Drums lay the foundation to almost all types of popular music. That being said, it is safe to say that if there’s one instrument you need to get right in the studio its drums. If your beat is wavering in tempo and amplitude, the job of everyone else in the band becomes instantly harder. This difficulty to play and record can be mostly attributed to the nature of the instrument.
Firstly, it’s an acoustic instrument, which is always harder to capture than a non-acoustic instrument. You have thousands more variables, such as the material the drums are made from to name but one. Wood kits react very differently to metal or plastic kits. The live room’s reaction to those materials is also very important, as different forms of acoustic treatment absorb different frequencies at different rates. Wood, metal and plastic kits will all have unique frequency patterns and sub harmonics.
Secondly, A drum kit makes a lot of noise and is fun to play regardless of one’s proficiency on the instrument, so it is a very popular instrument to start learning, unfortunately it is also a very under estimated instrument that is very difficult to play to a recording artist standard, this leads to a very large amount of inadequate recording drummers.
Heavy Metal drum beats have many traits, which separate their sound from every other genre. The popular Modern Metal kick drum sound is unlike any other, and the main goal when recording Heavy Metal is always crystal clarity and utmost precision.
Another trait of Heavy Metal drums, which shapes the way they’re recorded, is musical composition. The beats are often very fast utilising lots of 16th and 32nd notes on the kick, snare and hi-hats/ride, and often at tempos of up to 200+ BPM. This makes control of the bottom end and fast attack incredibly important, especially as the guitar is often very percussive and will, in many cases, follow the drummer's patterns.
Getting Started
The first and most important step when starting to record drums in the Heavy Metal genre is to analyse and get to know the recording space. Drum room choice for Heavy Metal is an area that has always fallen into debate. Some feel that an open, large room is essential so as to capture a natural reverb and space around the kit, with the opinion that attack and clarity can be added later with sample replacement and blending. Others opt for a small, tight room with a high level of isolation, with the aim being to attempt to capture the maximum punch and clarity of the fundamental frequencies for that particular drum.
Many of the standard practices for drum rooms also apply to metal drums, but will often be taken to further extremes in search of the clarity required.
Parallel walls are usually avoided at all costs. The standing waves created between two parallel walls create a strong resonance that can bleed heavily into the overhead microphones and likely cause phase issues during the mixing process. These standing waves occur when the frequency of the source causes reflected waves from one end of the room to interfere with incident waves from the sound source.
Such patterns are only created within the room at specific frequencies of vibration; these will be dependent on the room shape/size. These frequencies are known as harmonic frequencies, or harmonics. At any frequency other than a harmonic frequency, the interference of reflected and incident waves leads to a resulting disturbance, which is irregular and non-repeating, e.g. heavy bass vibrations in a club.
Acoustic Treatment Options
Removing parallel walls is the first essential, second is to utilise resonators, particularly the Hemholtz resonators. These will absorb low frequencies and also provide a small amount of diffusion. Hemholtz resonance is the phenomenon of air resonance inside a cavity; the name originates from a device created in the 1850s by Hermann Von Helmholtz to show the height of various tones.
Originally, the Hemholtz resonator was a small brass sphere with a thin neck at the top. The theory behind this device states that when air is forced into a cavity, the pressure inside increases. Once the external force that pushes the air into the cavity disappears, the higher-pressure air inside is ejected. However, this surge of air flowing out will tend to over-compensate, due to the inertia of the air in the neck, and the cavity will be left at a pressure that is slightly lower than the outside, causing more air to be drawn back in. This process repeats with the magnitude of the pressure changes decreasing each time, theoretically balancing out eventually.
This s a useful source for understanding the science behind sound pressure levels, resonance and diffusion
The second issue for the room is the floor. Carpet over concrete will make the kit sound dark, and old. A hard wood floor with a thin carpet laid over the top will brighten the sound of the kit. The reason for this being, hard woods have a sound that is brighter, clearer, more articulate, and more conducive to a sharp attack than soft woods.
With hardwood, what you predominantly hear is the attack and the fundamental. Soft woods are more sensitive, allowing the ability to hear the swelling of the overtones as the note sustains. Hardwood is, however, very expensive and a good cheap alternative is thick bonded plywood.
This leads on to the ceiling. There are many methods for floor to ceiling treatment, the most commonly used in recording Metal is a reflective floor with absorptive ceiling. This encourages brightness whilst minimising resonance. Bass traps will also be essential to control low end frequencies created by the double kick drums.
The Drum Kit
Moving on from room shape/size. A hugely important part of getting that professional drum sound is the kit. All skins need to be brand new, and all lugs and bolts tight with no rattling or squeaking. Old skins will sound weak, dark and void of attack and punch. Also they have the danger of breaking half way through a session.
Skin choice is also very important for achieving the Metal sound. Coated skins for the batter head on toms and snare will give more punch and attack and minimise high-end ring and tail resonance. Clear skins on the batter head will create a more vintage tom sound with less attack and create more of a rolling tom feel than an attacking tom feel.
Recommended skins for the batter head that are used frequently in the industry include Evans G2 clears or Remo Emperor coated/clear on toms, and Remo Ambassador X coated (which are engineered 20% thicker to create more attack and wider mid range tones) or Evans Power centre coated on snare. This skin is thicker in the center via a 5 millimeter thick patch. “Unique slots in the 5 diameter dot allow it to flex, keeping the head open at the edges and free to vibrate at any dynamic level.” http://store.daddario.com/
The following sites are excellent sources for skins and will explain the characteristics of each one in detail allowing you to make your own artistic choice.
Drum tuning is also essential, the aim of recording metal drums is to make the tom and snare fills sound as clear as possible. If achieved, that clarity will highlight any tuning deficiencies, so it is common practice to use a tension watch. A tension watch is a device, which measures the tension of the skin at the lug, making tuning far more accurate and creating the ability to easier choose a note for the drum. It is incredibly accurate and available from tama, pearl and many other big drum companies.
Recommended reading for this subject area is Drum Tuning: The Ultimate Guide by Scott Schroedl published in 2002.
The last point is that drums must be placed into the live room at least 24 hours before recording. Drums need to acclimatize to the environment so as to give the wood time to flex and change, this is due to the moisture content in the wood and air temperature, both of which will have a large effect on the drums ability to keep tune.
Now go out and create sonic insanity with your drum kit and if you follow the fundamental rules and ideas mentioned in this article you will be on your way to creating some great drum recordings.
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