Getting decent drum 'punch'

[Antman261]

Iunno, if you line up all the peaks, all you're going to get is bigger peaks. Sure push things around till it sounds good, but I don't think that necessarily has to be everything being perfectly in time.

 

I was watching school of rock on tv tonight. On my tiny little TV, with tiny little speakers, I noticed the drummers toms had this sort of HUUUGE sound, like a lot of body in the low end. But it was extremely controlled and didn't seem to get in the way, and my tv speakers could reproduce that sound, so I'm wondering, how do you get THAT sound in toms?!

[alcohol]

If you line up the peaks you're gonna get bigger peaks fer sure. You only got two ears. If you got more mics on the drums than your ears, it ain't going to be the same as what you hear, not that that's what you want. But I think tracks should push the kick drum in the speaker at the same time rather than at different times, unless you want that effect. Which is essentially an out of phase flam. I've not done any scientific studies on this but from my experience getting tracks lined up sounds better. YMMV

[Antman261]

well it's not going to be anymore then a few ms, which is also likely to make the attack thicker/longer.

 

You'd have to have a fair bit of distance between the mics to get more then 40ms between them

[UstadKhanAli]

 

I was watching school of rock on tv tonight. On my tiny little TV, with tiny little speakers, I noticed the drummers toms had this sort of HUUUGE sound, like a lot of body in the low end. But it was extremely controlled and didn't seem to get in the way, and my tv speakers could reproduce that sound, so I'm wondering, how do you get THAT sound in toms?!

 

 

I haven't heard this, so I'm *guessing* here...but I'd say that it's a combination of rolling off a lot of the bottom end that many speakers cannot reproduce plus creating artificial harmonics of the bottom end (think Waves Renaissance Maxx or something similar) and perhaps some well-placed EQ with a bit of the bottom end rolled off so it doesn't sound really "woofy" and can impart a lot of the bottom end. Oh, and some well-used compression to create a little more sustain and take the initial peak. But again, I'm *guessing*!!!

[Phil O'Keefe]

On pretty much all my rock stuff where I want some big, punchy sounding drums I'll clone the drum (not cymbal) tracks and squash one set of them (like a 4:1 ratio) while leaving the original tracks clean, then mix the compressed set in at about half the volume of the originals. Really makes them cut through.

 

That can work well, but as an alternative, I would suggest using aux sends / returns instead, and putting the compressor on the aux returns. That accomplishes the same thing, but doesn't take up extra tracks and doesn't require extra HDD storage space. I wrote about this in one of my recent EQ columns.

 

Another thing to consider in the quest for "punchy" drum tracks is early reflections and reverb - too much of either one can be counter-productive insofar as perceived punch.

 

Compression can also be helpful in getting good "punch" out of drums - IMO, the idea is to set your compressors so that you allow enough of the note attacks to pass through before the compressor clamps down - IOW, don't use an overly quick attack time on your drum compressors.

 

Lots of good answers / suggestions in this thread.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Fix all problems at the source.

 

It's certainly one of my mantras. :phil:

[Antman261]

Can we skip the next 5 pages? *insert flame war here*

 

Okay thanks.

[DeathMonkey]

 

WHAT would cause drum samples to NOT be punchy on playback?

 

 

I use primarily loops and sampled drums, and quite a few of them lack punch - they sound great - detailed and solid - but have a hard time poking through rock tracks. I've been following some of your guy's tips and have found that a duped track (or submix for drums) run through a comp and a Sansamp plug in then layered behind the original can really make a ton of difference.

[UstadKhanAli]

Can we skip the next 5 pages? *insert flame war here* Okay thanks.

 

What are we flaming each other about...triggers? Samples? Drum machines? Loops? Whatever it is, I'm in!!

[Lee Knight]

As far as I'm concerned there's only one trigger and he's proudly stuffed and standing in the Roy Rogers Museum.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

As far as I'm concerned there's only one trigger and he's proudly stuffed and standing in the Roy Rogers Museum.

 

 

Does 'e sound good on a snare?

[Antman261]

What are we flaming each other about...triggers? Samples? Drum machines? Loops? Whatever it is, I'm in!!

 

I was just expecting another 'samples are good'

 

'no you suck if you use samples'

 

'no i don't'

 

argument

[Walt Disney]

Hey Majoria,

 

Here's something sort of stumbled into some time aggo. Everybody's probably gonna thing this is rediculous but hey...

I'll explain my recording situation abit.

For a start, our practice space is an acoustic anomaly.

It's a concrete brick space with a concrete floor wich we treated with very thick cotton cloth draped 10 inches from the walls and about 15-20 inches from the ceiling. Drums are on a 6" wood riser and most of the floor is carpeted.

This room is recording heaven for phat rock sounds. I'm serious too.

The kit is a 4P Premier Artist Maple.

 

Ok, to the point. My kit is placed on the riser with my back close to the wall/drape.

I hardly ever record my drums close miced (because the room sounds so good and i like an "open" drum sound).

I often use an Audix D6 on kick, NT5 pair for overheads and an sm57 on snare. Thats it.

It happens that i add an AT2020 somewhere in the room to get an even more roomy sound if i record drums without the intention of overloading it with other instruments later.

These recordings sound great, but not particularly punchy.

I don't use compression that much and i even try to avoid it where possible.

 

One day i placed a Beyer N69 on a stand and placed in on the front/hihat side, hight about one meter, pointed at my chest. In a nonchalant manner. To my surprise the result was the kit sounded much like Nirvana's In Utero sound. Big as life and Punchy punch!

 

Call me crazy, but it works for me.

 

Peter

[screamer24]

really sounds like a monitor or amp problem!

[screamer24]

no punch on drum samples! sounds like monitor or amp problem ! you wont get much punch on near field monitors, but pa's should kick @$$

[UstadKhanAli]

I dunno, the monitors I have are really punchy, and they're *small* NFs!! Now, not a huge-ass bottom end, I grant you, but they are really punchy sounding!

[halljams]

There is a product call voxengo transmodder.

Here is my suggestion for you, try it on your drums, it will make them as punchy as you ever imagined. I bet you will find that once the mix is done, the drums will be distracting.

The truth is, i find, that, like was said earlier, drums are plenty punchy from their dry recorded position (if they are tuned and tracked well).

Often i find myself using light compression on the OH's of 3-6 db reduction and playing with the attack to tame the punchiness so the drums don't stick out of the mix too much.

This i find is a much nicer position to be in then trying to make more punch.

 

So if you are looking to manufacture punch, you are most likey recording poorly (tuned or setup for recording) drums or have a not so good mike setup, or the wrong mikes and preamps.

 

That said, some things that will help with a dull kik.........

 

Play the rough mix and turn the kik down to just a bit below where you like the volume of it, so it's not quite loud enough.

Then do the old frequency boost sweep with a narrow bandwidth from 35 hz up, do it slow and listen for where for the kik gets powerful and you can feel it in your lower back, listen with your body not your ears, even at a low volume you can feel these sounds in your body, pick the spot of power you like and turn off the boost for now, move on to the next band.

 

In the same manner look for the spot(s) where there is alot of energy coming out of the drum but not energy you want in your mix(sometimes it's 125 maby 200) really depends on the drum and recording).

 

Next band( move up to 400-900) anything gross in there?

 

Then on the top band search for your attack, 2-5k.

 

You may want to go further still and check around 8k too.

 

Once you have the spots, start nuking or boosting.

 

Then the best compressor is an opto, i have ben using the distressor(@10:1) with awesome results and that is where you can add puch and knock the drum in line.

 

All these things should be done with the KIK playing in the mix. Don't make decisions with it on it's own.

 

The reason you want the kik turned down a bit is because you want to make the kik powerful and noticable at a low volume in the mix, nothing messes up the finalizing process like a loud pain in the ass kik taking up all the room and grabbing all the compression and maximizing etc...... Yuck!