DRUMMER CAFE - Community Forum

i usually go for a really snappy sound when recording drums. with the kick, i noisegate it, then compress it to hell and i have no problems there. my problem comes with the snare. it sounds fine if i noisegate it and compress it, except when the drummer does a build up or roll, the noise gate cuts some of the hits out. if i don't use the noisegate, i have a problem getting the snare to sound punchy with just the compression, because it ends up making the noise in the background such as high hats, just as loud as the snare. if i don't use compression the volume of the snare varies too much especially with an irregular drummer, which is good sometimes but in the type of music i record i like a pretty consistent snare sound.

So, you compress to tape??   An engineer did that to me once...and it wasn't at all necessary.   He does it as part of his everyday method in tracking drums.   I'll never record there again.   Don't you think you'd end up with better drum sounds if you recorded the drums raw and uncompressed?   It seems obvious to me -keep the beds RAW...compress later.  You can work with them afterwards to much better results.

I agree with Peter - if someone feels the need to compress drums while tracking, rather than recording without compression and later using compression during the mixing stage (if at all), then...well, without pointing fingers, there's something wrong - either the mic' choice, or the mic' placement, or the room, or the drum, or...well, let's just say that SOMETHING ain't right.

If the recorded material is compressed to tape, that compression can't be undone...so why paint yourself into a corner, sonically speaking?

(IMHO, YMMV, FWIW, and all other hideous Internet disclaimers apply...)

JW

And I agree with James and Peter.

The general rule of thumb is to only track the raw sound ... effects, compression, etc., are all post-production.  The reason given is the main reason ... you can't undo if you track with all the effects. Once you start mixing the album, you may feel there's too much reverb or too much compression ... what are you going to do? You can't remove it because you tracked it with all the spices added before hand.

The only exception to this "rule of thumb" tends to be small, low budget projects which lack the outboard gear to add effects individually ... so they record instruments with it to solve the problem.

You can do whatever you want, as you already know, but what we are saying is more than opinion ... it is a general approach to recording. Notice I did not say it was law.

Or, moving tangentially OT...if the effected sound is an integral part of the sound of one's instrument, then tracking the effects to tape along with the "dry" instrument track - but this is (AFAIK) very rare when tracking drums; something you'd see done more with guitars, keyboards, vibes...say, a chorus, or an "auto wah" (envelope filter)...but not reverb, compression, or even EQ...

Or, if there are enough tracks, send the effects to one track and the "dry" signal to another...but that's moving away from the discussion of compressing drum tracks while recording, so I'll stop here...altho mixing together the uncompressed drum mix with a compressed submix can yield some quite satisfactory results...

As always, YMMV.

JW

What kind of compressor was the dude using.  I find so many people that come into the studio don't give a heck about gear...I find that strange.

I would probably just ask the guy to go record my tracks dry and/or insert different plug in compression/gate settings (he has a DAW right????)on the tracks-

A few years ago I had a guitar player that inserted or "keyed" the compressor into gates for toms and snare for me.  We got a really hard rockin sound but I had to play very measured (hard) thru out the tune.  There were no real dynamics.  Hmmm, actually I cut a whole album once that way.  I think one can get awesome rock sounds but it's tough and if the settings and mic positions are not reproduced exactly ...well, it will be tough to copy it again.  Most of the hard rock stuff is triggered in the studio now.  I don't know how true that rumour is but my friend is pretty hip to the rock scene.

Oh ya i don't do the compressing and noise gating during the tracking. i do it all while mixing down, well i use protools and record all digitally. i have a rack compressor and noise gate, but i usually use the software plugins instead.

I'll agree with Peter, James and Bartman.  DON'T TOUCH the sound of my drums, unless they just really need it (which they usually don't)!   :)