Personal SPACE
Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Jim Batcho
Nothing kills the vibe of a song or an instance of music like rhythm tracks that strive for realism and fail. This is much of the reason that the rhythmic culture of underground music is identified by electronic pulses. The sound has emerged from basement studios and a DIY aesthetic that demands music be heard independent of class and economics. Of course, the continued development of cost-effective sampling is helping to alleviate some of the economic divide. But it is still somewhat restricted to set patterns, not to mention that sampled drums often create an identity crisis: They're kind of yours, but their genesis belongs to someone else. Sometimes, you just want a killer realistic drum sound that you can build on your own.
So what are the choices in making realistic drum sounds that reflect your own identity? You could dish out the big bucks directing and recording a drummer across 10 channels of audio in a professional studio. Or you could build your own at home and, through the magic of technology, give them life through inventive sequencing, deft ambience processing and good mixing. And that's the focus of this article: creating realistic drum tracks in your home.
First, remember what goes into the sound of drum and percussion instruments. The sonic characteristics are dependent on room acoustics, more so than perhaps any other instrument in modern recording. This is the reason that ambience — a sense of acoustic space — plays such a vital role in capturing realistic sounds. This is also one of the reasons that it costs so much for a professional recording studio. Studios can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars simply attaining good room acoustics. Because you most likely don't have such a luxury, you need to first build a library of acoustic drum sounds and then create an artificial sense of space.
(DRUM) ROLL YOUR OWN
The first step of this process involves the creation of a custom sample library of acoustic drum hits. But before going any further, some basic recording concepts need to be explained. Music recording, in general, is a combination of close and distant miking. As the terms suggest, close-miking drums involves placing a mic an inch or so away from the drumhead whereas distance miking uses different mic types that are arranged farther from the source to capture more room tone, or ambience. Typically, a sliding scale is employed. Because distance miking relies heavily on room acoustics, you're going to slide more to the close-miking end of the spectrum. However, it's up to you to decide what kind of tone you want based on what your room sounds like. You could either record only a source (close-miked) or record a source plus an overhead mic.
Each approach has its drawbacks: If you use only source mics, it's harder to create realistic ambience later. And if you go with a source and an overhead mic, you will likely pick up an ineffective room tone, which creates problems with assembling tracks later on. When you build a drum sequence with ambient-flavored samples, you run the risk of “additive ambience” problems. It's not a deal breaker, but it's more tricky to manage. However, an added benefit of an overhead mic is the natural bleed of a kit. For example, a tom will pick up a bit of snare rattle, which adds to a kit's sense of realism. (It's worth noting that you could also just record a drummer playing in a house, using multiple mics. If you go that route, you can enhance a room tone later using the tips described in this article. But this primarily concentrates on tracking single notes and building sequencer performances.)
For close miking, set up a drum kit as normal, make sure it's properly tuned and sounding good, and then place a mic of your choice on the snare drum. Directional cardioid mics — either a dynamic or a small-diaphragm condenser — are generally a better choice. Something with a fast transient response and high SPL handling is also a good idea. (Check the sidebar, “The Mic Locker,” for a list of budget-oriented drum-mic options.) Set up a mono track for the snare, and mess around with mic placement until you like what you hear from the drummer. In general, the closer a mic is to the snare (or any individual drum) the drier and more precise the sound; the further a mic is, the more open and spacious the sound. If you decide to go with a source plus an overhead rather than just a mono source, add a cardioid condenser microphone over the whole kit and set up two sequencer tracks instead of one. Once you're happy with the sound, hit Record and have the drummer play notes on of various types at different volumes and with a variety of sticks and brushes. Keep track of which takes you like, take careful notes, and label the audio regions you've made. Go ahead and throw out the notes that weren't happening.
Next, move your snare mic to the first tom, and change mic type if you wish. (Important: If you're using an added overhead, do not move the overhead mic. Keep it in the exact same center position as it was in for the snare recording to maintain realistic distance.) Hit Record again, and track a few tom hits. Take note of drum hits you like, and dump the ones you don't. Move the mic to the other toms, and track them, as well. For the hi-hat and ride cymbal, record more takes than usual to get the many different voicings and accents that are possible with these expressive instruments. If you haven't already, you'll almost certainly want to change mics to record the kick drum, so do that next.
For the ride and crash cymbals, you'll want to use a stereo overhead pair placed high, rather than a single mic. Ears are so accustomed to hearing cymbals in space that it's best to track them this way. Keep them high enough to avoid “ringing” frequencies that can occur when a cymbal is miked too closely. It's also a good idea when recording just cymbals to use a highpass filter on your mixer or preamp, set anywhere from 100 to 500 Hz. Once you've finished recording all of your individual elements, zoom in and trim the regions so that you capture a zero point on the waveform that begins just before the huge rise in gain (the attack) and ends at some zero point at which the decay becomes inaudible.
Although original recorded sounds give your eventual kit uniqueness, sometimes, you don't have the option of recording your own samples, especially if your DAW is set up strictly for remixing. When culling sounds from a library — say, CD-ROM collections, Web downloads or your own stock samples — try to pick sounds that would be complementary in a kit. They don't necessarily have to be of the same stock kit variety. By being creative and trusting your ears, you'll create a kit that has more of your own personality. But do imagine how a resulting kit would sound, and choose accordingly. The nice thing is that once you get to the assembly stage, you can change your mind.
Many great stereo drum-hit samples are out there, but unless you're dealing with cymbals, it's best to stick with clean, dry, mono samples. They're easier to sequence, and you're going to create space out of them later anyway. Another option, however, is to find a stereo loop that is devoid of cymbals and hi-hat and add your own hat and cymbal samples on top to fill it out. Make sure all of your stock sounds are properly labeled and easy to identify on your hard drive.
FROM ISOLATION TO REUNIFICATION
A drum kit in its entirety is not so much a collection of parts as it is a single large stereo instrument. What you did at the recording stage is shatter this important rule by thinking of everything in isolation. So what you need to do now is reunify the kit. Do this by setting up your sequencer and placing separate elements at the right volume levels and in their proper places in the stereo field.
All of the popular software sequencers these days have grid-style editing capabilities. Set up your sequencer for laying in your drum elements by creating the appropriate number and type of tracks. A typical arrangement and labeling sequence goes something like the following: kick, snare, hi-hat, tom 1, tom 2, ride, OH-L and OH-R (or a single stereo overhead track). Stereo imaging is crucial for creating a unified kit, and it generally requires tweaking to get it just right. For starters, decide whether you want your kit to present a drummer's perspective or an audience perspective. Here are some general rules for panning a drum kit: The kick and snare are mono instruments and should be panned straight down the middle; the hi-hat can be set at 25 percent or so to one side, maybe with the ride set to 35 percent on the other side; the two toms should be spaced 20 to 30 percent in both directions (a third middle tom at center pan); and the cymbals can be panned 50 percent or so in both directions. What you're going for is not only a natural representation of a kit but also an even balance across the stereo field. Don't pan anything hard left and right; this will create a sonic hole in the middle, and you want to leave room on the flanks for later ambience (your fabricated “room” sound), not to mention other instruments, in the total mix.
From there, you can place individual elements into your sequence based on your determined grid note value and tempo setting. Create your original performance, groove or desired loop by dragging in audio regions. If you used an added overhead mic, you should first bounce the two tracks down to a single file. How you mix the two levels to mono will depend on if you want the note to have more of a source sound (close-miked) or an ambient sound (more of the overhead level). When placing these bounced files into the grid, you'll find that the natural ambience may be wreaking havoc on your eventual compiled performance. Do what you can to crossfade from note to note and see how the performance is sounding.
When you've finished compiling a performance, listen back with all channel faders at unity gain. The stereo field should be fairly tight and narrow. The next step is to set individual fader levels, which is always subjective. But, again, here are some general tips: For a standard pop or rock sound, the kick and snare should reside at around -3 or -5 dB with cymbal channels around -12 dB or less. Toms, hat and ride can go somewhere in between those levels. A jazz or more ambient sound will depend more on the cymbal signals, but because you don't really have a proper overhead track — in which overhead mics capture the kit as well as cymbals — you'll have to rely much more on later ambience processing. Check that you're not overloading your main stereo output mix; in fact, try to keep the stereo mix at about -5 dB or so to give yourself some headroom. When you're fairly happy with your levels, set any equalization and compression you want. With EQ, try to carve out a good sense of space. At the danger of being wildly oversimplistic, kick is best around 80 to 500 Hz; snare at 500 Hz to 4 kHz; cymbals, ride and hi-hat at around 2 to 15 kHz; and toms at various places from 100 Hz to 100 kHz. Compression and EQ will result in gain changes, so readjust your main mix back to -5 dB to compensate for shift. As a final step, set up an auxiliary channel for ambience, and create bus assignments on all individual channel strips.
VISUALIZING TIME AND SPACE
Considering how artificial ambience will affect your tracks, think back to the nature of a drum kit. Drums are loud, powerful instruments that project at high decibel levels. As such, the sound waves of the notes are quite strong. In confined spaces — a room, for example — the waves bounce off of walls repeatedly at various time intervals and in many directions, creating reverberation. For example, you are not only hearing the sound of a snare-drum hit but also the sound of the surrounding space. The angles of the walls determine the directions of these waves; the type of material (wood, carpet, glass and so on) absorbs or reflects the waves; the size of the room determines the amount of decay and sound diffusion. Try to visualize the kind of space that you want your drums to reside in, and work toward that. It helps to think of the kit's sound in four dimensions: height (volume levels), width (the stereo field), space (the depth of the room) and time (the length of reverb decay). You want to take advantage of all four dimensions so that you have room to play with and so the ears capture a total atmosphere.
The best means to develop realistic ambience with an assembled drum kit is through careful use of room simulators. This doesn't mean that you simply jack in a standard reverb setting; it's more about creating a sense of space than creating an effect. Specialty hardware boxes, such as the Digital Domain DD-2 K-Stereo Processor, are available for creating artificial ambience, but this article will concentrate on plug-ins. Thanks to faster computer-processor speed, convolution (or sampling) reverbs are becoming more prevalent and doing a lot to provide users with notably high-quality ambience. The nice thing about convolution processing is that the software strives more for realism than ear candy. Audio Ease Altiverb and Waves IR-1 are two excellent options, but there are many others, including Emagic Space Designer. Altiverb in particular combines great-quality sound and a visual approach to developing a sense of place. IR-1, on the other hand, has the advantage of a parametric EQ that allows you to further carve out a room sound.
Whichever means you use to generate reverberated ambience, you should attempt to work to the strengths of particular components of your kit to give it a natural sound. Here, send levels are crucial. Because you didn't record overheads that capture the sound of a whole kit — unless you used the three-mic technique — you need to “distance” the sounds of each element by assigning channel-strip sends to an ambience track. When deciding on send levels, think in terms of what overhead mics might capture and what a room might do to each element. You will have some kick in there but probably more snare and toms and even more cymbals. And aside from general acoustic properties, keep in mind the particular quality of kit sound that you want to achieve. For example, maybe brighter instruments like cymbals and snares sound better with more send level whereas a kick drum is better served retaining its fundamental raw punch.
What you really want is to give the whole kit a sense of depth through individual send-level adjustments because not every element hits a room at the same moment. To do this, assign varying levels along a bus to your ambience channel that has the sampling reverb on it. Use a single reverb setting to retain the sound of a single space for the whole kit. The reverb should also establish a sense of space further along the stereo field (increasing the dimension of width). If your original dry overhead cymbal sounds are set to about 50 percent panning each way, try setting the reverb ambience spread to about 80 percent each direction. This will create a wider field of sound and give your kit a great deal of life and presence.
Reverberation on drums often benefits from using a predelay setting, which delays the time at which the reverb kicks in and heightens the sense of realism. A short 15 to 20 millisecond setting usually works. Another trick for adding brilliance to the ambience is to chain a mild chorus to the cymbals after the reverb. They'll shimmer more with a short chorus setting and give some nice sparkle when used sparingly. A more dangerous but often fulfilling option, when done right, is to use delays rather than reverbs to create room space. Try to keep delay repeats down to a single reflection, or it will sound artificial. Slap-back echo, for example, creates a nice effect, or you can send two slightly different delay settings to the two sides of the stereo field. Or maybe in the space you're visualizing, the snare is bouncing off the walls stronger than the kick because of the virtual room materials you've created. So adjust the send levels accordingly. It also works great if you can sync one or more delays to the tempo of the rhythm, although, there, you're going ever so slightly past the point of pure realism. If you decide that you want to combine delays and convolution reverberation, go easy on both. A nice trick is to tighten in the delay's stereo field while the reverb is spread further out. For example, if your reverb return panning is set to 80 degrees each way, have your delay spread set to 40 or so each way. That will create an attractive acoustic field. Experimentation with plug-in placement on channel strips can yield some interesting results. Producer Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno) is known for, among many other things, moving various effects around a particular signal chain. For example, try letting your drum kit hit a chorus before the reverb or add reverb just to a slap-back-echo send rather than the kit itself.
Hopefully, the techniques described here will give you a starting point for building realistic drum tracks on a tight budget. Be careful with effects levels while mixing your virtual kit, though. The two common errors with effects are either adding too much or too little. A definite sweet spot exists with this kind of processing, in which a kit sounds natural without sounding canned. Once you hear the kit within the scope of your total mix or remix, you'll have a better idea of where your kit resides and how natural it sounds. After you've achieved realism, you can then go back and patch in more of an old-school, colored reverb sound for snare, toms and cymbals at varying levels. But for now, just think space.
THE MIC LOCKER
For acoustic-kit recordings, you'll want to procure a couple of dynamic mics that will work effectively on various elements of a kit in close-miked situations. If you're also using a distant-miked approach, an overhead condenser will be needed. Here is a list of some dynamic and condenser mics that will work in a variety of situations and won't break the bank.
DYNAMIC MICS
AKG D 112: This popular kick mic has less hype at the low end and is effective on floor toms.
Sennheiser MD 421: Although a more expensive option, this one mic could probably be used on every close-miked instrument on a kit.
Shure Beta 52: Another popular kick-drum mic, this has a frequency curve that strongly enhances low-end frequencies.
Shure SM57: This rugged, good-quality mic is very directional and commonly used on snare and toms.
CONDENSER MICS
Marshall MXL603: This lesser-known Chinese microphone is cheap, solid and great-sounding.
Oktava MC012: A popular, inexpensive Russian mic, this is often sold as a matched pair and is available with interchangeable pickup capsules.
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