Before we start on this subject let me tell you a story: I was working at a studio called the Music Farm and there was an English engineer working there called David Tickle. He went on to produce Tony Childs . One evening a muso asked him "How do you become a good engineer?" - to which he replied:

"You go into the studio and ask the drummer to hit the kick drum and you grimace. You put a mike on it and go into the control room and ask the drummer to hit it again. Again you grimace. If you can make the kick drum sound like the one you hear in your head - you are a good engineer! It doesn't matter how you do it but a good engineer can"

I can't really tell you how to do it either but this page will give you a starting point.

METERS

Before we do anything we must talk about meters and what they read.

Take a look at this image of a drum sample: Click image to hear sample.

You will notice from the shapes that the waveform rises sharply at the start and then tapers off as it fades. This initial rise to the highest point at the front is called a transient and the highest point is called the peak of the waveform.

There are two ways to meter this waveform:

1. The VU or Volume Unit meter
2. The Peak Meter.

The VU Meter

These meters read volume units , hence VU, and do not give an idea of the peak material. They indicate the RMS (root mean square) value. Some VUs might have a peak LED in the upper corner. NOTE: If you peaked this meter to Zero on the drum waveform the actual peak transient would in fact be 10 - 20db or so higher than the meter was reading and can give you a wrong impression of the actual peak content. If you peaked this meter to about what it's reading now the peaks would be in the red section. So if you are working with this type of meter don't peak transient sounding instruments like kick, snare, percussion, toms etc. to zero because you will distort all the transients. In the late seventies the console manufacturers started adding peak meters. So if you are into retro gear with VU meters watch your transient levels!!

The technique of pushing magnetic tape by saturating the tape with high level was really just a method of compressing the transients by using the tape as a compressor thus the new trendy term Tape Saturation. Actually the tape played back the transients but only for a few days - after a week or so the transients were well and truly eliminated and engineers complained that it sounded great when we recorded it but somehow the tape has lost it!!! ( the tape also suffered from extreme print through which is a condition where the magnetic flux on a tape is so high that it printed through onto the tape layer adjacent to it when it was rewound and was left sitting on a shelf.)

The Peak Meter

These are the ones used today. They often incorporate a peak hold function that lets you see what your peaks are doing and are therefore easier to use and are a truer indication of what is actually happening. Don't try saturating your tape with one of these meters as digital doesn't saturate - it just distorts severely!!

Before we can balance the mikes we must bring them up into the console and set their levels to tape. How the mikes are tracked to tape is really dependent on how many tracks you can afford for the drums. I usually allow 7 or 8 tracks for drums. This might seem extravagant to some and not enough to others. I'm conditioned to the old 24 tracks of recording and therefore think in those terms but nowadays with multitrack digital recorders and multitrack computers anything goes but with 8 tracks you can assign your drums as:

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Hats
4. Tom 1
5. Tom 2
6. Tom 3
7. Overhead left
8. Overhead Right

1. Kick
2. Snare
3. Hihat
4. Bass
5. Toms L
6. Toms R
7. O/Head L
8. O/Head R

 

This setup will leave you 16 tracks for the rest of the instruments and vocals etc. I'm not going to go into how to assign your tracks, I assume you will know this.

I would make a special note here:

You must always be aware of the gain structure surrounding a console. Look at the gain structure and how it works.

The microphone signal is amplified by 40 - 50 db by the mike preamp to bring it up to the operating level of the rest of the console. Any EQ is additional gain or reduction. Lets say you open the channel fader 1/4 the way up and then increase the gain by increasing the mic preamp gain. It is very likely that the higher output from the mic preamp will distort when it enters the input of the next stage, the EQ. You will then EQ it adding more gain and more distortion. Similarly with the group output fader if you have one. If you run this fader low all the previous stages will be driven to overload.

Always start with your channel and group faders at Zero
and adjust your gain at the mic preamp

You'd be amazed at the number of times I glance at a PA console and see the group faders at 1/4 and the channel faders at 1/4 and the mic preamps turned up!! and a worried engineer wondering why the PA sounds awful.

EQ can enhance a sound but it can't fix it. Too many engineers try to EQ their way out of trouble and believe me - it doesn't work. Adding highs might make it sound better but if you play it through a speaker that doesn't have the great highs your studio speakers have it will still sound awful so you really must aim to get the sound correct its source.

OK so we open up the kick mike and ask the drummer to hit the kick. Bring up the preamp level so that the kick peaks to just short of Zero in your meter. (I guarantee that the drummer will hit it louder during the track) Now if you are going to EQ it you can do it now or later. I prefer to do a basic EQ now because it makes the kit sound better while you're tracking the other instruments etc. but don't make it extreme.

The traditional EQ for a kick drum is to add some mids (say +4db) at around 3.5K to bring out the attack, and pull out some low mids ( -4db) around 300Hz. (The fundamental frequency of a 22" Kick drum!) I wouldn't advise adding any low end at this stage but you might be tempted to add some 80Hz, say +3db.

If it still sounds awful you must fix it by either:

1. Using a different mike.
2. Changing the dampening.
3. Moving the mike
4. Retuning the Drum.

If none of these work you've got problems.

Moving on: now let's open the snare mike and as with the kick bring your fader to zero and increase the level of the mic gain. Now you have the option of adding the under mike if you've put one up. (Remember the phase reversal) By balancing these together you can vary the amount of the metal snarey sound in the mix.

The standard EQ for a snare drum is basically add some tops around 7Khz. Once again if it sounds awful you must change it at the source.

Now the overheads:

Ask the drummer to hit the snare drum and then open the overhead mikes and balance them so that the snare drum sounds centre. Then ask the drummer to play the whole kit with the toms and the cymbals and listen to the stereo spread listening for the balance of the cymbals. If say the left crash is too low go into the studio and lower the overhead over that crash. Repeat the process starting with the snare again. What you're doing here is making sure that the overhead sound is a true stereo image of the kit. You will hear the toms spread left to right, the kick will be centre. as will the snare. The Hihat will be off to 1/2 right. If you wish to EQ it maybe add some 10Khz tops to it but if your mikes are good you shouldn't need anything else.

Now you go through the toms one by one. Basically toms need a bit of tops and they often need some upper low mids(400Hz) taken out. You may also wish to add some lows like +4db at 80Hz. I suggest you balance the floor tom higher than the first rack tom. Drummers invariably loose energy as they go around the toms - sorry guys. Now that you've got all the toms peaking to zero in the meters open up the overheads. Suddenly they will start to come to life as the overheads will give them space and transient attack.

Finally the HiHats. Remember these are extremely transient so watch the level carefully. For EQ I usually roll off a lot of the bottom end quite severely as well as adding highs at around 10Khz to give them some sizzle.

Gates: Gates can be used when you record drums and the most common method is to gate the kick and the snare and if you have enough gates to gate the toms individually. Personally I don't gate at the record stage mainly because if you haven't set them up correctly you can't redo it later because you've already lost the signal. I recommend that you gate at the mix stage where you have more time and freedom to get the gate tuned exactly for each track. Quite often you will find that the drum sound for one track works great with gates yet another track sounds better ungated. For toms I prefer to automate the tom tracks with mutes instead of using gates. For more on the operation of gates refer to the Effect Pages.

Reverberation. I don't advise adding reverb to your drum tracks at the record stage however you can add reverb to your monitoring by adding reverb to the monitoring controls of your drum tracks, This allows you to have reverb on your monitors but the reverb is not on tape. N.B. you can't undo reverb!!