For those of you that know... I was looking at the pictures from the Synchestra sessions and reading Beavis' journal update. Both seem to indicate a lot of time spent getting a "sound." I notice a lot of mikes around the drums and in particular, a mike pointing at the front of the drum set and hovering over an object with a big blanket of some sort. Does this seem unusual? How many mikes does one usually use in recording drums? What kind of sound from a guitar does one get if you spend a day and a half working on it? I don't play (although I did mess with the drums for about 6 months a while back) instruments and have never recorded any, especially in a studio. But, I'm interested to know if Devin is doing something unusual here or what. What do you think?

All I know is that they used a helluvalotta mikes for the drums on Alien, and that the sound they ended up with on that album was great. So if lots of mikes=a better sound, then bring on the mikes.

If you've seen the Making Of vids for Alien, they created a bass drum tunnel for that too....

If you've seen the Making Of vids for Alien, they created a bass drum tunnel for that too....

So, you're saying that is a bass drum tunnel? What's that? What's it do? Can you elaborate? I know nothing of this sort of thing.

When recording drums, the standard setup is this:
1 - Kick drum
2 - Snare
3 - Hi hats
4 - Rack tom 1
5 - Rack tom 2
6 - Floor tom
7 - Overhead left
8 - Overhead right

Usually if there is enough mics there will be a second mic on the kick at the exit of the sound hole, and possibly a mic on the bottom snare skin. Because of the bleed (the sound of the other drums 'bleeding' into the other mics) on heavier drummers, sometimes the engineer will make a tunnel to isolate the kick from the other drums. The biggest trouble in my experience is hihats, as they are difficult to isolate in a mix being so loud, so usually you don't worry too much and just let them bleed into the other mics.

In the photos the red device on the snare drum is a drum trigger, which will send a signal to a drum 'brain' (drum computer) and trigger a sample that will be mixed in with the original snare sound. This can be done with the kick and toms as well.

Another commonly used drum micing technique is room micing as well, sometimes there will be a matching set of mics at a certain distance from the kit to give more ambience, but in my experience we have usually only set up another stereo pair on the other side of the room in the corner to give the room sound.

Hope this answers a few questions.

i currently own my own studio. pretty much the mikes are set out to get the best sound. there will be say 3 mikes around the kit that will be mixed together that will form say 1 or two tracks.

the bass tunnel/bass blanket that u see is used for sound absorbtion.. pretty much when recording drums you want as less spilage. e.g if i had a snare drum mic i dont want the toms nor the bass drum sound spilling into that mic as goes for the rest of the mics.. so the bass drum tunnel and blanket deaden the sound out side it so the rest of the mics wont pick up as much of the bass drum..

i hope that helps you understand why they use it.

if u look in the fotos closely and the Alien DVD they use, like blanket walls on the side of the drums, this is to stop any rebound sound and reverberation coming from the walls, this is what the techs call out of phase, which causes cancelation in the sound

anyways it gets more technical than that but i wont continue coz ive probably confuses u guys even more

isn't the blanket setup a "dampening" technique to absorb the sound...and wouldn't more mikes be better for a "3D" sound (sounds great in headphones)....

Well I call it a tunnel.....as far as I know it's so that the bass drum sound can be captured separately than the others, so the sound won't bleed out onto the other mics. Ryan would be the person to grill on this.

We did a similar thing in the College studio.

isn't the blanket setup a "dampening" technique to absorb the sound...and wouldn't more mikes be better for a "3D" sound (sounds great in headphones)....

Yes... to dampen the bleed into other mics.

Nailed it.

Good job, all! Thank you very very kindly, especially TeamJohnny and amstudios for the very specific descriptions. I think I understand it now and am truly grateful you took the time to explain it. Thanks to all!

I wonder if Ryan puts cotton balls in his floor tom like Gene?

I wonder if Ryan puts cotton balls in his floor tom like Gene?

Aaah, right, that's an interesting question. I think it would especially have suited his more epic, bombast and not that much over the top-drumming on AE pretty well. Maybe Ryan will tell us soon

(sounds great in headphones)....

...Sounds great with a good HIFI speakers which really can create a 3-dimensional sound. And I mean stereo speakers, not 5.1 systems.

I wonder if Ryan puts cotton balls in his floor tom like Gene?

Aaah, right, that's an interesting question. I think it would especially have suited his more epic, bombast and not that much over the top-drumming on AE pretty well. Maybe Ryan will tell us soon

Nope.....no cotton balls in the Floor Tom for me. Usually when you do that, it's for the bigger floor toms like an 18". I've done alot of drum teching on the side and the cotton balls help calm down the massive resonance you get out of bigger toms like an 18" floor tom, so you get a thunderous sound that does'nt ring on forever.

As far as the drumming compared to AE, we actually went for a tighter drum sound for source sounds anyways. The drumming is way more progressive on this album. Lots of double kick, some fast stuff too and lot's of very cool fills and creative beats (ghost stroking, time signatures). This album is the opposite of AE drumming wise and music wise in many ways. I'm very proud of this outing and the drumming on this album represents my style of drumming way more than AE did. This is going to kick ass !!!

RVP