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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 3, 2015 0:00:52 GMT -6
PT has clip gain on every audio region, it's quite convenient, tookem long enough to add it though.
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Post by Ward on Apr 3, 2015 10:40:25 GMT -6
Ward, I think that thud thing you are describing is a massively gross over use of compression, especially in regards to snare drums. I know those top tier mix guys doing that are gonna look back a few years from now and be ashamed. It sucks. R That's exactly what it is! No life in those drums at all. What's so bad about having a snare drum that sounds like a snare, toms that ring and a kick with definition but also body and tone?
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Post by svart on Apr 3, 2015 10:51:28 GMT -6
Ward, I think that thud thing you are describing is a massively gross over use of compression, especially in regards to snare drums. I know those top tier mix guys doing that are gonna look back a few years from now and be ashamed. It sucks. R That's exactly what it is! No life in those drums at all. What's so bad about having a snare drum that sounds like a snare, toms that ring and a kick with definition but also body and tone? I think it's because all that ringing ambiance cuts into the other instruments that make the melody and into the vocals, which are what most people listen to anyway. I think the general mix attitude these days is to hype the moneymakers and let everything else fall to the wayside.
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Apr 3, 2015 11:25:55 GMT -6
Listeners only care about perfect hyper-realistic vocals. everything else isn't as important.
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 3, 2015 11:53:23 GMT -6
JMO, The common way to "track" the single hardest instrument to record and mix well(being a drum kit), is to deaden, close mic, eq, and compress to shit. (Excluding you RGO guys 8) 95% of engineers(and drummers for that matter!) couldn't tune a drum kit properly if their life depended on it, then of course great capture can only be accomplished with a great sound to begin with, then roughly 80% of the people have no earthy clue how to use compression for anything other than killing dynamics, (when used effectively, they should add dynamics), all this usually results in sampled drum replacements, and the inevitable utterance of "we recorded live drums".
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 3, 2015 11:53:58 GMT -6
Listeners only care about perfect hyper-realistic vocals. everything else isn't as important. nope 8)
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Post by svart on Apr 3, 2015 11:58:46 GMT -6
JMO, The common way to "track" the single hardest instrument to record and mix well(being a drum kit), is to deaden, close mic, eq, and compress to shit. (Excluding you RGO guys 8) 95% of engineers(and drummers for that matter!) couldn't tune a drum kit properly if their life depended on it, then of course great capture can only be accomplished with a great sound to begin with, then roughly 80% of the people have no earthy clue how to use compression for anything other than killing dynamics, (when used effectively, they should add dynamics), all this usually results in sampled drum replacements, and the inevitable utterance of "we recorded live drums". And how. 90% of the drummers I get in the studio can't tune their own drums. 80% of those actually admit it too! 50% have played more than 10 years and still can't tune their drums, nor do they seem to care. Most of the time I tune their drums for them, or replace their heads with heads out of my own stock that don't have 4 layers of duct tape and napkins on them. A lot of time I just sit them behind my kit and firmly tell them that they are playing my drum kit instead.
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Post by dandeurloo on Apr 3, 2015 14:32:54 GMT -6
I know a ton of PRO drummer who have no idea how to tune. Honestly, that would be most of them. I truly know A LOT of pro drummers. Crazy
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Post by Ward on Apr 3, 2015 20:17:25 GMT -6
JMO, The common way to "track" the single hardest instrument to record and mix well(being a drum kit), is to deaden, close mic, eq, and compress to shit. (Excluding you RGO guys 8) 95% of engineers(and drummers for that matter!) couldn't tune a drum kit properly if their life depended on it, then of course great capture can only be accomplished with a great sound to begin with, then roughly 80% of the people have no earthy clue how to use compression for anything other than killing dynamics, (when used effectively, they should add dynamics), all this usually results in sampled drum replacements, and the inevitable utterance of "we recorded live drums". And how. 90% of the drummers I get in the studio can't tune their own drums. 80% of those actually admit it too! 50% have played more than 10 years and still can't tune their drums, nor do they seem to care. Most of the time I tune their drums for them, or replace their heads with heads out of my own stock that don't have 4 layers of duct tape and napkins on them. A lot of time I just sit them behind my kit and firmly tell them that they are playing my drum kit instead. Funny you should mention that! I actually hired a drum tech to tune the drums in between every take for the album I'm currently mixing. The latest one I started, I did all the tuning myself. It's kind of amazing to watch drummers with years of experience have that big open-eyed look on their face 'oh, that's how you do it' kind of daze.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Apr 3, 2015 21:20:23 GMT -6
JMO, The common way to "track" the single hardest instrument to record and mix well(being a drum kit), is to deaden, close mic, eq, and compress to shit. (Excluding you RGO guys 8) 95% of engineers(and drummers for that matter!) couldn't tune a drum kit properly if their life depended on it, then of course great capture can only be accomplished with a great sound to begin with, then roughly 80% of the people have no earthy clue how to use compression for anything other than killing dynamics, (when used effectively, they should add dynamics), all this usually results in sampled drum replacements, and the inevitable utterance of "we recorded live drums". You can tune drums? I thought it was just fish you could tune!
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,919
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Post by ericn on Apr 3, 2015 21:21:37 GMT -6
And how. 90% of the drummers I get in the studio can't tune their own drums. 80% of those actually admit it too! 50% have played more than 10 years and still can't tune their drums, nor do they seem to care. Most of the time I tune their drums for them, or replace their heads with heads out of my own stock that don't have 4 layers of duct tape and napkins on them. A lot of time I just sit them behind my kit and firmly tell them that they are playing my drum kit instead. Funny you should mention that! I actually hired a drum tech to tune the drums in between every take for the album I'm currently mixing. The latest one I started, I did all the tuning myself. It's kind of amazing to watch drummers with years of experience have that big open-eyed look on their face 'oh, that's how you do it' kind of daze. This is why a good drum tech is worth every penny!
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 3, 2015 21:35:13 GMT -6
Jeez, how hard can it be?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2015 21:54:06 GMT -6
I'm not a drummer but want to learn.
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Post by mulmany on Apr 3, 2015 22:14:44 GMT -6
Jeez, how hard can it be? From a very good session drummer, "the possibilities are endless". Think of all the different head combinations and construction materials that could be available. Tuning drums gets really deep fast. Like svart said, you need a large selection of heads and the time to figure out what the drum needs for the sound you want. The most common issue I see is drummers trying to get small tom's to be deep... they end up sounding like wet cardboard with a thud after. Or its the "it sounds great when I am playing, why is the mic making it sound like that?", nope that is the way your kit actually sounds.
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Post by noah shain on Apr 3, 2015 23:59:41 GMT -6
Tricks! Or maybe techniques? Where's that stuff guys? I know you have more of Em up your sleeves!
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 4, 2015 0:11:56 GMT -6
Jeez, how hard can it be? This qualifies as technique.... I think?, and to answer mjbs Q at the same time, tuning drums is a pretty subjective area, but I believe It's much harder than any other instrument...it's very counter intuitive. I've been playing drums for cough! 30 years cough! Being the obsessive type, I have tweaked tuning as many ways as you can imagine, but it always comes back to the same thing for me, every drum has a sweet spot where everything comes together, once you find it, it does NOT change for that drum, even for the best of drums there will be a small range within that sweet spot. Tape, moon gels, wallets, pillows and all that stuff are fails imo (i'll make an exception for other dudes bass drums, certainly not my own though, i get it done with heads and a few other tricks that don't ruin playability), you get the amount of damping you need from drumhead types/plys and thickness of plys, a lot of great drummers get lazy and moongel and tape, and wallet and...? it can and has worked, but it unacceptably screws with the playability of the drum imo. For a pure tone drum sound, the kit will inevitably sound a tad boingy when you sit behind it, it takes a little distance for the sound to develop, thats why larger rooms rule for drums, generally if your drums sound acceptably thumpy and ambient as you sit behind them, they will sound ok at best in microphones, i know that sounds hard to believe, but it's ABSOLUTELY true. Back in the day when i was taking lessons from Dave Garibaldi, Simon Phillips etc(boom goes the name drop lol), they all knew this, i remember being stunned by how amazingly ringy their drums sounded the first time i sat down behind their kits, much more than you'd ever think listening to their recordings. Simon's kit was so alive that you couldn't even have a conversation around it without it barking all over the place, it was just ready to explode, and it did when he played it! Those Artstar ll's sounded insane! this is the era that i took a couple lessons from Simon, he actually showed me personally how to play the 7/8 shuffle from Jeff Beck's "space boogie"! that was a friggin epic day! good times 8)
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 4, 2015 8:30:17 GMT -6
Dang, it's a little early for that kind of playing! That's amazing. My friend and drummer when I need one, Paul Duskin is a long time friend od Pete Townshend, he was a little upset he didn't get the solo gig, but man, Simon Phillips is undeniable, even when playing music I don't exactly care for.
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Post by Randge on Apr 4, 2015 9:34:27 GMT -6
I get fatigued at "where's the one" type music pretty fast. I have played a lot of it and rarely do I get anything out of it. Much musician respect and their chops are great, but give me a salty groove to play over any day instead. It really depends on what kind of music you are doing as to the needs of a drum kit imo. The tones of this kit wouldn't work for Country, Americana or roots music but they work perfectly in this context.
R
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 4, 2015 9:52:13 GMT -6
Tuning drums is just an ordinary part of being a recording engineer.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 4, 2015 10:09:12 GMT -6
Interesting thought Bob, and I like the concept, but I thinkt tuning the drums should be an ordinary part of being a drummer!
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Apr 4, 2015 10:34:49 GMT -6
I don't think tuning for recording is taught. I picked up bits and pieces from different engineers and drummers. In the '60s every studio had a drum kit because one was expected to be rolling tape within a half-hour of the musicians' arrival and there was hell to pay if you didn't finish 4 tracks in 3 hours.
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Post by Martin John Butler on Apr 4, 2015 16:27:30 GMT -6
I know what you mean Bob. When I did my solo album, my drummer used the kit in the studio, and it was one of the best drum sounds I'd heard. They had it all dialed in beforehand, so we were basically good to go.
I don't know if this qualifies as a "tip", especially since the guys here are far more advanced as engineers than I am, but I often use two compressors on vocal tracks, but sparingly. I print with the Warm Audio WA76 to a pinch of UAD's LA2A. But I use the least amount I can. A friend did a vocal track last night, and I then added some STA-Level and a little verb to that finished vocal track, and it's one of the better sounds I've gotten, and you wouldn't know there's any compression on it.
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Post by ben on Apr 5, 2015 8:46:40 GMT -6
Tricks! Or maybe techniques? Where's that stuff guys? I know you have more of Em up your sleeves! I like to use very subtle delays to get program material out of the middle of the mix to make room for other things. I'm surprised at the amount of mixers who don't know how to do this. Then again, it took me a while to learn.
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Post by swurveman on Apr 5, 2015 9:48:28 GMT -6
Tricks! Or maybe techniques? Where's that stuff guys? I know you have more of Em up your sleeves! I like to use very subtle delays to get program material out of the middle of the mix to make room for other things. I'm surprised at the amount of mixers who don't know how to do this. Then again, it took me a while to learn. ben, Are you talking about, for example, (a) taking an electric guitar track and panning it left (b) setting up a mono aux track with a short delay (1-10 ms) inserted, (c) panning that mono aux track right- the opposite of the guitar track, and (d) sending the guitar track to the mono aux track? I do this when I want to make the guitar to sound wider and less directional. Or, are you talking about something else? To make a vocal wider, I also will at times take the vocal channel and send it to two mono aux tracks panned opposite-one L and one R- with insert delays of 30ms on one and 35 ms on the other.
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Post by tonycamphd on Apr 5, 2015 11:02:20 GMT -6
one of my favs is the Haas effect, it's a huge step up in mid panning images from pan pots, Hass is also the saving grace for guys who pigeon hole themselves into "strict" LCR use, allowing them to say they were "right" lol, it's the act of taking 2 identical tracks, one L one R, that should show up the in the center, then applying a delay in the sub 20ms range. The delay in effect moves the image partial L or R, amount and direction depends on delay time, and side applied. Haas follows real world human hearing dynamics, so the image comes off entirely more depthful and realistic than simply using the pan pot. You can further tailor the effect by level attenuation and shelving high freq's on the delayed side, just be subtle or you ruin the effect ime.
this guy totally gets it, enjoy 8)
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