Sounds like a WELL recorded drum kit to me - lovely and dry, 70s feeling, groovy - no need for room. You want done badly recorded drums, Rick, I'll send you some.
@@theringmaster6641 I agree too. And no room mics and no high-hat mics. Oh no!!! I guess everyone does things differently. One thing I can say is going through mixing tutorials, not one engineer is ever the same.
@@michaelmclaughlin6376 agree.. if you need to cut down on mics these are the ones to dump. Hihat is rarely an issue.. room mics can be faked easily to a degree where most wont hear the difference. They are nice to have, but in no way a must-have is you dont have a good room.
He makes a common mistake,he equates good with what he likes and bad with what he doesnt like, let him make all the changes and give it to another producer and he'll say the same thing, it's bad and then he'll make the changes that he likes and so on.
Really like these production related videos. "Sounds like it's being hit with a wet sock" deserves to be used more times, it's certainlly part of my musical lingo for now on.
Yeah, I feel like the term "badly recorded drums" might be being used a little fast and loose here. These don't seem too badly recorded to my ear... maybe _improperly_ recorded given the context of the song, but, um... I've heard far worse drum recordings. ...many of them by me. 😔
A problem I run into a lot is after messing with the mix a while, it starts to sound good but then when I listen back later it sounds bad. Then I start all over again. I sometimes have to stop, then listen to something else for a couple minutes, then go back.
I totally agree: In terms of professional recording this might be an "incomplete" recording, but even from an semi-professional poínt of view this is quite a good recording.
filipelouro right? Like, yea they're extremely dead. But some of the stems I've downloaded for mix practice are so unbelievably unusable 😂 soooooo much worse than this. This would be a dream. Also, maybe it's a vintage style track. Muted drums like this could work in a mix, but we never heard the mix haha
They are not the best heads on them drums, and there is no hi hat mic. Other than that, anybody competent at mixing can fight their way out of this and end up with a toe tapping mix. Replacing the actual recorded sounds with samples is not "fighting you way out"...it is giving up. Just my own opinion though.
HUGO FUGUSEV I've never used a hi hat mic 😂 ok that's not totally true, when I'm actually in a studio and i have time i do sometimes. But never for home recording stuff.
Sounds like a 70s disco kit. I got some drums with no HH on it one time, but it was to a click so I just bashed in some midi notes and made a HH with Superior Drummer. Sounded great. I triggered the main kit too so I could add a room mic from Superior. Modern technology gets a lot of flak from gatekeepers, but it's incredibly useful.
This really isn't a bad recording (aside from those phase issues in the overheads). It's just a very dry, 70's style recording. Since your audience doesn't know the musical context here, it's not fair to dismiss this recording outright. LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver has that kind of drum sound all over it, and it's widely considered to be one of the best albums of the 2000s.
Please please do a video going in depth into phase. Not just a definition, but examples of how it happened, what to avoid, what to listen for, and tell tale signs that it's causing problems. Thank you Sir.
It can be caused by reversed wiring of microphones, or fewer wiring turns in microphones. If you have a matching pair of microphones it can be be caused by having different distances from the source of the sound. You can also have phase cancellation on guitar tracks due to the windings in the speakers (same principle as the microphones.). What's happening is that there is a peak in one wave form where there is a trough on the other wave form (While playing at the same time). This results in total phase cancellation, but in most cases you will only have partial phase cancellation because one wave is approaching a trough as the other is leaving a peak. This phenomenon is known as destructive interference. You have constructive interference when there is a peak and a peak (or trough and trough). I hope that helps, if you look at a wave diagram that can help you to further understand.
While this is true, they can have the same effect on audio. If you were to mic a cymbal from the top and bottom with matched polarity microphones, you would experience phase cancellation and the waveforms would appear as if the microphones were inverted in polarity. Really, the argument about phase vs polarity is more of a semantic argument than a practical argument.
Talon- right. Jannik- how do you think those analog phase inversion switches on di boxes work? They invert the polarity- which just happens to swap the phase 180 degrees. very clever if you ask me. That's why you won't find analog gear with anything other than a phase inversion switch. (aside from a Little Labs IBP). no 90 degrees, 23 degrees, 7 degrees etc. that's much more complicated and expensive. ps, if you want to invert the phase on a trs cable just resolder one end backwards. (tip on one end goes to ring on the other, and vice versa).
Gnome- phase is where the tops and bottoms of your soundwave line up. every sound is a wave. every wave has phase. anytime you change the tone or timing of a sound in any way, you are changing the phase. eq changes phase, the distance of the mic from the sound source changes phase, a phaser effect (yes, kinda a no brainer) changes the phase. changing the resistance in any electrical signal changes the phase of it. phase is important when recording one sound source, with multiple mics. like micing a snare drum top AND bottom. or any room mic (in conjunction with a primary mic). phase is also important when making duplicates of the same track in your DAW. learning to listen for phase issues takes a bit of practice. the best way to do it as a begginer is: anytime you have duplicates of any instrument in your DAW and that instrument isn't sounding good- CHECK the Phase! you can do this as Rick did in his video by just hitting your phase invert button on one of the tracks. or you can visually inspect the waveforms of the instrument in question and look to see if they are WAY off aligning. ie, if one wave is at it's highest point (or close to) while another is at it's lowest point (or close to). and if they do that consistently through the track. (bear in mind looking at the waveform will only tell you if the original recording is out of phase- not with all the eq changes, tone changes, or plugins you've put on the tracks through your DAW- but maybe that's too technical to worry about for now). Rick's phase issue was an easy fix. he just hit his phase button on one of the tracks, and voila! it sounded way better. most of the time this will work just as well as it did for rick. The other way to fix it is to do what Rick said the recording engineer did when rick was looking at the wave forms earlier in the video and said that somebody had moved them, because they were way too perfect. (and that wasn't a good thing). you can go in manually and shift a track over until the wave-forms lineup... better. I DON'T really recommend this. A-because it's difficult to do right, and involves a deep knowledge of your DAW to not screw it up. B- because it still won't be perfectly aligned and you might just make it worse (unless you really know the right way to do it in your Particular DAW). C- it's extremely tedious and time consuming. D- sounds can be too perfect and not sound natural at all. sometimes some phase misalignment can sound really cool, or just unique enough to give you something really original tonally. (also, if they weren't going to mix it themselves they should have just left it, so the mix engineer -rick- knew were it was originally and could fix it from the origin, instead of fixing their fix blindly) oh, little labs makes a phase adjsuting plugin (software) through UA that let's you make even small adjustments to your phase without manually moving your entire tracks' waveform by millionths of a second. it's called the IBP for in between phase. i greatly recommend this. they make a hardware version too, but that's about 12 times the cost! very, very useful tool. SMG just posted a video about phase. and i think URM has a good video that touches on it too! hope this helped. Basically, if you are dual micing, or making copies of tracks in your DAW- Check your phase like rick did! (press the phase button).
That was not a bad sounding recording and it is very well played. Triggers and samples + gating very delicate and hard to play ghost notes away? You must assume those were played for a reason. The groove reminds me of something James Gadson could have played with Bill Withers. Surely he would have no wish of sounding like Lars Ulrik.
I do create my own technique for emulate ambience mics, I not saying is the best but it worked really good for me: I mixed the drums roughly, put the mix into 2 different stereo tracks, each one with a different reverb set on 100% wet. The first reverb is usually a short time plate reverb, the other one is a longer time boomy reverb. With the main drum mix at 0db, set volume levels around -8db and -15db for the 2 reverb tracks, with minor adjustments. Since the mix I started with it was rough and volumes are usually different from final mix, this technique add, in my opinion, a bit of fake uncontrolled room reverb that make it sound more natural
Rick I really liked that you took a pretty simple approach to mixing these drums. You were able to improve on what was there without loosing the overall feel that the original tracks had. Well done and thanks for sharing.
Oh, at my level of clients it's the awesome drums. I'd be blessed if everybody sends me something like this every time. Usually it's far worse if I don't record them myself in my studio.
Everyone is saying either that these weren't poorly recorded or that they would be great for funk. It wasn't recorded for funk and for a rock song I don't know how you can claim that these drum didnt sound awful
definitely were not tuned or setup properly. but it's also so bad, that i genuinely don't know how their mic placement was. besides, i happen to think that tuning the drums is the most important part of recording drums. fuck the quality of the set, fuck the room, work with what you got and set it up right, and you'll get something way better than this video as a starting point for mixing. (don't get me wrong, i've recorded bad drums too, just sharing my limited experience). recording is all prep work. it's like painting a house. i'm a firm believer of not setting up drums, and attempting to start tracking the same day. always plan for separate days just so performer's understand the importance of setup and don't try to rush it. (doesn't have to be a whole day setting up and mic checking- just separate days).
Rick, could you provide the original recordings through Google drive or something for others to try to work magic on? I would love to try some ideas I got while watching this... And share the results on RU-vid...
Sounds like pillow cases or similar placed over the toms that a lot of bands do, like The National, for that dry short decay tom sound... works for some stuff, though not overly lively.
Hmm.. I'm a drummer too and I think for certain type of music the original recording was not that bad. Like a really soft and groovy funk track. Ofcource it still would need a lot of mixing, but for rock or something else it really needed those measures to be taken. Can't wait for that bass to drop in..
Little trick i found to give your drums a more human sound, position some of your beats slightly ahead and behind the beat. but of course not so ahead or behind to be too noticable. also varying the velocity (volume) of random beats. i guess one could really get into the weeds tweaking things, but thats part of the fun right?
Lee Maples That's true when working with full sampled drums but with real ones you should already have a performance that's played with the right timefeel and dynamics.
One of the better videos of this type I've seen and (crucially) the drums do sound a million times better than they did in the beginning (i.e. the end justifies the means). Mind, I'd say that the source material isn't that poorly recorded and was certainly salvageable, though the samples certainly were required. I've dealt with FAR worse and still got them sounding decent, though it does take a long time to correct.
I love when symbols sound like Pie plates and when the snare drum sounds like a Pringle can and also I like my kick drums to sound like a cardboard box
At the end of the day, the customer wants good sounding drums and he did it. There's no need wasting time with bad recordings in a studio. Not all records are done by bands, there are hired musicians that come and do their parts, the same is true for the people recording it, many times poorly. The final track is a product, and should not sound like a home studio record. Period.
Thanks, Rick. What a dramatic difference the plug-ins make! It really supports the original premise that it is so important to get a good recording first, so you don't have to 'doctor' it so much. How do you avoid the inclination to always end up with the same general drum sound? I guess what I mean is, how much latitude is there before it starts working against you (less is more theory)? As an aside, I am fascinated by the replacement for original hardware with software that has the same look. It begs the question; are they as good as the original hardware, and is it better to use them ahead of mixing? Lots of questions!
It's crazy, I was setting here trying to fix a REALLY badly recorded drum track then found this video! I don't have some of the Plugins you used but did find some work arounds! thanks Rick!
Very helpful guide and I especially appreciate that there’s a lot more advice besides “just sample replace it”! As for why I searched for a video like this…uh, don’t worry about it!
I’m curious as to why you automatically go to sampling as opposed to trying to work with them and making them sound as good as they can and then blending samples in to enhance what you have?
I mean if he had them there in the studio, that'd probably be an answer. I'm thinking this is partly a contrived example to show what you can do just with the tech side of a performance.
i dunno, i've spent way too much time fiddling with eq and plugins trying to get bad drums to sound good. you only get so far. i can totally understand that he's probably spent way more time than i have doing the same, and knows enough to go directly to samples. i mean once you have the experience and knowledge what are you really getting out of wasting all that time and effort just to put a sample in at the end anyway?
Thanks for this tutorial! I've just learned a ton of new tricks by watching you work. I sometimes struggle with getting Trigger dialed in correctly, but your video made me rethink how I adjust the settings.
Why is it bad to slide tracks a few ms back or forward to get them in phase? For example those kick in/out tracks. I've seen a few producers do it to align the tracks to the snare.
There are so many studio tours on youtube, where they show us their fancy gear and most popular songs. Its like theire afraid of being seen actually mixing. This however!
great job rick great save thank you so much for sharing if it wasn't for your kind Beato school a lot of us would know nothing about music recording playing etc thank you again
i assume thats not what they were going for. i guess rick should have said at the start what the song was supposed to sound like. but you cant be perfect everytime
Honestly I don't like the drum replacement, things are starting to all sound the same like an idealized version of what the drummer played, I don't mind the imperfections but I suppose it's just my old fashioned opinion, garbage in garbage out doesn't apply any more we have plug ins to make crappy singers be in pitch but it loses something
Great to watch you do this, Rick. Thanks for posting! I find that when I have to add room reverb, it's a very fine line between too little and too much room reverb. I also set a compressor/limiter on the master bus from the beginning for many reasons, one being that it will bring reverb levels up; if I added the master bus lim/comp later, I'd have to go back and redo reverb levels (and other things). Thanks again :-)
I love this RU-vid channel, but I was expecting something more from this video than just replacing kick, snare and toms for library sounds. 😕 And I wish my poor recordings sounded like this! 🤣
IMHO sounds better without the samples. Very dry but natural drum sound. Would work great for a funk track, perhaps less well for other genres. The reprocessed end result sounds painfully affected.
Agree. The samples sound like v drums. Listening to the original sound gave me a good feeling. Listening to the modified sound was like hitting your head on the kitchen cabinet over and over.
I already knew they were out of phase when I opened the session. The more you high pass it the less the phase affects the snare. If you high pass at 400hz there is no low end to lose from the snare close mics.
Rick Beato, you are right, I was talking about the case when overheads are highpassed around 80-100, because filters introduce phase distortions. Anyway, thanks for the video!
i immediately thought that same thing... but upon reading Mark's comment i realize we might be thinking the exact opposite thing. i meant the original recording was so bad, that i thought it was a 1987 drum machine. it was totally unusable by almost any standard. i'm not a fan of samples, but if the original recording sounds like a 90's synth drum... It's like Aldous Snow: You gotta do something!
Even when adding trigger it's helpful to know what real drums (and humans) sound like. Many don't get it, I fear there is a whole culture now that doesn't hear the difference. Excellent work.
Hi Rick, I very rarely comment but just wanted to say...that I love your videos and don’t stop. A wealth of knowledge and great personable videos! Thanks 🤘
While these aren't great recorded drums, I dispute the NEED for a room mic or a high hat mic. Sure, you can record them, but it's definitely not the end of the world if you don't. Modern mixing has become ridiculously specific. The more tools people have, the less they want to make their mixes unique, and the less they want to put some effort into mixing. I sent a mix to someone and I had mistakenly comped three different guitar tracks to the same track. It was THREE minute, and none of the guitar tracks overlapped. If anyone had wanted them on separate tracks, they could have spent, um, about 2-3 minutes separating them. But instead I get the mix back, $500 later, "I couldn't do what I wanted with the guitars since they were all on the same track." You've got to be kidding.
Thanks so much for this, Rick... While there are ton's of vids out there on how to mix drums that already sound pretty great, there's not many on how to make 'silk purses out of sow's ears' ..lol.. I'll be using the trim/cut and fade on a bunch of tracks I get...(including mine)...very useful boss..bravo..
Hey Rick, at 7:25 you say that the out kick looks like it's been slid back and "it's not very cool". Can you explain why? I would have done just that . Just wondering!
just goes to show how different we hear things.. the snare bottom sounds pretty good to me.. would be easy to eq and low cut and get a good snare sound. No need for samples in my book. But again: not 2 ears are the same..
I'm going to have to watch this a couple times Rick Beato. Lots of info in there. I remember reading something back in the 90's about re-amping drums through speakers in a room to deal with some of the stuff you are addressing in this video in one example they stuck a kick drum in a bath tub to get a sample of some sort. Question do you have any experience with that technique and could you elaborate please? oh and would this just be outdated with all the gear you use or is there still a practical application?? Thanks and I love your videos and look forward to getting to know you better. Plus we both are into the exact same taste of music and love Chris Cornnell. Love your stuff covering him and would love to see more of that too.
This is a great video from a technique standpoint, but confusing from an artistic standpoint. I won't deny that the drums are poorly recorded, but your result is a completely different style and sound from the original. This isn't "fixing" the recording, it's making the kit sound _completely different._ Which, yes, is a useful skill to have! But it makes the title incredibly misleading.
I have a feeling we're missing the context of the drums in the rest of the song. if it were a soul/funk song I wouldn't want such a 80's rock drum sound out of it. Love watching your mixing technique though.
Jesse Grisham - a drag is a kind of ghost-note or grace-note. Drummers play a drag by dropping the stick onto the drum and just letting it bounce a few times (in a controlled way, of course). Classically trained percussionists have names for all of the variations on this type of technique - this track has examples of both a ruff (longer/more bounce... almost a partial buzz-roll like “DZZzzzh”) and a drag (shorter/less bounce, but generally more defined notes like “DUH-guh-duh”). Hope that helps clear up the definition a bit.
Hola Rick, i like your channel A LOT. What do think about use DRUMAGOG or SSD TRIGGER?? I'm recording my band's first album, and the drums are the most estressing thing to record...sorry for my english 😝 AND THANKS A LOT
Who in the actual fuck puts a mic on the goddamn hi-hats?! The hats are literally in every single mic. I get super annoyed at the engineers who complain about the hats not being miced.
