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getting toms to stand out in live mix


paisteguy

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anyone have have a suggestion on getting louder tom sound live aside from turning them up alot louder through mains. would it help if all toms would be tuned to higher pitch or maybe a head change is in order as in going from double ply to single ply heads?

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Someone pointed out in another thread that if a drum has ONLY attack and then deadness, it won't cut through as much as if it has a bit of sustain.

 

To that extent, if you need to cut through you do these things:

a) tune higher

b) remove all muffling

c) change to single-ply heads

 

all those changes promote a PING vs a THUD.

 

However, drum overtones tend to bother sound guys. So odds are, you'll likely just be turning up the toms in the mix.... but that has its own problem because a group of mics has only so much volume it can attain before feedback, and each mic affects the headroom available to all the others.

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Originally posted by coyote-1

Someone pointed out in another thread that if a drum has ONLY attack and then deadness, it won't cut through as much as if it has a bit of sustain.


To that extent, if you need to cut through you do these things:

a) tune higher

b) remove all muffling

c) change to single-ply heads


all those changes promote a PING vs a THUD.


However, drum overtones tend to bother sound guys. So odds are, you'll likely just be turning up the toms in the mix.... but that has its own problem because a group of mics has only so much volume it can attain before feedback, and each mic affects the headroom available to all the others.

 

 

Coyote beat me to it. Exactly correct. If you're unmiced, you need higher pitch, and more resonance.

 

If you're miced, it's a different story. A good soundguy can still work with drums like this...it's just a matter of using the gain to capture only what's needed. If, however, your drums are "thuddy" and the soundguy wants 'em that way, then I'd make sure that you have a good interval between the drums (bigger differences note-to-note between the toms), and then it's up the the soundguy's skill with the eq to carve out areas within the frequency range for each drum.

 

Final thing to keep in mind: Tell your guitarist and bassist to stop hogging frequencies. If your gutiarist is using the entire frequency range, and the bassist is too, you'll have no "space" to climb in.

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Since the problem is spectrally based, self editing would go a long way as well. When competing with overdriven bass for instance, forget the detail and pound out the shape of the figure. You can always sneak in references to your ability when things are more transparent. If you find that too constricting, you could then resort to rotos with black dots. :D

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I agree with what everyone's said about single-ply heads tuned high. As I'm typing this, I can hear Genesis' "Selling England By the Pound" behind a door down the hall in the other room. All I hear are toms. :)

 

Toms are midrange instruments, and there's a lot of competition for the real estate in that area: guitars, vocals, keyboard parts, reverb settings, room reflections, etc. You may want to experiment with different EQ'ing options to try and brighten them up while also keeping the natural sound intact.

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