December Birthdays 
Hi everyone. You can follow us also at facebook: www.facebook.com/enfantsterriblesofsurfrock
Part 1: Drums
Greetings from mystic dungeons of Twang-O-Matic studios! We started to record our third album (EP) called Meltdown and decided that i write some notes from our recordings. As earlier projects we decided that i will do the recordings and mixing. The mastering we will subcontract that we get at least one external pair of ears.
First thing to do was dangerous. We have to capture the werewolf which has been running wild since Apocalypse 2012. Luckily my vampire friend (Rutiger) is good in scouting cause his flying talent. Also the werewolf is not very good to stay in shadows and rumors about destroyed villages lead us to right path. So we used same trick as in earlier recordings. We put tasty kebab roll in the cage and started to wait the beast. And when he sense it ,it didn´t take too much time when our drummer was eating his meal satisfied in locked cage. When noticed his position it was our luck that the cage hold up until we got in Twang-O-Matic studios. We knew from our experience that when the beast saw the drums he will cool down and will concentrate his energy in the drums. Perhaps there is a part of human still left in him which wake up always when he see the drums… So we did it! The beast was beating his drums with furious attitude! Next i have to concentrate more seriously how to cache the sound. image
For me the recording and mixing is ongoing learning process. I´m not an complete expert and learning these things is part of the fun as well as the playing. Our goal is to create album that sounds like us and is not replicate of any classic surf album. So we are free to express ourselves. Hopefully with this type of doing our every album will sound better than previous one 
Although they all sound quite nice to our ears and are precious pictures of the time and part of the story of The Grande Bois.
The drum recording were made with Pro Tools 9. Preamps were Digi 002 and Behringer ADA8000. The preamps used were cheap but i believe the good starting sound, the place, the place of the microphone and the microphone itself is more significant than a expensive preamps. And with bad microphone placing you loose the benefits of high quality preamps. Cause we are doing low budget recording and we don't have extra money this is a one place to save. So the drum man tuned his drums and we were able to go on.
In this record we wanted that the drums has more organic and more "live" sounding sound versus our earlier The Grande Bois albums. This time we were also not afraid of hearing the sound of the recording place - small concrete cellar (in fact the place is our training place:)). Earlier we have done quite clean and dry drum sounds in same place.
Cause the recording place was small and the roof was quite low i put the overheads somewhat to the front of the drums (length to snare≍1.5meter) at height of my own ears, instead putting the mics straight to the top of the drums. Mics were small diaphragm Octava MK-012 condensers. Cause the room was not very wide i used XY- stereo technique which gave quite narrow stereo image about the drums. I did this cause i thought i don't want to try sound anything else than the room can give in. XY-pair is also on same phase. The result was very natural sounding drums with medium amount of space. We loved them! "Sounding like our training place!" was our happy react. Snare were quite distant but just wait… more mics were used in the session.
The kick drum has two mics. Beta52 was just outside peeking inside the kick drum. Samson "something" condenser mic were at the same distance as the overheads was from the drums (≍1,5 meter from the snare) and height of the kick drum . The mic was inserted inside the "KickTunnel" (watch the picture). Tunnel were made from mattresses and carpets Just wanted to try something different. All the damps were also removed from the kick drum. The result was wow effect when we were recording. Now when listening afterwards the Beta52 sounds quite unnatural with lots of "snap". When listening by itself it sounds same like the kick drums in heavy music. I would not use by oneself. But we are counting on "wow" effect and when mixing along with overheads and another mics the result is promising at least interesting . The "Kicktunnel" microphone were quite natural and surprisingly quite dry thanks to mattresses.
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Snare was interesting project. I used three different mics just because wanted to experiment with the sound (see the picture). Two snare were added to the top of the snare. SM57 and Shure Q snare were both pointing at the centrum of the snare. Even though they were very close each other the result was quite different. SM57 was quite dull by itself. Lot of fatness, unnatural, not so much crispness. Q-snare was more natural, the wood and the "ping" and more crispness heard in it. Third mic was Shure KSM-102 pointing towards side of the snare drum. This mic added some character but wouldn't use it all by itself. I also tried how it sounds from beneath the snare but it doesn't gave me the "wow" effect so i turn out to insert it to the side of the snare. If i had to use just one mic for creating the snare sound in this project i would use the Q-snare. It had a good mix of all elements that our snare have. In the end i think i will build the sound from all three of them. I also added small acoustic element between snare and hi-hat to minimize the leak from the hi-hat. I thought it worked quite well.
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Cause our drummer is quite gentle handed i also miked the toms to have the opportunity to heighten them if i want. Miking them was nothing special. SM57 pointing to the centrum of the tom at distance of two finger width from the drum foil. To the floor tom i also added bottom microphone cause i felt i didn't get enough fatness and sustained sound from it. Bottom mic was Q-snare and it worked well.image
Our next step is to record bass. Something new have to be tried versus earlier recordings. What is it i don't know yet… Read about it afterwards One problem is also that our vampire (bass player) has flew away to look for fresh blood of virgins to get satisfied. So any hints to get him back is taken. But anyhow... we are once again quite exited from the upcoming recording. The drums sounds amazing and the songs are yber cool and absolutely sounding from us. Until next time...
May the tone be with you!
Last edited: Sep 21, 2013 01:15:21
