Philip
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Percussives for the Home (Studio)
Now I'm vacillating toward authentic percussives (a bunch), that can be recorded in the studio (without a special drum room of mics ... but rather just via 1 overhead mic or such) for live vibes, spontaneous performances, fresh timbres/tones, etc. ... please suggest any thoughts. My goal is to increase subconscious (?) humanization (as per other threads) ... for beatz sake (haha!)! Here is my non-creative list: Easy: Hihats bells cymbals tambs eggs shakers glocks chimes some real samples/song construction kits claps clicks cabasa (?) Not Easy: kick snare (except maybe some side sticks) toms Again, There are many questionable ones I'd like to know if you've had success with or not (including those listed above). Thanks for any thoughts.
post edited by Philip - 2011/04/04 13:11:21
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ohhey
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/04 19:52:07
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Philip
Now I'm vacillating toward authentic percussives (a bunch), that can be recorded in the studio (without a special drum room of mics ... but rather just via 1 overhead mic or such) for live vibes, spontaneous performances, fresh timbres/tones, etc. ... please suggest any thoughts. My goal is to increase subconscious (?) humanization (as per other threads)
... for beatz sake (haha!)!
Here is my non-creative list:
Easy:
Hihats
bells
cymbals
tambs
eggs
shakers
glocks
chimes
some real samples/song construction kits
claps
clicks
cabasa (?)
Not Easy:
kick
snare (except maybe some side sticks)
toms
Again, There are many questionable ones I'd like to know if you've had success with or not (including those listed above). Thanks for any thoughts.
I did some of that with shakers and tambourine. The thing I remember is learning that I needed to get way back from the mic to make the track fit right in the mix.
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Guitarhacker
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/04 20:34:37
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My website & music: www.herbhartley.com MC4/5/6/X1e.c, on a Custom DAW Focusrite Firewire Saffire Interface BMI/NSAI "Just as the blade chooses the warrior, so too, the song chooses the writer "
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ohhey
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/05 00:37:00
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Guitarhacker
SAMPLES!
Not random enough to sound real, just one real thing in the mix can make everything else sound more real and it's fairly easy if you have any rhythm at all.
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Guitarhacker
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/05 07:56:33
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Frank you're correct.
I saw a video some time back.... I can't remember the guys name... anyway, he showed how he used a real hi hat played live over a sampled midi perfect drum track to add the human factor. Just having ONE "real percussion instrument" in the mix made the whole track sound like it was played by a human.
A used hi hat can be obtained from ebay pretty inexpensively.
I was just rattling Philips cage with the samples comment.
My website & music: www.herbhartley.com MC4/5/6/X1e.c, on a Custom DAW Focusrite Firewire Saffire Interface BMI/NSAI "Just as the blade chooses the warrior, so too, the song chooses the writer "
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NW Smith
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/05 10:12:56
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I recently finished a song with different percussion instruments recorded in my basement studio. I recorded them live and did not use samples. In my recording I have congas, tambourine, shakers and claves. Here's a link to the song. http://www.marwoodwilliams.com/new-song-d-day/ Incidentally, there was a thread a while back about recording congas. In the thread, I mentioned that I recorded the congas directly on the floor. (There was too much "ringing sounds" when they were on the stand.) This song is an example of recording congas without a stand.
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LpMike75
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/05 13:42:20
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I have often wondered if it is worth it to record a real percussion instrument if you do not have a great mic and have a crappy sounding room. I suspect good drum samples with a midi pad of some sort will get a better results in this case. As long as you have a midi pad so you can actually play it in live, that should make the biggest difference.
I am not claiming to be right about this, just my thoughts. EZDrummer and Addictive Drums have such good sounding kits, as long as your playing the sounds live they should record great.
On a separate note, I've mixed real drums with a ton of mics and it can be really really messy, whereas, mixing sampled kits are a breeze.
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ohhey
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/05 15:35:35
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LpMike75
I have often wondered if it is worth it to record a real percussion instrument if you do not have a great mic and have a crappy sounding room. I suspect good drum samples with a midi pad of some sort will get a better results in this case. As long as you have a midi pad so you can actually play it in live, that should make the biggest difference.
I am not claiming to be right about this, just my thoughts. EZDrummer and Addictive Drums have such good sounding kits, as long as your playing the sounds live they should record great.
On a separate note, I've mixed real drums with a ton of mics and it can be really really messy, whereas, mixing sampled kits are a breeze.
Recording quality doesn't have to be good in most cases. These are just ear candy in the mix and not something in the front of the mix. In fact poor quality mics often work great at taking the edge off and making it sound distant so it sits correctly in the mix with no EQ. Think about how these things might be picked up in a live show, not an idea room and often just holding them near a vocal mic. That's the sound you want in the mix. If you solo the track and it sounds all HiFi and "in your face" you will have a hell of a time getting that to sit correctly in the mix and sound "in place". Tambourine is a good example, you don't want that loud thing close to a good condensor mic, if you use a "good" mic you will need to get off axis and back off. Work the distance as you play to get the dynamics you want in the song. If you do a high speed rattle at the end of the track pull the thing away from the mic as you do to create the fade, just like a good player would live.
post edited by ohhey - 2011/04/05 15:41:47
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Philip
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 00:00:30
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Excellent ponderings all:
Frank, you understand my concerns. Clinical 'samples' and beatz grooves have that robotic deadness lurking; so does S2, Addictive Drums, etc. on the high end. This issue is extremely common on Song's Forum on all levels. Its been an awkward blow to hip hop as well, IMHO.
Interestingly ... with motown ... the *tambs seem overly used* in order to keep things humanized and hearty ... despite an authentic orchestra behind Diana Ross, et al. Its as if these placed the human element up front, and the virtuoso's in the back.
Heck, the tambs are almost the dominant element in 'Reflections'.
IOWs, tambs and shakers are wonderful to use by us clumsey composors ... to make our own deepest groanings more cheerful and vibrant.
Also, these high-end percussives fill the empty 5-10kHz range in our bottom-heavy mixes.
I'm guessing that our little percussives are helpful to:
1) Dominant element stuff
2) Human and hearty communication
3) Balancing our bottom-heavy and orchestral heavy mixes
4) Redeeming vocs and EZ rhythms
5) Denote loving-sincerity over sample-cleverness (to the listener)
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Rbh
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 00:21:15
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Here's an interesting recording methodology. Set up a simple tight X-Y stereo pair and then use multiple percussion instrument tracks to add and define stereo placement and depth by simply varying location to the mics. It's kind of fun to have a central reference to EQ and room ambiance and let placement and instrument timbre be the only variables.
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mattplaysguitar
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 07:01:58
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Guitarhacker
Frank you're correct.
I saw a video some time back.... I can't remember the guys name... anyway, he showed how he used a real hi hat played live over a sampled midi perfect drum track to add the human factor. Just having ONE "real percussion instrument" in the mix made the whole track sound like it was played by a human.
A used hi hat can be obtained from ebay pretty inexpensively.
I was just rattling Philips cage with the samples comment.
A technique I'm going to use for my album. But I'll play all the drums, just using a MIDI kit and then real cymbals. Use BFD for the drums and some nice cymbals for the.. cymbals! Little bit of MIDI quantize here and there (I'm not a full time drummer) and it should sound great! Some important notes about the tamborine recording. I am curious as to how a tamb would sound in the mix on a 57? Never tried it. Might sit it back nicely with pretty much no harshness - but would it be too dull?? Anyone care to comment? Another question to add, live room or dead room? Obviously a nice sounding live is really going to win hands down, but do you think a dead room (if you have only a bad sounding room to work with) with good quality verb can give a nice result? I believe it can, but it's never gonna beat the ideal live room.
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Philip
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 09:37:58
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NW Smith: You might want to share your recording environment for your most-excellent D-Day. The tambs are a bit distant from the mic (I'm detecting your rooms lively verb). Congas seem well placed and sound great ... though a bit distant. Sticks seem perfectly placed. All and all, this is a wonderful demo for our thread! I'm detecting your basement studio is more lively than my crowded office-studio. Matt, Please elaborate on dead vs. live room. A home studio typically has rugs and hangings, sometimes bass-traps ... keeping things dampened with few early reflections. Or, share what has worked for you. Yesterday, I hung rug-curtains behind the drums ... at the 'drum corner' ... and placed the mic (a Pearlman) toward the center of the room. Its more anechoic now. A note about hihats: Open hats aren't working for me ... they fail, IMHO, here at the home studio; they reverberate excessively and in a loud brashy drowning mushy manner. You skilled drummers should comment on open hats ... and proper mic-ing/recording ... per GuitarHacker and others. The small Crash Cymbal, to my ears, gives a much better home-studio sound than the open hat. Its reverberation is controllable by 4 fingers beneath that bell ... for drum hackers like me. OTOH: Closed hats (fully closed) seem to record very well. RBH, I'm hoping (for this discussion) to stay mono-phonic and simple for now (at my level). Obviously, we (many of us) ... are limited ... to near and far mic-ing. The vox 'intimacy-rule' seems to apply for micing the percussives ... many of which are hi-ends ... near-micing for clarity/intimacy and the low-end ... distant or overhead-mic-ing for necessary dampening of the high-freq glocks, bells, chimes, and tambs ... as per Frank.
post edited by Philip - 2011/04/06 10:33:34
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NW Smith
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 09:40:38
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I agree with the comments. The percussive elements enhance and add to the overall "vibe" of the song. These extra additions can really help humanize a song that uses drum samples.
Frank, you're spot on about using so so quality mics to capture these sounds. The individual sounds of the the percussion instruments take up a specific part of the sound spectrum and are not too difficult to place in a mix.
When I record these sounds, I try to imagine a live performance setting and how these elements will sound in the overall mix. Thus, I will play around with mic placement - usually placing the mic at a distance and an angle to capture some room ambience.
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Philip
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 10:34:50
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Thanks, NW, that helps a lot! Matt, I may add a 57 (or 58) to the 'drum area' ... per your and Frank's thoughts. Tambs really do sound great when shaken with enthusiasm 'up close' (when dominant) ... but (per Frank), condensor mics pick up too much and they clip the meters.
post edited by Philip - 2011/04/06 10:40:13
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ohhey
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 12:15:41
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Philip
Thanks, NW, that helps a lot!
Matt, I may add a 57 (or 58) to the 'drum area' ... per your and Frank's thoughts.
Tambs really do sound great when shaken with enthusiasm 'up close' (when dominant) ... but (per Frank), condensor mics pick up too much and they clip the meters.
I have songs on my SoundClick page with some examples, the tambourine on "In My Head" and at the end of "Scary Girl" was done with a AKG C414 condensor mic. I just used distance (proximity effect) to get the desired sound. Some of that was several feet from the mic.
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LpMike75
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/06 14:50:36
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I agree things like Tamborines and the various shakers are probably much better played live even if you have a crappy mic and room. You just cant get an appropriate midi performance on those instruments, just like guitars.
I can only comment on my limited experience, if you get too much room ambience on a instrument by itself, it may be difficult to fit into the mix as a whole. The far micing of an instrument may not always work out so well in a crappy sounding room (which I have).
Frank, you wrote:
"Think about how these things might be picked up in a live show, not an idea room and often just holding them near a vocal mic. That's the sound you want in the mix'
We are in a day and age where in most styles of music, the recordings are not necessarily what you would hear with a live band. Huge stereo overdubbed guitars, lots of vocals layers....gigantic bass droning, very clear highs. Recordings nowadays are much more HD than what you would hear with a live band. You do not have as much control in the frequency spectrum/automation/compression/room sounds with a live band as you do with a recording, I suspect this has led us to keep pushing the envelope on modern recordings. Similar to watching a regular TV to a high definition (HD) TV. I realize some people want the rawness in their recordings but that is not the radio norm these days.
Again, I am definately very much in favor of playing things in live if you can, however if you have a crappy room and bad mics it might not always be the best option, from my experience. I cannot get the crappy room sound out of my live instruments no matter what I do, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
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NW Smith
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Re:Percussives for the Home (Studio)
2011/04/07 09:31:16
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Philip
NW Smith: You might want to share your recording environment for your most-excellent D-Day.
The tambs are a bit distant from the mic (I'm detecting your rooms lively verb).
Congas seem well placed and sound great ... though a bit distant.
Sticks seem perfectly placed.
All and all, this is a wonderful demo for our thread!
I'm detecting your basement studio is more lively than my crowded office-studio.
Thanks, Phillip. My basement studio is small - but I have it treated with some homemade bass traps and panels (using rockwool). Adding the treatment made a huge difference in the sound I was getting in my recordings. My main goal with the song was to create a "live vibe" and a sense of space. I wanted the song to sound like it was a live performance - as opposed to 1 person throwing everything together. For the congas, I put my two congas directly on my carpeted floor - and used a simple SDC (CAD GXL1200), about a foot away - aimed down towards the center of the 2 drums. The Sonar PX64 Percussion strip really enhanced the conga sound. As for the other elements, I used my Apex460 Tube Condenser. I purposefully Put the mic several feet away from the sound sources. I wanted to capture the room into the recording and create a sense of space.
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