Drum Tuning and head choice

Cirrus

At the start of next month I'm spending a week recording drums for my latest project, so suddenly I'm thinking in terms of drum sounds - how I'll tune the kit I'm using, what heads I'll pick etc.

I have preferences from my days of being a tub thumper, but those of you who play or record drums, what preferences do you have?

IanSavage

For recording, I prefer drums to be pretty much dry as a bone particularly if close-mic-ing; Evans Hydraulics ideally or something dual-ply and slightly damped if I can't get / can't be arsed to fit Hydraulics.

kizzer

To help get the correct tuning I set up a demo track. I choose an 8-12 bar section of one of the songs I'd be recording, preferably a busy section into a slightly lighter section, and work out a click track for it, then record guitar and bass to the click.

Once I have tuned the drums and setup mic's to where they sound good, I pull up the click and guitar and have the drummer play through it. I can then listen back and make any tuning and mic positioning changes that are needed.

When it comes to tuning I use the evans torque key. By using the number gauge you can find the effective tuning range of each drum and easily move between them to test. For instance on setting 2 the drum sounds to flabby, setting 5 too tight, but 3 and 4 sound good. You can then record the demo track twice with both tunings and make a choice, and can easily check tuning after each take.

octatonic

Depends on the material- what sort of music do you make?

I have a Gretsch kit 24/16/13 kit with Ludwig Supraphonic snare that I use most of the time.

I like it with a Emperor X snare head, Ambassador coated toms and Powerstroke 3 on the bass drum.

For tuning- I tune the toms a 4th apart, nothing is cranked high or slackened off over much- imho each drum has a natural resonance that slackening or tightening seems to kill off- if I wanted something higher or lower I would use a different shell size.

Cirrus

Musically my drumming kinda ranges from hard rock to alt in the style of, say, Interpol or Bloc party. I like a fairly cohesive drum kit sound rather than the ultra-dry, ultra dampened metal tone as I don't need to cut through walls of guitar or screaming vocals.

Having spent a fair few hours over the weekend experiementing with tuning, mike placement and actually making sure I can still play the things, I think I'm going to pretty much stick with the choices my drummer's made - the reso tom heads are clear diplomants, the batters are coated ambassadors. The resos are unmarked and a year old, probably won't bother changing those. New batter heads and I'll be laughing I think. Kick is a powerstroke 3 batter and needs a new reso head; we've got a printed band logo one that gives off a real metallic clatter for the Kick In mic.

The snare has some kind of dampened Evans head tuned high which sounds great when hit hard, though personally I usually go for a coated ambassador and tune out anu nasty overtones I can't argue that the thing sounds great. Might leave that as is and get a second snare tuned a bit lower with more sensitive snares for the softer songs.

I finally found a place where my little Oktava 012 mic really shines, see if you can spot it; Oh, and his kit is absolutely beautiful!

IanSavage

That room looks familiar @Cirrus

Cirrus

IanSavage said:

That room looks familiar @Cirrus

Yeah, you might recognise it!  Am I right in thinking the drummer and guitarist fell out? Did the album ever get finished?

I've been experimenting with the kit and mic placement in the room, I don't think we'd put in the corner traps when you were there. It's made quite a difference to the low end in the room.

IanSavage

Yeah, never got finished - long, messy story which I'm quite happy to no longer be a part of some good sounds from that room though - what did you make the bass traps out of?

Cirrus

They're triangles of the more dense kind of rockwool stacked on top of each other to make a prism, inside wooden prism shaped frames with thin plywood panels on the top, bottom and two wall-ward sides. The front's left open, I was trying to work out whether to use a semi-permeable membrane or another wooden panel to act as a resonator for low end. Then before I could work out the best plan, I got bored.
>:D<