The EM Poll

Reality Check

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Mitchell Sigman

           

Tom Is of the Essence

You can often skip compression altogether on the toms, or to punch them up, compress them with settings similar to those used for the snare. Be sure to keep the attack time high to let the stick hits through.

Equalizing toms is usually a matter of finding the fundamental frequency of the tom and boosting or cutting it to taste, using your ears or a spectrum analyzer as your guide. Some high-shelf EQ boost above 5 kHz can help toms cut through the mix. Finally, make sure your toms are realistically panned. Visualize the drum kit and place the toms accordingly. Don't overdo it. Remember, the drummer doesn't have his kit spread across the entire room. You may want to send a bit of the toms to the reverb bus, but don't go too heavy, or they'll sound like a drum circle of doom.

Cymbals of Success

Hi-hats don't usually need compression, but they often need some of the low end knocked out. Use a highpass or low-shelf EQ in the 200 to 500 Hz range. Hi-hats might need a little high-end boost as well. And pan the hi-hat a little to the right.

Crashes and rides usually need EQ similar to the hi-hats. You can take some lows out with a low-shelf or highpass filter, and boost a little above 5 kHz for sheen. Pan those around the stereo field a bit, and send a little to the reverb bus.

Web Clips 1 and 2 are dry and processed versions of the Battery factory Rock kit. Web Clip 3 is a Logic Pro 7 file with the settings described here.

Bang the Drum

Now that you have a realistic kit, here are some sequencing tips. Go easy on the quantization. Most sequencers have a percentage-quantize feature that reels in the notes only to a percent of the quantize value. I find 70 to 80 percent works well. That way your playing sounds better, but it's not robot perfect.

It's also important to avoid playing superhumanly. If you play a tom fill before a change, mute the hi-hats and ongoing snare hits. Physically air drumming the fill can help you figure out what should hit where; you'll know exactly where to stop your hats and when to simplify the kick part.

When playing repeated-note fills, lower the Velocity on every odd hit to avoid the dreaded machine-gun syndrome. Most important, mix things up. Real drummers often throw in little cymbal hits, tom flourishes, or an extra snare hit. Subtle inconsistency is the name of the game.

Straighten Up and Groove Right

I've saved the most important point for last: program the drums first, and then track all the other instruments to the drums. I frequently receive songs in which all the instruments were tracked by playing to a click. Then the drums were programmed or played live to the already recorded instrumental tracks. This is groove suicide! At best the vibe will suffer, and at worst you'll have a musical train wreck on your hands. Musicians always play differently to a real drum track than to a click. The best approach is to throw down some quick-and-dirty instrumental and vocal reference tracks for drum tracking, and then replace them later with the keeper tracks.

All the tricks I've covered here work just as well for synthesized drum kits, such as the Roland TR-808 and TR-909, and for older digital drum machines, such as the vintage Linndrum and the Oberheim DMX. Use the same strategy as for the Battery kit: break out and process the individual sounds, and the kit will sound really great. Now start bangin' and mow down those wimpy drum-loop users.

Mitchell Sigman is keyboardist and music director for the seminal '80s synth band Berlin. He also makes his own synth rock with the L.A. band Celebutante.