channels, Mark re-arranged the mic array to give more emphasis on the floor tom and less on the cymbols. Once we were all happy with the sound, Tim got much more into the songs. The sun came out and we were all in much better and relaxed moods. Five hours later, we had recorded drums for seven tracks, including the two I wasn't so happy with the day before.
I took them all home, but suddenly freaked out that the drums sounded more flimsy than the day before. Time for lots of plug-ins on everything. Actually, the drums for 'Too Late' needed very little plug-ins - just a little compression and some help from my Plate 140 reverb. 'Lovers And Politicians' needed more work and I've spent all of this afternoon trying to get it right (ironically, partly what the song is about - getting things right). It's very focused on the Toms, so I used some heavy multiband EQs on these but then found the track was just drowning in bass and not enough sparkle of clarity. It's an awesome sound if live, but I often forget that my speakers are a bit weird with bass and as long as the velocity is there, the bass should take care of itself. So I EQed each channel to bring everything out a little. I feel a lot happier with them now.
Still have a lot of work to do for the drums (not to mention some edits required) on the rest of the tracks, and I'm desperately trying to get hold of Mark Osborne to do some bass for me, but in the meantime I got my work cut out for me.
posted by Angelchrome at 9:51 pm
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