Eq -ing drums to tape?

How do you Eq drums to tape?

I have a Teac reel to reel that I want to tape my bands demo with, but would need some advice on how best to tape the drums onto two tracks of the recorder.

I understand I need to pan the drumkit correctly and compress some things, but since I only have the mixer and a cheap Behringer Eq I dont know how best to make the most of what I have.

Any thoughts chaps?

How exactly are you doing this? and for what style of music? For just about anything but metal you can look up the Glyn Johns Method or the Recorderman Method. They both use 3-4 mics and do a good job of capturing the entire kit. You could bounce that down to 2-channels pretty easily. A more detailed list of the gear your using/have would help with suggestions.

Matt

Its just that I often read of people advising to "shave off frequencies up to 50hz off everything except bass guitar and kick, to make for a less muddy mix".

I got the reel to reel eight track, a Studiomaster 166 Trilogy mixer, Behringer Multicom compressors, Quad noise gates, Mics....SM57, Beyer Dynamic M69, a pair of old Beyer Dynamic pencil condensers (CK103 I think), Shure clip on tom mics, Shure kick mic, a couple of PZMs.

I don't, but then again, I'm not doing what you're doing.

If you are making just a stereo track, I'd EQ everything so that it sounds as good and as "finished" as possible going to tape. Since you don't mention what kind of music you're doing, and it's hard to tell until one is actually hearing it, it's difficult to give specifics. Just make it sound as "finished", fantastic, balanced, and vibrant as possible, making sure not to overcompress. Most everything you'll have to live with, and while you can EQ the stereo track to a certain degree afterwards, you still want to nail it as closely as possible beforehand. You can compress afterwards a little more also.

I do that all the time, but this shouldn't really affect what you are doing that much. I don't think you want too much bottom end on your snare anyway...there's not that much that is usable under 100Hz on the snare typically, so why not use a highpass filter and roll that off anyway? Just get rid of as much useless "mud" as possible in the low end, and get everything as "finished" as possible in terms of EQ, balancing, positioning, and everything. You're recording and mixing simultaneously, so you have to make these choices accordingly.

One way to do it would be to record the drums to individual tracks using no more than 6, with a scratch guitar and vocal or whatever, then do a drum mix and record it to the other two tracks, and then do your overdubs to that.

Also, I find myself doing mono drums more and more (so many classic records had mono drums) so you could mix them to one track.

But strictly speaking, I don't eq drums when tracking all that much, beyond maybe rolling off stuff below 60 at the preamp on snare and overheads. I get sounds with mic choice and placement, and eq in the mix.

With your rig I'd consider using the Kick drum going to one channel, snare to another overheads (set up in the recorderman technique) to a pair of tracks and toms going to the pair of tracks. You can use the other channels for scratch tracks. Then bounce the drums down to a stereo track and continue overdubbing from there. However you could also mix them to a stereo pair, or mono if you choose, to begin with. As mentioned get it all sounding as good as you can from the get go.

Depending on kit/room/style of music, the Kick and snare is usually fairly compressed. Toms not so much and overheads even less. Maybe roll off anything above about 2k on the kick (mainly if it's picking up a lot of cymbals and snare), below 100 and above 7k on the snare, and below 200-400 on the overheads (this is if you use tom mics and don't go for a true recorderman/Glyn Johns mic technique). You could also play around with the gates if you're getting a lot of bleed somewhere. However for a minimalist set-up that might be overkill. Normally mic placement can take care of bleed. And not to necessarily eliminate bleed but to make it sound more natural and "roomy".

If you do the multitrack then bounce down, it will give you more time to tweak and get it all sound right after the fact. However there is something to be said for committing from the get go.

You mention "roll off". How exactly do you do that with just a mixer and a cheap equalizer?

does the cheap mixer have any EQ at all? Turn the knobs till stuff sounds good.

Yeah its a Studiomaster Trilogy 166, with treble, swept mid and bass on each channel.

I think the bass on each channel is a "shelved 60hz".

Cool. Turn it all the way down on everything but kick for a start. That's what people mean when they say "rolling off" below 60Hz.

OK thanks

Noone's mentioned the key item here when it comes to analog recording.

What I suggest is setting the recorder up to moniitor the playback heads when recording.

Theres going to be a delay from the time the record head records to tape when you hear the playback,

but the benifit is you're going to hear whats actually being printed to the tape.

Then you can adjust the drum tracks to get maximum fidelity with minimum distortion and noise coming off the tape.

To do it any other way is pure guesswork trusting your meter levels, and/or trial and error.

Your recorder should have the ability to monitor the playback heads when recording which is a #1 key item here.

You can then EQ the drums any way thats needed to get the best fidelity from the tape.

My plan was to mic the kit up, compress the kick and snare, turn down the 60 hz shelved "bass" on the mixer for the toms, snare and overheads to cut out the "muddiness". Then pan the toms to 10 o clock and two o clock, and the cymbals to 9 o clock and three o clock, press the record button and tape the drums to good old half inch tape running at 15 ips. It shouldnt be far away sounding decent to my ears.

Theres no way of knowing any of that will work. Theory is great, reality throws you all kinds of unexpected curves.

If you were recording digital, some of that may work because the recording quality is predictable to some extent.

Recording to tape is a whole different animal. You have to feel your way to best sound quality by making on the spot decisions.

You have to listen how the sound is hitting the tape then manipulate the input for the best results.

How you hit the tape will vary each time depending on the brand of tape, its age and weather its been recorded on before.

You have to tweak things in because the dynamic headroom is less than digital and you have a narrow sweet spot to hit

to have it sound any good at all. You may or not need compression depending on the drummers dynamics. Since tape compresses

the signal, you dont want to just slap compression on there. Save its use for mixing just like you would recording digital.

Same goes for any EQing. If a mic doesnt produce frequencies, its senceless to EQ out something that inst being produced to begin with.

All you're doing is passing the mic through additional preamps and sucking tone and adding noise. Keep the signal path short and clean.

Target your tones with micing techniques and mic selection and forget about the other hardware unless you have "no" other options.

They are band aids to cover up poor tracking techniques. This is the big key to analog recording thats quickly becoming a lost art.

People think they can fix everything with a piece of gear instead of focusing on the source of the troubble.

Get the envirnomental and gain staging properly nailed and you'll be blown away by the results.

If your gear lacks the ability to do something you specifically need tracking, "then" you do what you have to do to make it sound right,

but not untill you isolate the exact difficiancies and know exactly why you need to use additional gear.

The difficiance needs to be crystal clear to you and the fix obvious. Theres no guesswork involved.

Since you're recording drums, spending a half a day tuning the drums for optimal recording tone should be the first item on your menu.

Tuning will produce results a hundred times better than any EQ can. EQ is the bandaid to improve what tuning alone couldnt accomplish.

Until you've gotten to that point you havent got a clue whats going to work. The room reflectivity brightness is another. If the room is dead

you may wind up pumping all the trebble you can get into the mix EQing, and a broght reflective room may require you to pump all kinds of bass

into the mix, not only to compendate for the tapes roll off, but the room reflectivity making the drums sound like tin cans and carboard boxes.

OK thanks. As regarding balance of the recorded drumkit on playing the tape back to hear it, are there any recordings of just a lovely sounding kit to record alongside my recording to adjacent tracks to reference what I would hear in the room?

My advice is to watch your levels carefully. If you're using VU's that average, then you can easily over cook the energy going to tape from say the high hat. It's much easier with digital as the noise issues aren't comparable so you can run the level to tape much lower. If you try and get the peak of a high hat up to just below 0db, then you're likely over cooking it.

What I'd do for a drum setup is first get the set miced.them monitor the set through good isolation headphones.

In may case I have a pretty good digital drum machine that makes some high quality drum sounds.

I set that up within fingers touch of the set and have it pumped through the headphones.

I can then do an A/B comparison between the miced drum and the sample from the drum machine.

Since the unit has many different kits in its banks I can select one thats close to the type music I

may record. Then I can use the touch sensitive pads and pop a snare or tom tone and match the set tuning it up.

This process can take time, and if you havent done it before you'll also find yourself mobing mics around to get

rid of rogue tones, buzzes, squeaks, etc to get the best sound you can through the mics. Its unlikely you'll match the quality

of the Drum machine, but the closer you get the better the recordings going to sound.

If you havent got a decent drum machine then setting up drum samples on a drum loop on a cassette, CD, thumb drive on a lap top,

or whatever will work. Just play the tones back through the headphones along with monitoring the mics and it will give you a good reference

to tune the drums by.

Some samples even list the drum dimensions and head types which is handy. You dont want to be tuning an 18" floor

tom to sound like a 9" rack tom for example. Room acoustice will be your bottleneck. Every room is different so you'll have to ignore that effect

the mics pick up and focus on matching the drum tones taking that into account. If you just happen to find something that sounds great along the

way, go with it. Theres no hard fast rules there.

After you think you got things set where thay are sounding good live, have the drummer play the parts while you monitor the drums with the headphones

off the playback heads and adjust the recording gains so its above the noise floor and below the ceiling with the hardest drum strikes the drummer may use

as rimmer suggests.

The meters may be accurate enough to use them as a guide but remember, the meters may not respond to sound the same for all frequencies.

Its easy enough to judge what you're hearing to what the beters are reading. In general high frequencies move the meters less than low.

You can push the ceiling a bit to give the tracks some compressed edge but if you're going to roll tape unattended and play yourself, leave a safety margin.

You can boost a track and deal with some floor noise. You cant do jack with distorted overs and there nothing worse then havong a bunch of static

because you didnt account for the drummer playing harder live. Do that a few times and blow what could have been a great take and you'll kick yourself

in the ass enough times to remember its importance in the future.

if you have decent monitoring in your studio, a cool trick is to play the original drum track loudly through your speakers and record the results with two (or one) room mics. I learned it back in my how to play drums class..

I like a peak bump at 60 cycles, peak atten at 500, and a peak at 1.2 and 2.5-3.6k on the kik for a starting point.

other than that just use your ears.

Post 14 is reasonable. I agree with the use of shelves.

Just have a slow attack time and fast release time and low ratio on the compressor.

Nothing can kill the drums more than too much {censored}ed up compression.

Remember that your whole mix will have a touch of compression, tape itself is a compressor, and mastering will add even more.

Very true.

It's common for Hi Hats to barely read on old analog meters. Sometimes the meters don't pick up high frequency transients. Use your ear.

Also there is so much Hi Hat bleed, it was common back in the day for mixers to ditch the Hi Hat track. ('don't need it' was often heard)