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[Fibes]

We track bands live quite often and sometimes one thing doesn't get the full attention it deserves due to the rhythm section being the important foundation all is built on.

Yesterday was the first day Miles and I had the pleasure of using a wonderful trick at the mix stage: Reamping the source.

In this particular case we have an awesome drummer, a decent sounding snare and now that we've printed some of the most intense guitar sounds we realized that the snare needs a wee bit more excitement in the upper frequencies. We are also trying to eschew all reverb for the drums and use the room to make the glue...

Before I know what's up Miles is rigging up a guitar amp with the send from out headphone system. Too much amp hiss. Now out comes an NS-10 with the Adcom amplifier; pretty good just not enough pressure into the room. After digging to the Bottom of the Machine room closet, out comes the Urei, blue horn and all staring at me through the CR and filling the room with the snare.

This still isn't enough so we move the Bova Balls a bit, crank the API 512s and drive the front end of the Trakkers until you can finally hear them working. Still not enough.

Miles disappears for a moment, out comes the blue sparkle Fibes fiberglass snare in front of the Urei. Were getting closer, but things aren't right. I walk in to the tracking room, take the Fibes of the stand and put it on top of the NS-10 so it aligns with the Urei and starts getting a good snap. Too bad it's a not so right snap for the song.

Then the idea comes to mind, we need a bigger snare, we need Big Gay Al (our giant pink custom ballad snare) and he's placed on the NS-10 in lieu of the blue fiberglass wonder.

Close but still no cigar.

Miles insists we eq the send and he's spot on but it's still not there so I move Al around in front of the Urei until i get the thumbs up from Miles.

We now have a heaping helping of excitement, right where we needed it and not a sample was required.

We went through 3 more tunes, placed the Bova Balls in different spots and eqd the send differently to get what we wanted out of the reamped snare. The last tune required a bit of distortion to give us the grit we required.

This my friends is much more fun than using samples and due to the nature of it allows you to re-use your best compressor again in a non-destructive way.

[rankus]

And it has the same ambience that the original drumkit has.... (which samples never do)

[Tidewater]

I need more power...

I need higher spl...

I need bigger playback..

I wonder where I could find more...

More speaker...



I love it when it works.


M

[compasspnt]

Cool.

Are you running the Bova Balls through SAGE mic pre's?

Things like this are fun, and often can work.

[Fibes]

compasspnt wrote on Mon, 09 October 2006 15:16

Cool. Are you running the Bova Balls through SAGE mic pre's? Things like this are fun, and often can work.

I don't have any of the Bova Pres, although I'd love for us to get some.

It is a lot of fun.

[Podgorny]

Never?

Most the samples I use were recorded in MY drum room.
I don't know if makes them blend better with the kit, but they sure do sound a heck of a lot better than those crappy Clearmountain samples I spent good money on.

[dcgzr]

Not quite sure how reamping a snare works. Can you enlighten me of the methology of it?

I would love to try it but don't get the concept

[Fibes]

dcgzr wrote on Mon, 09 October 2006 23:16

Not quite sure how reamping a snare works. Can you enlighten me of the methology of it? I would love to try it but don't get the concept

Hmm, I thought i outlined it a bit earlier but here goes...

Take prerecorded snare track, buss it to a line in the tracking room via reammp box, backwards passive DI or in my case the line level (with gain) cue system. Run that line into a power amp of some sort, in this case it was a Urei Time Align speaker driven by an Adcom amplifier. Eq and/or gate the send to taste. Standard reamping would mean micing the speaker/room and tracking it, in this case we placed another snare, batter head facing the speaker and excited it with the pre-tracked snare part. The speaker when set at proper level and eq gets the snare kicking almost like a trigger would.

We were looking for a lot more snap and snares for this particular application so we tailored the eq to make the snare do what we wanted. We also wanted a fair amount of room (read natural verb) around it as well so we used the most transparent yet awesome compressors to pull that out of the tracking room and set them on stun. Also contributing to the roomines of the sound was the distant placement of omni-directional microphones tracked in stereo. This gave us all of the snares, room and width we were looking for that put the drums into a realm of their own.

Hope that helps.

[archtop]

When I watched Bob Lang do this in 1981, the speaker was sitting face down on the snare, and became the stick so to speak.

[compasspnt]

That depends upon whether you want the top head to resonate as well, or just to be the conductor to the bottom/snares head.

[Fibes]

compasspnt wrote on Tue, 10 October 2006 15:41

That depends upon whether you want the top head to resonate as well, or just to be the conductor to the bottom/snares head.

Precisely.

Yeah, Archtop, there's a difference and once we switched to the Urei there was no laying the speaker face down on the top head.


<insert blue cone joke here>


The real key is getting the excitement that you are after, whether it be batter or resonant head action.

Then getting the room into the picture if so desired.


and resisting the urge to pipe the Bvox into the snare for some real thickening.


FWIW I've done faux press rolls this way with my mouth (pfffftpfffft...)via bullet mic-tube guitar amp and through the snare when they weren't in the original drum track.

[compasspnt]

TMI

[archtop]

yeah , now I feel icky

[Tidewater]

You should see what he can do with his ASS..



M

[Fibes]

Tidewater wrote on Thu, 12 October 2006 00:17

You should see what he can do with his ASS.. M

No visuals allowed.

Trade secrets...

[Tidewater]

Nah, you keep your secrets.



M

[Donald Mohr]

can we go over this again?

I think I'm missing something

[McAllister]

Fibes - that's really cool. Especially your persistence and entheusiasm. I'm sure the band was stoked.

M

[Fibes]

McAllister wrote on Thu, 19 October 2006 13:48

Fibes - that's really cool. Especially your persistence and entheusiasm. I'm sure the band was stoked. M

Just got an email:

Quote:

dude.. the stuff sounds FREAKIN AWESOME

I hope we can keep it up until the last song is mixed.

2 more to go...


FWIW during the mix stage I barely have any plugs on the drums at all. Instead of adding top end eq, we got what we need by the reamped snare. The added ambience of the reamped track helps in the verb dept.

So with a touch of UAD Pultec on the OH, a 1 db boost to the left channel and the occasional narrow Q eq ringy frequency yank on the snare we're done.

So an average of 2-4 plugs including (minimal) verb aux...

[Donald Mohr]

so you just pump the snare track through the speaker you decide to use and let the snare sympathetically vibrate essentially?

How close do you go?  I don't have a snare to test this with right now...

[Fibes]

Donald Mohr wrote on Thu, 19 October 2006 20:29

so you just pump the snare track through the speaker you decide to use and let the snare sympathetically vibrate essentially? How close do you go?  I don't have a snare to test this with right now...

as close as required.

[Donald Mohr]

That's pretty Neat...

Any advise on toms?

Mine always seem to sound dead even though the drummer tells me that's a good sound (in the room)  I guess I'm looking for longer sustain out of them...

[rankus]

Donald Mohr wrote on Thu, 02 November 2006 09:22

That's pretty Neat... Any advise on toms?  I guess I'm looking for longer sustain out of them...

Try micing both top and bottom ... we use LDC's on the bottoms, 421's on top.

[Fibes]

Donald Mohr wrote on Thu, 02 November 2006 12:22

That's pretty Neat... Any advise on toms? Mine always seem to sound dead even though the drummer tells me that's a good sound (in the room)  I guess I'm looking for longer sustain out of them...

The choice (and newness) of heads is a huge factor here. Also tuning is a big concern

As per head choice, the thinner the head the more sustain you will get (normally).

[hargerst]

Donald Mohr wrote on Thu, 02 November 2006 11:22

Any advise on toms? Mine always seem to sound dead even though the drummer tells me that's a good sound (in the room)  I guess I'm looking for longer sustain out of them...

Is the drummer (that you're recording) also looking for longer sustain as well?

[Donald Mohr]

I think the drummer is.

Hey thanks on the reamp trick again, it's starting to sound cool.

Yeah, I love big huge toms that seem to sing rather than thud.

Often times, admittedly, I don't have the option of new heads as we are doing everything last minute and on a zero budget.

Often though, these are not my issues as I'm more the engineer than producer.  I will try an LDC underneath, that might help the tom sound a lot.

[Yellowguy]

I've had some luck with re-amping kick drums, and that may perhaps work for toms as well.
The method is just the most basic re-amping scenario where you just put the sound up on a speaker and record the room ambiance. I used a cheap B