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[Michael Durovic]

hi all,
this is my setting for the actual production (new rock style, heavy distguitars etc...)

guitar: drop C tuning (drop D but all strings a whole note deeper)
bass: adadg (deepest a is 110 Hz)
singer: 3 voices mid-range to low, full and voluminous

my question: if I seperate the frequ. properly (no guitar below 260 HZ, no bass below 110 HZ) without having that close to the ear effect, just blowing things up, making it sound real huge.
what tuning and damping would you guys consider me to have the drums like?
heard  a lot that new theory of a deadman, nickelback stuff.
to be honest i don't like the drums on it, but they fit oh so well in the overall mix...

tried to put a hi tuning (pretty dennis chamber like) on it,
tried to put a lo tuning (nickelback like) on it,
both just doesn't seem to feel/fit that well with the rest of the music.

burning for your suggestions...

[j.hall]

i'd make the drum kit sound really good in the room you are recording in.  pay no mind to the other elements at the moment.

get the drums to really sing in the room.  then spend a lot of time mic'ing them and getting the best tones you can.  sometimes this takes a day or two, if you are really being anal.

then i would build the rest of the tones around the kit.

[scottoliphant]

maybe you are unintentionally overcomplicating it for yourself? I'm with Jay. You are going to drive yourself nuts trying to get each drum piece to fit into an exact frequency range. I'm a drummer, so I'm pretty OCD about getting good drum sounds. Have you tried to get a good room sound out of the kit as a whole before you jump in to your close mics? I'm hearing less and less of the room in drum sounds these days, and a decent full kit sound always seems to help tie my drum sound together. But I suppose it's a personal opinion. I'd guess a lot of the "new rock" stuff on the radio these days is probably triggered and sampled, which may explain why "they fit oh so well in the overall mix". good luck

[craig boychuk]

Indeed, if you don't like the sound of the instruments before you hit tape, you probably won't like them after. There's no substitute for having everything sound good in the first place.

Also, I would be wary of applying filters to stuff just by doing calculations...see what it sounds like first! Throwing an hpf on the bass at 110 Hz is gonna get rid of A LOT of your bass sound, and cutting out everything below 260 on the guitars might just make them sound weak.

Use yer ears!

[scottoliphant]

"use your ears" amen craig

[j.hall]

something else to keep in mind is building off the kit first isn't always the best plan

you need to hear all the elements and start assembling your thoughts as you get sounds.

the drums might sound great in the room and on tape, but once the rest of the instruments come in you might not like them.

i've found that sometimes what sounds bad by itself sounds perfect in the mix.

[NelsonL]

Context is huge-- a little of topic but what the hell:

I'm working on a project where we overdubbed bass drum played with a mallet. There's no traditional drum set to compete with and almost no bass guitar, so it works pretty well in the mix without a lot of fuss. But...

At times, we've tried stealing a bass drum hit from one spot to replace a weaker hit at another point in the song. Sometimes this works ok, but quite often the new "sampled" hit doesn't have its original impact when moved to a new spot in the song--it deflates out of context. This is one of those everything affects everything else and vice versa deals.

[Michael Durovic]

thanks,
I'm european, I'm anal as hell.
I got a pretty dead room to record in.
sounds pretty well to me cause I'm more the artifical-room guy.

I finally tuned the snare (batter and reso) to A(880).
the bd to 160 (batter and reso), the toms as a 5th (batter to reso), all with evans. Got a quickbeatHH too and off it goes...
thanks for the comments and suggestions.

(with that room suggestion I decided to do MS in addition to close micing, placed a valvemic 1,5 meters above the snare prette close to the drummers head)

[Michael Durovic]

to craig:
the seperating of frequ. is just for the "full on" chorus.
for intro, verse, etc... I of course let some bass-frequ. bleed into the mix(which instrument or vox soever seem to need it) I'm not doing static mix...
and the other way round I love the overtones but sometimes there are just too many of them, so I have to use my darwin-complex and get rid of 'em.

to have my fixation of seperating determined: the problem is the close micing and its proximity effect. Not even a linEQ can make the membrane of the mic move faster if its driven by that low frequencies (so to say: a long way).
as I'm said I'm European, anal as hell (and sometimes too lifeless

sorry for the inconvinience of my long writings.
as english isn't my mother tongue it's hard to keep it short and polite (in german short always sounds military, cause you don't have to use the verbs

[j.hall]

no worries about your post length, or your english.  both are just fine.  

i can only speak one language, and i can only write in one language, so you are light years ahead of me.............

if proximity effects are driving you mad pull the mic back an inch and see if you are happier.

i'd pay less attention to the fundamental frequencies an instrument can produce and focus on what sounds good to you.

the link you posted in the "wanna play" thread sounded pretty good.

[Michael Durovic]

thank you very much.
having one year in between of the mixing and now it seems much to sterile and crappy. the two most limitations where adat-conversion (that 16bit old ones) and a drummer overruling/powering my suggestions of micing, drumtuning & hitting consistancy.

hopefully I find some time this evening to listen to yours on your hp.

[craig boychuk]

tangledspeech wrote on Tue, 29 November 2005 02:14

to craig: the seperating of frequ. is just for the "full on" chorus. for intro, verse, etc... I of course let some bass-frequ. bleed into the mix(which instrument or vox soever seem to need it) I'm not doing static mix... and the other way round I love the overtones but sometimes there are just too many of them, so I have to use my darwin-complex and get rid of 'em.

Ahhh, I see.

That's cool...I guess my point was to listen for the best cut-off point for your filters instead of arbitrarily or mathematically assigning one.

I don't mean to be patronizing...heh...

[Michael Durovic]

hi all,
just came back from some bigger jobs, sorry for the missing answers.

placed the following on "marsh". probably its useful for you guys too:

http://marsh.prosoundweb.com/index.php/m/124277/?SQ=3d36b00c 0500b1b7c68f98c341a7e20e#msg_124277