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Share Your Music (it probably sucks but that’s not why we do it)


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Posted
5 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Sounds great!  Is that at Paul's place?  Who's the drummer?

thanks, jj.

drums were at paul's place...pix on the drum porn thread. drummer is a friend of mine. not a regular pro so keeping that non-public. but while not the most challenging drumming given it is all in half-time, still a nice outcome that musically enhanced the track IMO.

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Posted
Just now, sidis said:

thanks, jj.

drums were at paul's place...pix on the drum porn thread. drummer is a friend of mine. not a regular pro so keeping that non-public. but while not the most challenging drumming given it is all in half-time, still a nice outcome that musically enhanced the track IMO.

Yeah, I saw the pics.  Pro or not those are some nice sounding drum parts and tracks.  Well done.

Posted
3 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yeah, I saw the pics.  Pro or not those are some nice sounding drum parts and tracks.  Well done.

thanks, yeah i agree. it was a fun couple of hours getting them down...a pretty silly number of takes but we were having a good time an i got them pieced together. i just learned a hell of a lot about how to work with 12 different mic recordings of drum takes in pro tools and how to mix and work with that drum buss. we captured two kicks (one running through an 1176) and then the kick and snare had a parallel track through the bricasti. everything else was just eq'ing and a little gating on the ssl channel strips.

but my god, once i got home and started working in pro tools with just the drums, i learned...a lot. 

started with two kicks and just overheads. got them where i wanted, brought everything else up slowly and killed a few mics entirely. full parallel with a nuked el-88 distressor mixed in at about 50% of the primary track. each mic/track had a de-bleeding gate (black salt silencer is wizardry if anyone needs to do this) pro-q4 eq on it that was scooping and boosting all the nasty stuff. drum buss had an api 550a, soothe2, spiff, and a few other things. put that all that into the logic session where the rest of the song was. did a little sample supplementation on the kick and snare in a few spots, the toms in a few spots, and a few crashes where the performance lacked. bussed all that to a reverb send and used the 7th heaven bricasti emulator. then volume and panning automation to finish.

 

tldr: holy shit recording and mixing real drums is a lot when you're really doing it on your own for the first time.

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Posted
3 minutes ago, sidis said:

tldr: holy shit recording and mixing real drums is a lot when you're really doing it on your own for the first time.

This is me.  I always recorded spare -- two overheads, a kick maybe a snare.  I have some tracks I want to mix where the drums are on 12 channels and there a couple of hits I want to nudge -- I don't even know how to go about it.  Nudge all 12 tracks?  Just mess with the kick mics (for instance)?

I need to take a course.  Damn I hate mixing.

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Posted (edited)
23 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

This is me.  I always recorded spare -- two overheads, a kick maybe a snare.  I have some tracks I want to mix where the drums are on 12 channels and there a couple of hits I want to nudge -- I don't even know how to go about it.  Nudge all 12 tracks?  Just mess with the kick mics (for instance)?

I need to take a course.  Damn I hate mixing.

ever since i got my atc's at home, i actually love mixing (as long as it is either my own music or something i really like from someone else) because it's a fun sonic journey. i am way too slow at it though.

but this was truly the first time i went soup to nuts on my own on drum recording and it's definitely the hardest on a drum track with 12 different tracks. luckily, paul's go-to engineer is as patient and generous as he is talented and he weighed in on a few of my detours to help me figure out how to push through a number of roadblocks i was having. for example, i was getting a really washy sound on cymbals in the second half that was driving me apeshit...they weren't there in isolation and then when mixed with the rest of the song, there it was all washy and distracting. it was an issue with the release time on the 1176 on just the kick drum in the parallel drum buss...the bleed from the cymbals was coming through the kick, kick would trigger the compressor (whose attack was way too fast and the release time was dialed all the way out to max length) so the cymbal bleed all the way down on the kick was getting pulled way too far up by the 1176 on the kick. stupid shit like that. Gate out the cymbals on the kick mic and dial the 1176 attack to slowest possible and release to fastest possible and voila, i'm no longer a dipshit. gating and debleeding all the close mics but the overheads and rooms was a key to getting to a point where i could figure out where to nudge things.

it was a good learning experience but is the kind of thing i suppose you more effectively pick up working as a button pusher in a real studio for 10 years before actually doing it instead of trying to autodidact myself through trial and error.

Edited by sidis
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Posted
2 hours ago, sidis said:

so it only took me like three months to get the damned drums recorded but i did indeed follow through. Here is the updated version of @Goredho absolutely lighting the world on fire with a fabulous lead. Had a session drummer for the drums. I did everything else.

 

Awesome man. I got the notification via Soundcloud earlier, was stoked to hear this.

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Posted
1 hour ago, sidis said:

killed a few mics entirely.

 

This is almost always what happens unless you have like 4 mics to start with

 

1 hour ago, sidis said:

 

tldr: holy shit recording and mixing real drums is a lot when you're really doing it on your own for the first time.

 

First time? Try every time!

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Posted

You might want to look into an ekit and toontrack’s ezdrummer or superior drummer, @sidis.  I know you wanted to do this as professionally as possible and had the means to do that, but ezdrummer has high quality samples captured very well, triggerable via midi, easy set up with popular e-kits on the market and you wind up with a legit set of tracks for a drum bus in your daw.

Screen shot example of a drum bus mix in Ezdrummer.  This can be dumped as individual tracks to your daw and you work with them at that point like tracks captured with a mic.  I am sure it’s not as good as a top tier true drum recording session, but for the songs you don’t want to sink a good amount of money into and/or to build drum mixing experience, it’s got a serious 80/20 Pareto principle value/cost thing going on.

 

IMG_2036.jpeg

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Goredho said:

You might want to look into an ekit and toontrack’s ezdrummer or superior drummer, @sidis.  I know you wanted to do this as professionally as possible and had the means to do that, but ezdrummer has high quality samples captured very well, triggerable via midi, easy set up with popular e-kits on the market and you wind up with a legit set of tracks for a drum bus in your daw.

Screen shot example of a drum bus mix in Ezdrummer.  This can be dumped as individual tracks to your daw and you work with them at that point like tracks captured with a mic.  I am sure it’s not as good as a top tier true drum recording session, but for the songs you don’t want to sink a good amount of money into and/or to build drum mixing experience, it’s got a serious 80/20 Pareto principle value/cost thing going on.

 

IMG_2036.jpeg

boo-outrage.gif

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Posted
35 minutes ago, Goredho said:

You might want to look into an ekit and toontrack’s ezdrummer or superior drummer, @sidis.  I know you wanted to do this as professionally as possible and had the means to do that, but ezdrummer has high quality samples captured very well, triggerable via midi, easy set up with popular e-kits on the market and you wind up with a legit set of tracks for a drum bus in your daw.

Screen shot example of a drum bus mix in Ezdrummer.  This can be dumped as individual tracks to your daw and you work with them at that point like tracks captured with a mic.  I am sure it’s not as good as a top tier true drum recording session, but for the songs you don’t want to sink a good amount of money into and/or to build drum mixing experience, it’s got a serious 80/20 Pareto principle value/cost thing going on.

 

IMG_2036.jpeg

you know i love me some programmed drums and samples...i've looked at a few of these and I like a lot of them.

but just seeing the ez drummer name is giving me ptsd of providing sms-based technical support to a certain, short-lived prog rock band's drummer each time said band was working on a new song. ;) 

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Posted

God, drums. I'm pretty sure if I put effort into them, I could do better with them, but after months of practicing the guitar part to get it right, a month of nailing the bass, another month doing lyrics and (awful) singing, and half an hour on synths* I just want a solid beat and I mail it in with an 808 or something. No mix, just volume slider.

I do have a song idea where I won't be able to do that though. Drums have to be right on it.

 

*i had to be good at SOMETHING 

Posted

Speaking of drums, this actually reminds me we published a new song last week, I forgot to share with the group. I had a few of the boys give it a listen for notes about a month ago. I mightily struggled with getting the drums how I wanted.

 

Feel free to skip the intro, I am perpetually not happy with it.

 

 

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Posted

Thanks dude.

 

One of the things about drums is not just having to change them from song to song, but within songs. I was always pretty happy with the verse drums, but the chorus was a struggle to fit all the low mid energy in, the kick really overwhelmed it. Eventually got it somewhat shoehorned together!

 

Full disclosure for @Goredho too, I do own EZ Drummer lol. But I only use it for demoing stuff. I'm definitely fortunate in that I have a pretty capable drummer I've been together with since high school. It can be a challenge for us older dudes with family and work commitments. 

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Posted

i did come up for a final mix on that song i made a few months back... made it a lot more balanced and I'm much happier with it

 

also i feel terrible about it because i finally caved and used melodyne on the worst out of tune singing i feel like a bad musician now

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, sidis said:

you know i love me some programmed drums and samples...i've looked at a few of these and I like a lot of them.

but just seeing the ez drummer name is giving me ptsd of providing sms-based technical support to a certain, short-lived prog rock band's drummer each time said band was working on a new song. ;) 

This is why the Alonzo Mourning GIF was invented.

Edited by Goredho
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