Steve Albini drum sound resource

42
Tommy wrote:Anthony Flack wrote:Also mentions panning from the drummer's perspective in case anybody was in doubt that this is the true and correct way.I still do not understand this practice. There is only one person who hears music this way. The drummer.You gonna play air drums, you need 'em panned drummerside. Nobody wants to feel like they are standing in front of drums. You want to feel like you ARE the drummer, the king of musicians.

Steve Albini drum sound resource

44
My recording setup usually has the whole band recording together. The room mic picks up the amps along with the drum kit. This starts with the audience experience of listening to the band-in-the-room as the default presumption for making recording decisions. Things get adjusted from there when problems arise. As result, I usually use audience pan-perspective on the drummer to match the room mic's orientation. I can see it might sound weird but - gotta be honest - in 20 years as a band our drummer has never complained about this even once.Separately, that observation about using the console's preamps vs outboard stuff has had me eying my pro-sumer Allen and Heath board in a different light all week.= Justin

Steve Albini drum sound resource

45
why i always pan and notate in drummers' perspective:i will always remember what 'oh l' means. also when recording a full band with plenty of bleed it's pretty important to pan instruments relative to their placement in the room. of course you could just as easily have the opposite policy, but it's sort of like how its easier to figure out a chord while i'm holding a guitar as opposed to when i'm looking at one. full disclosure, a left handed drummer might fuck me up. if you want it panned opposite, just reach behind your amp and switch the rca jacks.
------
www.thehomerecordingproject.com

Steve Albini drum sound resource

48
Anthony Flack wrote:Tommy wrote:Anthony Flack wrote:Also mentions panning from the drummer's perspective in case anybody was in doubt that this is the true and correct way.I still do not understand this practice. There is only one person who hears music this way. The drummer.You gonna play air drums, you need 'em panned drummerside. Nobody wants to feel like they are standing in front of drums. You want to feel like you ARE the drummer, the king of musicians.Okay. I will concede, as this one totally makes sense to me -- because it is still taking the listener as the first consideration.

Steve Albini drum sound resource

49
n.c. wrote:the one thing i'd love to hear more about is how to check for phase with that many mics, and specifically between the 3 sets of ambient mics.When mics get a few feet from each other and the thing you're recording, they will have an essentially random phase relationship with the other mics. Polarity is not the same as phase, but also I don't subscribe to the the notion that absolute polarity is important.What I do is build the basic balance of the drum kit, with the close mics all up and working well on a per-drum basis, then test to see if flipping the polarity of one or the other pairs of tom mics makes things sound generally better or worse. I'm usually listening for depth of resonance in the bass, harshness or squall in the cymbal bleed, attenuation of overall impression of clarity, but I can't get too specific. Whichever orientation sounds best, I leave it that way.Next I'll pull up the stereo mic in front of the drum kit and do the same thing with the polarity switches on those channels, switching them simultaneously and always maintaining a consistent polarity between the two. Whichever way sounds best, I leave it that way.Then I'll add the overhead mics and do the same thing. First get a balance, then flip the polarity and listen, leaving it whichever way sounds best.With the room mics I'll try scrolling the delay line until it sounds good, then I'll quickly flip one or the other or both mics' polarity and see if one way sounds better than another. I'll leave it whichever way sounds best.Before I had a console with polarity switches on each channel, I built some minus-theta (okay nerds, minus-phi) cables and marked them, then I used those cables on the bottom mics of whatever drum I was recording. It was a pain to swap them out so I generally just left them and it wasn't really a problem. Flipping the polarity is a quick test now, and one way or the other usually sounds better, so I indulge in it.
steve albini
Electrical Audio
sa at electrical dot com
Quicumque quattuor feles possidet insanus est.

Steve Albini drum sound resource

50
Tommy wrote:Anthony Flack wrote:Tommy wrote:Anthony Flack wrote:Also mentions panning from the drummer's perspective in case anybody was in doubt that this is the true and correct way.I still do not understand this practice. There is only one person who hears music this way. The drummer.You gonna play air drums, you need 'em panned drummerside. Nobody wants to feel like they are standing in front of drums. You want to feel like you ARE the drummer, the king of musicians.Okay. I will concede, as this one totally makes sense to me -- because it is still taking the listener as the first consideration.Yeah, I have to be able to play air drums. Sometimes when I hear that the drums aren't panned from the drummer's perspective, I check and see if the drummer's a lefty.
Motherfuckers Move Slow.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 0 guests