| For one of the RID Advanced Recording classes
in July 2000, I invited Murgua Booker to give about an hour talk about how drums are
really set up for a recording session. The lesson was on how recording happens in
real professional sessions where you are recording gold and platinum records.
Many times students have a lot of exposure to "local" bands and little or no
experience of how it is done in the big leagues. It is a fact that top engineers
work 1/3 as hard and get ten times the result. I wanted to have my students
understand why. |
| I also wanted my students to realize that a
lot of the techniques and "tricks" that they had learned over the year they
studied with us had to do with the engineer having to compensate for un-professionalism on
the part of the musician the musical instrument being played. After the talk, the
class up only 5 microphones to record the drums (usually a session has 8-10 drum
microphones). We recorded the drums to analog tape and the result was an awesome
sound - as good as you would hear on any hit record. |
| I chose the drums as a subject matter,
because getting a good drum sound is one of the most difficult tasks of a recording
engineer. I chose Muruga as the drummer because he has been there - on quite a few
gold and platinum records, recording in the best studios with the best engineers and
leading recording artists. In this article I am recapping some of the points that
Murgua made during his talk. |
| 1. One of the first things Muruga
demonstrated was the different sounds that a cymbal has using wood top sticks vs. plastic
tip sticks. The difference, of course, was the "attack" sound on the
cymbal. An engineer reaches for the equalizer (at 5 or 7 kHz) but the drummer can
just reach for a new stick. Having a few sticks of different varieties around the
studio could make recording the drums a lot simpler. Muruga went on to explain how
other stick characteristics affect the sound that can be gotten out of cymbals as well as
where you hit the cymbals. |
| Muruga would later demonstrate how a drummer
can actually "modulate" the cymbals for a musical bridge - similar to the other
instruments changing key in the middle of the song. |
| 2. Muruga then showed the class how the
height, and angle of the drums affects a drummer's ability to play the drums. Murgua
pointed out that the stick is really an extension of the drummer's arm and the drummer
should easily be able to reach the drums and cymbals properly and be able to hit them with
different angles. Recording students have to get used to the idea that drums &
cymbals can't really be moved much to get a better sound - it inhibits the drummer from
playing. There is also no such thing as setting up the drums with microphones in
place before the drummer arrives. |
| 3. Muruga is opposed to drum muffling
(wallets and such on the snare). He showed the class that the way that the drummer
hits the drums affects muffling. He showed how on the kick drum that the drummer can
push the pedal and then hold it against the skin to muffle it or how he can hit it and
release the pedal to let the drum ring out. He played a minute or so of the drums to
show a generally muffled sound but occasionally throwing in a ring out to add interest and
character to the drum part. His point is that if you muffle it with objects, the
drummer is inhibited from doing things like this. |
| We could really go on and on with this
subject but I have a better idea. We have made Muruga our new Rhythm and Beat Production
Columnist. You can expect to see more articles, by Muruga, on the subject of
drums, percussion and getting the best drum sound every Quarter. |
