Jonbouy

 
.
 
btw Mooch your acoustic kit sounds much nicer than your v-drum set you just haven't worked out where and why it does yet.  

I agree that I can and will with the help of people here get my kit sounding and recording better ....


However, the v drums I have are the v drums lite .... They don't have great sounds in the brain internally. But you know, triggered in superior drummer toon track software with all those kit options And mixing  capabilities....Hard to beat that sound ehhh? 


I just want to learn how to be a better engineer and mic a kit... For my own projects and or anyone else I may record. 




I am kinda hungry. I should eat breakfast. Then I have a guitar lesson to give at 10am ... Just a tid bit for everyone 

Can you repeat that?

:-)


What's your favorite flavor of cymbals?

I like the old fashioned Avedis A series. I think it is because they seem to sound familiar to me.


Do you have any favorites?

Jonbouy


OK Mooch I'm only going to say this once so try to pay attention.
 
I had a few minutes spare so I put together a midi loop, something like the feel of 'Fool in the Rain'.  I did a quick kit setup in whatever sampler you like just picking out some likely sounding samples to make a kit, mixed it up totally dry with a bit of room and just recorded that to audio.
 
Being as this subject comes up quite a bit and there's always mystery and intrigue in how it's done, with ideas of him playing in concrete rooms, using chair legs for drum sticks, yada, yada.
 
Thing is when he played live he wasn't in a concrete room, nor using chair legs yet it still sounded like Bonzo.  So it had to be a simple set-up where you could get that sound on a normal desk.  Parallel processing is the answer of course.
 
Check this out, first time the loop goes round it's just dry, second time....well, can you hear the difference?  Remember I'm just using the same rendered audio loop, no multi-mic setup or nothing just parallel processing that loop, one channel is the dry loop, 2nd channel is smashed to get the front of the transients and eq'd to bring out the high frequency material a little room 'verb and a touch of hall, third channel is pretty much the same except eq'd to get the best of the low end.  The three channels are then mixed to get the best result and bussed out.
 
I did this really quickly using just 2 parallels along with the original dry loop but you can hear where it's going and it gets massive really quickly...
 
http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12291682

I get it! The first part is just regular ... The second you used chair legs for drum sticks. Simples!!! 




LOL kidding ;)




The parallel compression sounds great I've used it before. Can you do parallel compression live just using busses? I usually just bounce the tracks have double and smash one of them. How does that work live? Bus routing? 

Jonbouy

 
Then just sit in your concrete room, get yer chair legs out, and invite Bapu round.

Then smack him with the chair leg in his leg when he makes a stupid face comment?

Jeff EvansA big problem that drummers have is they don't know how to balance themselves with the rest of the band. They are simply not listening! Drummers can easily be the loudest person on the stage (along with guitarists that is!) Being a recording engineer as well as a drummer I have always approached playing live with the concept of balancing myself so I can hear everyone else in the band. As a result I got tons of work over 40 years of playing.

 
I am not sure that this is all of it.
 
In general, most drummers do not know/understand the relationship between their indivisual pieces of drums and the rest of the music they are playing ... beyond counting 1 through 4 to make sure they hit that snare drum at the right time.
 
The best drummers that we talk about, Bonzo included, Moonie, Pierre Moerlin, Mani Neumeier and only  handful of others, do NOT spend their time being "on time" in a mechanical sense (hold on a sec!), but instead try to color the music they are playing, which is more important than your hit on the snare drum on the 4th beat ... why not on the toms.
 
A couple of examples ... have been listening to "Caravan" and on the albums "For Girls ... " and "New Sinfonia" you hear something that is quite nice ... the drum rolls and wipeouts often start 16 or more beats way before it ends ... and are spread out a lot ... and it makes the music sound better ... most "beginning" and "metal" drummers, try to make sure all the noise is within that one measure and beat ... and thus you get someone like Gavin Harrison that is really good at doing 8 to 12 touches within 4 beats ... and to my ear, it sounds mechanical and quite learned by the DAW influence, instead of it being a detail just coloring the music ... but good ... it sounds ok in PT ... though I am not sure it is great.
 
Another example ... listen to Steve Gadd 30 years ago helping Rickie Lee Jones in her first couple of albums ... and Magazine being the last one he was on, and the difference was him spending time augmenting her voice and accent, which most drummers do NOT do, or are capable of doing ... they are not listening to anything but their own count in their head .,.. which tells you they are not good enough to play "professionally". And then check out Steve Gadd's amazing touch and "lack of drumming" in Kate Bush's album "50 Words for Snow" ... and in the end, you CAN NOT teach that, specially here, when folks think that no one else can help you learn music, because you know it better than the DAW!
 
Another example ... Mani Neumeier/Guru Guru ... just been listening to "Dance of the Flames" and I notice that the bass and drums are not quite in sync ... it's like one of the other is a half, or a quarter of a beat behing ... and upon further listening you will find that Mani is having fun and playing against the guitar not the bass ... and this is a very good example of the fact that at different times another person in the group can hold up the count ... that it is not always on the drummer, though the conventional rock'n'roll bullmerde is that the bass and the drummer hold the numbers and the other players are free to go to hell and back, and that is total BS and stupidity and lack of knowledge and appreciation for music and musicians.
 
Pierre Moerlin ... he was originally schooled as a percussionist and his timing and ability is impeccable and the Gong albums are all you need, and trying to drum along the two large cuts in "You" is not something that most drummers will EVER try ... because they do not have the confidence in the musicians around them, and they do not (also) have the ability to know ... that every one is smart enough to be able to come together in "time" when it is important to do so! You can also see Pierre do this in "Exposed", which is Mike Oldfield's DVD, and Pierre's contribution is really pretty to watch, though here you get to see the percussionist and then a few minutes later .. the drummer ... that knows music.  It is ... a percussion/drumming clinic for what "rock'n'roll" is not capable of doing with music at all ... when the only thing that people can teach you is timing and getting as much is as possible within that time! In the end, you never learned how much NOT to do within that time, and this is Steve Gadd's strength!
 
Bonzo's trick was not the cymbals, though this can be said because his drums were more important than the cymbals, and to Moonie, the cymbals were more important than the drums! And it made for a nice difference between the two, and STILL, best rock'n'roll drummers out there ... telling us what you can do with it all ... that most folks STILL do not do.
 
One last one ... Bill Bruford ... in one of his videos said something funny. He had a problem with his left hand that got numb at times, and necessitated its movement, or hit, in order to make sure it did not fail him ... and the hit on the 4th on the snare drum has been the most repeated thing EVER in rock drumming for 30 years ... and today's metal and rock bands still can not drum without having that unbelievable metronome on the snare drum ... they are not smart enough to use one tom, a symbal, a bass drum, or a silent tap ... as the beat as way to color the music better ... again, they are not listeing to themusic, as they are too busy counting things in their head!

mike_mccue


Which is better: tune your snare bottom tight or loose?

Depends on your usage ... you might not need to keep track of time in the metronomic style and instead simply create a different kind of thud for your sound in a particular song!
 
Strange question if you ask me ... I might want it to sound different just for the effect, rather than anything else!

Anyway,

I agree with much of what has been said about tuning.  I used to spend a massive amount of time exploring all of the tuning permutations with my kit.  I'd find the sweet spot for each drum.  I have an old Ludwig kit with a Gretsch snare.  Drum heads can make a big difference in the sound.  I personally like the Remo Pinstripes for the toms and the Evans Ambassador for the snare drum batter head.  I like drums that are bright, ring out, and fit melodically with each other.

Several years ago, I got together with some friends to play in a basement.  The bass player had a large drum kit (7 toms) that I loved.  He said he couldn't get it to sound right.  I put new heads on it and spent an afternoon tuning it.  When I was done, he said it sounded like a completely different kit.  He hadn't thought it could sound that good.  I didn't really do anything other than put some responsive heads on there and tune to find the optimum pitch of each drum. 

Hope that helps.

I was shopping in a Sam Ash drum room once and this young counter clerk looks me in the eye and says

"I have a SONOR snare... it is worth over $40k now a days"...  and I was like "uh, I have a REMO Ambassador, coated, that I bought at Guitar Center"




:-)
What is it with SONOR drum guys? Have they all decided to leave the price tags on their kits? :-)
:-)

"I am about to start playing mine live again in a new Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Elvis tribute show."




That seems as if it is going to be a lot of fun!!!


:-)