I agree with everything Neil and David said. Many years ago I was in a
local prog rock band that was about to record a four song 'EP' (
independently of course. This was the mid '80's and in a meeting with the
engineer/co-producer he was really stressing that he could get a
better/cleaner drum sound if I recorded just drums on one pass and cymbals
on another pass. I was a little surprised but I like challenges and to be
cooperative ( at least when I'm in the mood ;-) and 'on paper' it made
sense to me, so I said I would try that at our next rehearsal. Well, I kind
of made it through the songs but the performances were sub par of what I
could do it I just played normally. Maybe if we were doing '80s synth pop
it might of been feasible but with the fast and complex prog rock we were
doing it was pretty much not possible ( fun and interesting to try though. )
I've been able to record some pretty decent drum tracks on my own ( if I say
so myself and IMHO etc ) but most of the time after I'm done mixing I've
pretty much reduced them to crap, as David was saying.
Best of luck!
John L Rice
"Neil Rutman" wrote in message
...
I had a great drummer in my studio a while back and asked him to try such
a
technique as an experiment for both of us. He couldn't do it easily. It's
like learning to play the drums all over again to some degree. An analogy
might be like asking a guitar player to play a song he's intimately
familiar
with but only using the "d" & "g" strings for a pass. Possible but
uncomfortable until you've done it for a while.
Neil R
"David Morgan (MAMS)" wrote in message
news:q53vd.3919$N%6.1409@trnddc05...
"David" wrote in message
m...
I hear in many modern-day recordings songs sounding like the drums are
so isolated but not so much that they're programmed. They still sound
live and all but the cymbals are so big and in your face without
sounding like there's any snare in the overheads.
You mean, without 'appearing' to sound as if there's an abundance
of snare in the overheads... If it's mixed well enough to present a
good picture of the drum set as a 'whole'... and then placed into the
mix appropriately, how would you know for sure?
The snare sounds
different every time it hits but no cymbal bleed behind it in the
centre.
You mean, you cannot readily *detect* that cymbals are present in the
area of the snare drum... (same explanation as above).
Overall, the drums sound like they are all live but so
polished that there's no way gating or anything like that could get it
to sound so punchy and seperated.
If the kit is recorded live, that's called adequate recording experience
and above all, a good drummer and a well tuned kit. The area the kit
is recorded in also plays a bigger role than most would assume.
Gates can work wonders to isolate, but I despise them. Compression
can do a variety of little tricks, but I dislike the results for the
most
part.
"Punchy", is a well tuned drum kit played by an experienced drummer.
It's also knowing where the drum kit should sit in a mix based on the
genre'. It's easy to make a great recording of drums and then bury it
in the mix so as to make them sound like little more than cardboard
boxes.
"Separation" is taking a relatively accurate picture of the drum kits
parts
and then reassembling it so as to make it a cohesive whole; balanced
and separated as necessary to fit the into the mix appropriately. Some
people can do this with minimal miking, others mic nearly everything.
Personally, I find it more difficult to mix a drum kit tracked with only
three
mics than to mix a kit that was close miked, almost without regard for
how poorly the tracks may have been recorded.
My question is, could this be the result of the drummer recording the
snare, kick and cymbals seperately?
I sincerely doubt it, though 'sampled' sounds are often layered onto
the original drum tracks which can be ellusive to detect.
Such a technique makes sense to me
in my head but since I've never tried it I wouldn't know how realistic
the resulting sound would be.
Probably pretty nasty.
You happen to be striking a sorta' sour note with me, since I was just
recently flown to Montana to mix a western swing album wherein the
amateur recordist failed in his attempts to record the entire drumkit,
as
he was afraid of the 'bleed' between tracks. As a result of this fear
and
inexperience, he went back and re-tracked all of the parts seperately
with only a couple of small exceptions. Putting them back together
again, with any semblance of cohesion, was probably the biggest
turd I have ever had to polish. Don't get me wrng, the songs were
good and so were the other players. But on this record, the drums
simply had to take the back seat.
The results were a mishmosh of out of tempo, bad sounding tracks with
little on no 'feeling' at all left in them... certainly no "groove"
what-so-ever.
Every mistake an amateur could possibly have made, this recordist
made with great flair, on each and every single track that he had
subsequently re-recorded.... down to miking the ride cymbal with
a 414 from about three inches away. (I never knew there was quite
so much low end in a ride cymbal). Since he also recorded everything
totally flat, it was difficult to find enough EQ to carve out a
semi-smooth
sounding cymbal.
Any comments are welcome.
In general, no... I don't think this is an accepted practice at all, and
I would certainly *never* recommend it. It's bad enough when the
drums as a whole are recorded separately from the main rhythm
section, let alone each piece independently. I can't even imagine
finding a drummer who would agree with such a suggestion.
--
David Morgan (MAMS)
http://www.m-a-m-s DOT com
Morgan Audio Media Service
Dallas, Texas (214) 662-9901
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http://www.artisan-recordingstudio.com