Why Modern Music Production Sounds like Ass....

[skoora]

You’re likely noting the differences you hear when bottom-mic’ing a snare and getting a lot of the actual snares ringing out, the little metal wires stretched across the head and are responsible for the “chhh” sound in a snare and not the “bop” sound of hitting a tom. If you don’t mic the bottom of the snare at all it’s harder to hear.

But there’s also some of what you said in your first post; guys like Danny Carey, Mike Portnoy and Brooks Wackerman turn their snares on/off during a song, so it’ll sound like a high pitched tom until they turn the snares back on. Portnoy’s sig snare has an On/mid-way/off setting for the strainer (basically a tuning machine for a snare) so he can utilize 3 different snare sounds live.

You don’t see Danny turn it on until later into the song here-

You still get the majority of the snare sound you hear in a recording from the top. When you mic the bottom, you don’t tend to mix it in that loud compared to the top. Micing the bottom is also to get more beef in the snare. It’s done with toms a lot. Mic the bottom, flip the phase and mix in for more body.
There’s decades of cracking, beautiful snare drum recordings where they only mic’d the top head.

 

[DanTravis62]

But he keeps throwing in Quotes and examples from Nirvana, Grohl, Vig and Albini as reinforcement for what he’s talking about. He’s definitely saying you should embrace the bleed and messiness of the drums but that doesn’t really work for 90% of rock productions. I bet the first year a gate was adopted for studio use (later 70’s I think), it was used on a kick and snare drum.

Yeah I get what you're saying about 90s drums but just using gates and compression and trying to separate the disparate elements is a million light years away from beat detective and full sample replacement.

I would be willing to guarantee that every drum recording of the 90s had some bleed and messiness with some of the mics. It's well known with hihats bleeding into the snare mic, crashes bleeding into the Tom mics, that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of all the bleed - you're just trying to separate the elements ENOUGH that you have some control over them.

That's a completely different thing, and way closer to the 60s method than the modern beat detective sample replacement method.

 

[skoora]

Yeah I get what you're saying about 90s drums but just using gates and compression and trying to separate the disparate elements is a million light years away from beat detective and full sample replacement.

I would be willing to guarantee that every drum recording of the 90s had some bleed and messiness with some of the mics. It's well known with hihats bleeding into the snare mic, crashes bleeding into the Tom mics, that it's IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of all the bleed - you're just trying to separate the elements ENOUGH that you have some control over them.

That's a completely different thing, and way closer to the 60s method than the modern beat detective sample replacement method.

Oh yeah, you were always riding the rail of eliminating the hats vs. choking off the character of the drum. It helped if when it was all recorded they took steps to minimize by mic placement and choice of hats.

 

[DanTravis62]

Oh yeah, you were always riding the rail of eliminating the hats vs. choking off the character of the drum. It helped if when it was all recorded they took steps to minimize by mic placement and choice of hats.

At least IME working in studios that was always the big battle - especially with jazz drummers and drummers with jazz influence who had their cymbals RIGHT ON TOP of the toms, or the hats on top of the snare

There's going to be some bleed anyways, I think there's something to the youtuber guy's point that that creates an entirely different vibe, where the room the drums are played in actually matters. Not to mention the room reflections that are going to be picked up by the mics anyways.

 

[skoora]

At least IME working in studios that was always the big battle - especially with jazz drummers and drummers with jazz influence who had their cymbals RIGHT ON TOP of the toms, or the hats on top of the snare

There's going to be some bleed anyways, I think there's something to the youtuber guy's point that that creates an entirely different vibe, where the room the drums are played in actually matters. Not to mention the room reflections that are going to be picked up by the mics anyways.

Often had to try and coerce drummers that their 20” and larger mega crashes were going to dominate and ruin the chances of that big drum sound they wanted. “But man, they’re heavy sounding. I need my power crash dude”. No dude, you need people to hear the beat, not a washing machine as you’re also incapable of working a hi hat and lay on your crash 70% of the time”.

 

[BABMusic]

You’re likely noting the differences you hear when bottom-mic’ing a snare and getting a lot of the actual snares ringing out, the little metal wires stretched across the head and are responsible for the “chhh” sound in a snare and not the “bop” sound of hitting a tom. If you don’t mic the bottom of the snare at all it’s harder to hear.

But there’s also some of what you said in your first post; guys like Danny Carey, Mike Portnoy and Brooks Wackerman turn their snares on/off during a song, so it’ll sound like a high pitched tom until they turn the snares back on. Portnoy’s sig snare has an On/mid-way/off setting for the strainer (basically a tuning machine for a snare) so he can utilize 3 different snare sounds live.

You don’t see Danny turn it on until later into the song here-

Someone just gifted me a drum set (Tama) they no longer use, so maybe I'll try recording the snare like this. I'm not really a drummer or percussionist, so it won't be me trying to play all the drums at once. I never knew that snares were recorded under or behind it.

 

[DanTravis62]

Often had to try and coerce drummers that their 20” and larger mega crashes were going to dominate and ruin the chances of that big drum sound they wanted. “But man, they’re heavy sounding. I need my power crash dude”. No dude, you need people to hear the beat, not a washing machine as you’re also incapable of working a hi hat and lay on your crash 70% of the time”.

Oh my god, that hypothetical conversation gave me flashbacks

Especially the whole "big crash and drummer riding on it for half the song" thing is maybe the most surefire way to make the engineer sample replace the snare and kick