Recording Drums and Reflection

Hi!

Big one today - I recorded the drums for my track!

I won't go through the set-up again, as that was explained in a previous post (Planning the Drum Recording); however, here are photos of the set-up with the planned microphones and positions used!

In the photos, you can see us measuring the overheads to be equidistant from the centre of the snare and, interestingly, how we, after listening to the snare and tom, decided to cover them with jackets to muffle them. This sounded less bright and fit the aesthetic I was aiming for much more appropriately. The recording came out really clean, with everything accentuated perfectly... almost. Here's where it gets fun!

Reamping the drums! An interesting technique and, after discussing it with fellow music classmates, I got some strange looks, but it was so worth it because the outcome came out so perfectly! After learning how to use a reamp box (and connect it from the outboard to Pro Tools), it was smooth sailing from there. On the amp settings, I included almost no reverb, made the mid-frequencies really high with the bass and treble being around even in the middle. I also kept the volume low so as not to blow my precious AT2020. I recorded one take with the raw drum recordings and one with the Pro Tools effects enabled. The setup and plugins I used in Pro Tools are pictured below:

In post-production, I panned the raw takes of the drums and adjusted the volume accordingly, as well as adding some distortion to both the top and bottom snare recordings - I think it made them sound more fitting to the genre. I mixed the three drum takes with the reamped being the loudest, the FX reamped being second, and the raw takes being last. I like the reamped sounds the best in terms of fitting with the genre, and the FX take and raw takes give it both more clarity and more noise and a lo-fi feel, respectively. Below is a photo showing the mix of different takes.

After reflecting, if I were to go back and change anything, I would bounce all of the raw drum takes separately to Pro Tools before reamping, instead of bouncing them all combined. This is so I could pan and differentiate the sections of the kit, like I did with the raw takes, and potentially change the effects based on the piece of kit that was playing. Aside from that, I think the session went pretty well and I can now say I know how to reamp!

That's all for now!

-D.