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Zaxxon
Feb 14, 2004

Wir Tanzen Mekanik

RivensBitch posted:

Oh god how did my name end up in the title of this thread?

I have a confession to make - I am a bitter recording vet who works in a magical studio located at the peak of a mountain in the himalayas, and if it doesn't involve a pure analog signal path plated in gold diapers then I'm probably going to grumble and moan and cause a ruckus, and generally be more of an annoying troll than any actual help to a recording newbie.

admit it dude, you're stuck on a pro-tools HD rig, using the limiters in the waves diamond bundle to crank the last painful DB out of some lovely bands drums that they can't even play on time so you just spent the last 45 minutes dragging blocks to match the click track.

FEEL YOUR SOUL DYING

JK Riven's bitch I<3U

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Zaxxon
Feb 14, 2004

Wir Tanzen Mekanik

WanderingKid posted:

Most synthesized bass drums are sine waves run through an LFO set to trigger in an envelope. LFO modulates pitch of sine wave using a sine wave at 180 degrees phase. Thats the basis of a very crude 909 type kick drum anyway. You could look at this in a wave editor and its basically just an exponentially diminishing squiggle. Its so uniform that in dance music, it is often common to layer several different types of sounds (including hihats and snares as well as other kick drums) with this boring 909 type drum then bounce the whole thing as a composite sound. Its more interesting dynamically and harmonically that way. I think this has given birth to the 'Alphazone' bass drum which for lack of a better description sounds a bit like a gunshot going off. But with more bass. These turn up alot in hard house and the like, where they are compressed even further. Christ...

Are you 100% sure of this?

Most analog kick drums are usually a sine wave (actually usually a filtered or shaped triangle wave) who's frequency is modulated by an exponentially decaying envelope and some noise running through a very low filter. Some times a resonant filter jacked up to the point of self oscillation is used instead of the oscillator. Sometimes two oscilators are used with slightly different modulation amounds and decay times (808 right here).

Zaxxon
Feb 14, 2004

Wir Tanzen Mekanik

Pablo Gigante posted:

What's a good setup for recording drums? Is it best to actually have each individual drum/cymbal mic'ed, or can I get away with say, micing the kick drum and having one or two other mics for the snares/toms/cymbals?

This really depends on the kind of sound you are looking for.

Some drum kits get by with only a kick drum mic and two overheads (mic's positioned above the drum kit on either side pointing down.) In fact Earthworks sells a set of mics for just this purpose. In my experience this tends to sound allright except with the snare and toms. You tend to get more of the snap of the snare drum and less tone from it, and it is very hard to balance the snare drum against the cymbals. The toms tend to sound short and thuddy.

A slightly more involved setup is to do the same as above but add a microphone to the top of the snare. This way it is easier to control the level of the snare in the mix. Also because the snare has a microphone right on it's head you get more of the tone of the snare drum recorded.

Sometimes beyond that another mic is added to the bottom of the snare, and it's signal is inverted to minimise phase issues with it and the top of the snare mic. I like this trick because it allows you to control the level of tone of the snare relative to the level of it's snap.

The next level up is to mic all the toms. Really you can keep going almost forever. At my first big studio recording session. They had every drum with it's own mic, two overheads, two mics behind the drummer, one mic on the floor under his throne and two in the room at various distances. It seemed a little like overkill to me, but I guess if you have the resources you might as well go nuts, you can allways just kill off some of the mics later.

Zaxxon
Feb 14, 2004

Wir Tanzen Mekanik

RivensBitch posted:

But the manual SAYS they're INVISIBLE! That means no noise!

no it just means you can't see the noise.

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