Believable Beats Part 2

A Drummer’s Guide To Studio Recording

By Garrett Haines Originally published in the August 2008 issue of DRUM!

To read Part 1, click here.

Standard Practices

For the most straightforward project, we are going to record each drum and each cymbal in the kit. Each drum will be miked separately in a room that has minimal or no reflections. We want this “dry” sound to allow users of the samples to be able to add their own ambience based on the needs of their project.

Moving from drum to drum, Dan will hit each drum three different ways: soft, medium, and hard. We’ll capture the audio in our capture software and in a little while we will have a complete sample of his kit.

Suggested Practices

The following are some suggestions for sampling your kit. You may or may not want to follow these depending on your needs, time, and budget.

Set Up The Entire Kit. In the real world, you don’t play your drums with each drum in a different room, so why sample them in isolation? When you hit the snare it vibrates the other drums and reflects off of hardware. Although subtle, this added ambient information is captured when you record. I believe this can help increase the depth and believability of your samples. In our session, we placed ten microphones using two Latch Lake Mike King 2200 stands and several Xtra Boom add-on arms.

Three Is Not Enough. Traditional samplers might have had only enough storage for three volume intensities, but that’s changed. If you are going for authenticity, consider five or more levels of striking force. With kick and snare, you definitely want more than three options.

A Little Ambience Is All Right. While there is significant merit in avoiding effects such as reverberation when we sample, the fact remains that we don’t often play our drums in a completely dead room. From a small club to a recording studio to a stadium, the spaces in which we play have some degree of liveliness to them. Provided there are not significant slap-back echoes or pronounced reflections, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to sample your drums in a room that is not completely flat and dead-sounding. In our session, we included two overhead microphones and a monophonic omni-directional room mike.

Strike Different Areas Of The Head/Cymbal. We’re not all perfect — sometimes we hit a drum slightly off center. Make sure to record striking at different parts of the head (this is especially true for the snare). When recording cymbals, the hi-hats and ride samples will benefit from hits at different parts of the cymbal. Don’t forget to try different parts of the stick as well. Side-stick sounds and rimshots are two crucial samples for drums.

Use Different Sticks/Striking Devices. Speaking of sticks, consider using wood and nylon tips on the cymbals. You might also want to take advantage of the numerous alternate devices on the market: brushes, dowel rods, polymer brush-things, broom stick stalks, and so on. Many drummers utilize these products to open up their sonic palette. Don’t leave them out in the sampling process — especially if you have a favorite.

Multiple Microphones. For delicate work, like brushes, it might be a good idea to use multiple microphones. A large-diaphragm condenser mike placed farther away from the drum can often do a better job picking up nuances than a close-on dynamic model (Fig. 3).

Figure 3.

Don’t Forget The Rudiments. While it’s conceivable that you could re-create any drum fill using single hits, I’m convinced that strikes based on flam and drag families will be more believable if you record them for real.

Consider Multiple Head Types. If you are wed to one type of head, this may not apply, but having recordings of single- and double-ply heads, live and focused, will give you more flexibility down the line.

Remember Different Tunings Especially for the snare, but also important for the kick, you’ll want to try to get samples across the usable tuning range of your drums. This can be helpful when changing styles and for capturing more or less of the shell in the tone.

Loops Are Samples Too. Blame Sony Acid for making looping even more fun. Loops, or short one- or two-bar phrases, can be loaded into computer programs such as Ableton Live or Apple GarageBand. From there you can time-stretch (change the speed of the loop with minimal impact on the tone of the instruments) to fit your track.

Strange Perspective. With lo-fi beat-box sounds so popular, you might want to consider adding an actual boom box or other limited-range microphone to the mix. We added a Bing Carbon Mic, which is based on telephones of the 1970s. (myspace.com/carbonmicrophone) (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. Bing Carbon Microphone.

Geek Can Be Good. If you find yourself agreeing with some of these suggestions, you probably already understand that the scope of this project will expand quickly. If you have access to a spreadsheet program, it would be a good idea to begin by making a grid of what you plan to do (a piece of graph paper works fine too). In one column list the drums you’re sampling, and in another you can note intensity levels. Add items such as stick and head variations. Take this to the session and have the engineer call them out and check them off as you complete them.

Geek Can Be Good, Part Two. If you go in a specific order, it will make it easier for you to name each sample as you save it. Remember, a sample has no use if you can’t find it when you need it.

Cleaning Up

During the recording, you’ll have more audio than you’ll need for the sample. You’ll need to trim the excess audio at the beginning and the end of the section. I suggest avoiding cross-fades and letting the sound fade out on its own. If you must end the clip before the audio ends, do your best to zoom in to where you can find a zero crossing (where the audio wave hits the center line of the graphical scale). This can happen when the audio is moving up or down, just as long as you stop at a zero crossing. This will help to eliminate pops or glitches at the end of the sample.

Publishing To Sampler Type

Once your samples are trimmed and ready to go, you’ll need to export your audio files into a format that’s recognizable by your sampler. The SAMPLIT software used in our example can output information recognizable by the nine most popular software samplers. If you need to convert to a hardware sampler, you’ll need to use something like TRANSLATOR from Chicken Systems, Inc. (chickensys.com), which can translate into various hardware formats.

Of course, it’s always a good idea to keep a backup copy of the original digital files. These will be useful for tasks like sound replacement. They will also serve as your archive and the source from which new sample formats are developed.

Conclusion

Although there is a good bit of electronic lingo involved, sampling your drums is not terribly complicated. With a little bit of planning, some simple organizational tools, and a good audio engineer, it’s possible to capture an accurate recording of your kit. Provided that you record to a high-resolution digital file, you can share your kit for years to come.

And you don’t even need to be there!