Lessons
12 Pre-Show
14:43 2Introduction and Overview
21:36 3FreePreview: Drum Rooms and Tuning a Snare
40:30 4Microphones, Preamps, and Signal Flow
20:19 5The Art of Recording Drum Samples
22:27 6Drum Sound Breakdown
11:23 7Drum Sample Creation and Editing
26:49 8Selecting Samples
18:09Lesson Info
Drum Sound Breakdown
Let's, break down the drum sound of what we've got going on here this I'll start with carrie streams that we recorded panna west and so it's got solo everything out here and we'll talk about all the mikes here um and pro tools everything that I do, I run this trim plug it on here because this is how it helps me understand if I'm hitting negative ten so we'll see I'm literally write negative attack not going over six I'm not going under twelve it's with negative ten at all times that's the optimum level that way if I take this us putting for example I have enough room to really brutus and get crazy when I clicked on it, which is fifteen decibels and I'm not I'm not clicking and that's why it's really important to have your levels coming at negative ten so you make sure that you create enough head room so we'll start selling these out. So this is the katrina just heard um that's just the inside kick the m eighty two through there, cappy cramp as you could be here symbols near times in he...
re a little there so what's that we have our outside kick mike here, which is the subject, and if we blend these to see what we got here so far to get any threats that are out there, my lady so real quick just an example like let's listen to that bill that we just heard he's got a bunch of scenarios and there is a bunch of left and right information and then there's some dynamics in there so that's why we capture the multi example so that we can have we could place a smaller sample here and then the bigger hits on these big his here so yeah let's just keep listening to this for a second all kind of talk about more again people double you know what's really cool about that the fbi preempt that I have is they saturate really well so none of this has compression on it but as you can see we got a nice square way of going on theoretically square waves are bad because they're distortion right? But I like square ways because I like having saturation and I like having consistency so that's cool thing about those perhaps is that you can see them drive hard and you could see that these wave forms stay pretty consistent because they have a nice saturation and the saturation doesn't sound bad and it isn't introducing all this harsh bleed one of the other really big aspects that we need to listen to you is when we listen this top so you get high at symbols all that stuff is gonna live in our mix no matter what we're gonna want to eliminate a little bit of that but a lot of people do things like gating and stuff like that I don't find that to be very natural when I listen to drum set play they don't have gates opening closing on them naturally so I don't I don't put games on because I can hear that working when I'm working with the drum sound so it's important to understand that when you're actually miking up the drum set and listening everything you need to really play back you need to record before you like we talk about your record you listen to it then you go back and you repeat the steps again so you get a great sound but one of the really big things that I find it benefit is I sold everything and determine what else is it is happening here if I got high at in there does it sound good? Can I eliminate a little bit or do I doesn't actually sound nice or is it sounding too deep or something it's going to live in the mix so I have to be I have to pay attention to the bleed that's going to be inside of these microphones and I have to be conscious of how much of it is happening so that's our bottom lots of kick obviously that's their trick it sounds very cool so that's both scary like together that's just the top not nearly the bottom not nearly enough cool so my, I would say my bottom scenarios like probably the biggest secret to my snare sound, it's lots of times where I'll be listening, this snares like, I'll have it sold with the drums, and I'll have a sample up and I'll be like, man, my samples kind of too high and don't look at it, and sam was actually viewed it's, not even in it and it's, just that my snare bombs near just has so much impact in so much transition things that little fool myself, and I'll be like, I'm listening to a sample, so I was quite again, but lots of impact, lots sticking back. So then here's, our tom mix these are left that sounds really good, actually, what you'll say to you is that if you look at all these wave forms, these tom's are the ones that have the least amount of lead going on it it's really minimal, as you can see it's pretty much just a little bit of symbols. It's not too much snare it's, not too much kick where's the kid has, like it's still got a lot of other stuff going on with tom's. They're living right next to these symbols, and they really don't have that much information going on. And the bleeding sounds good feels like way let's do it before bill tom's not great and they punched through out of nowhere so it's really like those microphones particular because they get a lot of really good transmit information as you can see and stay nice consistent and they live above the bleeds so a lot of times like what you see is for twenty ones I would put him up and it was a process of you need to understand that you're going to turn them down in between because the bleed sounds bad it's too abrasive and or too much so you always have to rely on getting them and these tom likes I can boost them much more and I really don't hear all this extra background and yet so I really love those tom back on I think these are a good example of tom's now on to my other favorite mike's, which were the overheads through these lots of lots of their symbol sounds great it's like not an ice pick in my here. So now my other favorite mike the drum sound like the big blue cathedral pipes you forty seven light this mike sounds incredible it's got a lot of kids it's terrible theo symbols don't sound too harsh in its kicking scenarios on good it's very even mike sounds pretty awesome right now what was that place in the room that that's right in front of the drum set like ok, I'm like what how I usually find that if I'm a drummer and I'm sitting here my mike will go probably like right around here and will be aimed right at the top of the kick so that it's it's seen the kick and the kick tom's and the snare I don't want to go too high because I want to get too much of a symbol up here I want to get this range so it's kind of like saying pretty much right at your dude's crotch that's where you really want to get it at and again you really want to walk around in the room and you want to make sure the drums sound great warrior about that put that mic from because this is supposed toe represent you standing in front of that, trump said, and this is going to be your main drum sound the other important thing is that all these microphones that we record I like to do stereo all time the reason I can do stereos that panam left and right this minute microphone is the on ly other mike phone besides my kicking snare that's going to live in the middle and that microphone needs to blend my kick top kick mikes and my snare mike's together to create a drum image of the kick and snare so that it sounds consistent and I have normal natural ambience that's not too far away and it's right close up and is getting good good impact we talked about that I showed our way use the mid or that that is our mid mike should ever use the side mike to capture the sides so that's only two microphones how do we pan that side mike how do we work? So this is the really cool thing about mid side it's it's kind of complicated but basically what I do is I split this into monitor show this what I do is I make three model tracks just like this and the input of the side mike phone is the same on both tracks japan one left on a panel hard right? So it sounds kind of weird because basically that's because I have the forty seven he's got somewhere they're facing with each other right? Sounds really weird right? But we're looking you forty seven in and what we what we need to do is we also need to flip phase of one of them so one side is out of phase with the other side and when we put our mid mike and there is going to create this huge image and spread so I'm gonna make these trips I use these trims I got the face lift on my left one I got the phasing normal on the on the right one there and let's put in our midnight so see it's canceling now we're going to face cancellation because both sides cancelling each other because they have faced each other, right? But then we put our mid mike in, but everything explodes. So let me put this on one stereo track again so I can just move to failures to demonstrate the sound, but basically very, very focused. So what we're essentially doing is we're spreading where you work, allowing our mid armada my u forty seven microphone to have a little bit of spread and to be able to sit around are kicking our scenario. We wanted to engulf the cake and sit there and in a stereo image, but we also wanted to really focus on the center, so if we s all of these two mikes again, let's, get a good drum sound with these bags right now. Let's put anarchic anderson there with that, so we're just going to use just are close marks, here's the bottom or the top with lights fill out our drum sound and made our drum sound like a unit. So with these with these, like with the midnight with our side mike, with their kicks on our snares right there, we should have a pretty awesome drum sound.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
This is actually money well spent! A good deal of knowledge to be learned. Much better than the Eyal Levi class, that I spent nearly 8 times the cash on!
Geo
Crazy useful knowledge on Making & Using Drum Samples. Sam is the man, and throws in tons of tips and tricks along the way on building gobos and room treatment and other random production ideas, this class is definitely worth it!!
Zach Herman
Student Work
Related Classes
Recording Drums