I prefer wide drums. Most bands that you listed with narrow drum sounds didn’t have the best recording budgets at the time. If you want to albums by the same engineer as evidence just how much of a difference that it makes, compare “Difficult to Cure” and “Bent Out of Shape” by Rainbow, both recorded by Flemming Rasmussen. Bent Out of Shape features a much wider and rich sound, while Difficult to Cure sounds thin and doesn’t have much impact. Using good overhead and room mics really impacts how large your drums are going to sound. They recorded Bonham with up to eleven separate room mics, not even counting the overheads. Close mics don’t make a whole lot of sense when you think about them, who would want to listen to drums with their ears inches away from the snare drum? It is imperative that you have a plethora of condenser mics around the room. More important though is finding a good drum room.
Im a big rainbow fan. Pretty sure the budget etc for Bent out of Shape would have been pretty decent considering the previous album had produced the hit “Stone Cold”…so they probably had high hopes for Bent Out.
The production on Difficult and Straight Between the Eyes just reminds me of basic 70s style production with the sort of little cardboard sounding drums. Bent sounds a little more modern and louder
Shoot, even on Bent the drums are nothing to write home about lol
(one of my fave songs…they got that vocal u front)
I am just asking based on the idea of keeping the drums “narrow” (not as wide as possible) to leave room for guitars out wide.
Whereas with wide cymbals essentially the cymbals and guitars will be on top of each other. Obviously either way is used. Maybe some bands like Chevelle favor a more chaotic sound anyway, to go along with their vibe lol. Plus they detune and have a generally low guitar sound so the guitars arent really in the same spectrum as the cymbals I suppose
Yeah, the Bent drums are by no means perfect, but they’re definitely superior. Who knew that Flemming Rasmussen would later go on to engineer Metallica as a result of their love of the JLT Rainbow albums? Eyes sounds pretty flat, probably because it was mixed on early digital equipment. I’m glad I found a fellow Joe Lynn Turner era fan. Most people are too busy worshiping at the Dio alter. Not to diminish Dio, but I don’t think it should discredit Bonnet or Turner. I think that with big drums there is still decent room for guitar. They’re mostly not taking up the same frequency space, and depending on the song, sometimes the backbeat can be very important. Also, don’t you think it’s hilarious that in that video Blackmore pulls Turner “out of the closet”. Never could keep a straight face while watching that video!
yeah, everyone raves about the Dio era of Rainbow and also Sabbath. I much prefer the powerpop JLT stuff. Some of the Dio-esque dragons and castles stuff can get old after a while
Dio was great as Dio. (the song Mob Rules is great though lol) Dio first solo album is mega classic. Either way, 2 of the greatest classic rock singers who didnt lose their voices etc
Bonnet I can take or leave…I think he sort of screams a bit much.
I just found out that vid was based on this old movie. See around the 18:00 mark for the guy coming out of the cabinet and around 41:00 the guy and girl together and the crooked window setting etc at 47:07 lol. knife scene at 44ish
Have you heard of the band Alcatrazz [sic]? It’s Graham Bonnet with Yngwie Malmsteen. Later he got Steve Vai. Bonnet couldn’t have Blackmore, so he got his biggest fan to play guitar for him. It was Malmsteen’s second album after Steeler with Ron Keel. Look up their song “Jet to Jet”. It’s a total ripoff of “Spotlight Kid”.
Ahhh drums, my favorite. As with everything in mixing it comes down to a couple of things and decisions you make at the beginning. The older recordings as mentioned above had far more restrictions as far as tools to use, the Beatles are famous for non centered drums and making their songs more interesting mainly due to limited tracks to use not like todays ability for virtually unlimited tracks.
My favorite is a combination approach. The Snare, Kick, Toms, I usually prefer narrow. Toms depending on the style of music I like from about 50% panned either way to full 100% pan. Where I like to get the “size” from my drums is with overheads, room mics, artificially created spaces, plates etc… I like the drums to really hit me, even if it’s a laid back song I want to drums to be focused, and you get that focus generally from a more narrow spread, however, adding that depth with the OH, Room etc. maintains the focus and enlarges the drum feel.
Now I like songs with very dry drums and have wondered how drums that dry can sound so good, I’m not good enough to figure that one out. But in the right context it can really add an interesting vibe to the song.
To touch on what I mentioned in the first sentence, it comes down to a decision you have to make at the beginning of the mixing process. You have to know what style the song is, the general vibe, and most importantly how do you want to focus the listeners ear, you have the ability to make them focus on the things you want, lead them on a journey. There is also no rules stating you can’t use multiple drum mixing techniques, often the chorus are much wider and deeper than the verse for instance. I’m bordering on rambling, in any case always stick with your initial gut feeling and experiment.
yeah of course, im a huge Malmsteen fan. It was painfully obvious that yngwie and Graham didnt belong on the same stage lol. Graham was so wacky that he made Yngwie look normal lol.
yeah, they ripped off Spotlight Kid.
Ritchie cant complain, he did his fair share of stealing lol
By contrast, Yngwie and Joe Lynn Turner sound absolutely great together. Though I catch some flack for this, Odyssey is my favorite Malmsteen record, and Live in Leningrad is pretty good too. It was better when Yngwie let Joe write the words.
The biggest jump in mix quality generally comes down to clearing out mud with proper high pass eq, and eqing each instrument effectively. I don’t know where you are on your learning curve, but if you aren’t doing this I would suggest researching this concept before worrying about narrow or wide drums. Ignore this comment if you already understand it.
Back to the drums and an example of fairly dry drums(with the exception of some plate on the snare) and the Toms are panned fairly hard but they are so sporadic they don’t add to the groove here. This song is all about Michael’s vox as you will hear Bruce Swedien filled all the space with vox, left the main groove elements dead center, with accompanying sounds for interest nice and wide.
Just listened to “Take Out The Gunman” I forgot what a good band they are…
I kinda like the wide cymbals even though they seem a little “unnatural” and maybe even distracting swishing back and forth between the speakers (if you’re listening for it).
But in this case, I think the width is NEEDED to keep those frequent and loud cymbals out of the way of the vocals. I also think that just taming them or pushing them back would take away too much energy.
So I think that is just one more reason to consider…
later
rich
yeah. When I get a round tuit and actually lay down some layered vocals on one of my songs, ill be able to sit and really wring out a mix and see whats up.
Every time I’ve written on RR abut wanting the recording to sound real, the majority of responses are to the effect of “recording and reality are two different subjects”. For me, a great recording allows me to look into the soundstage and hear the positioning of the individual instruments, and have the scale of the instruments be proportional. Therefore, the width of the drums would be somewhat limited to the area it would occupy on the stage. In some modern recordings the drummer would need twelve foot arms to hit the crash, but that’s just me.
I’m quite anal about placing the whole kit as if I were the drummer sat on the stool. Commercial recordings that are significantly narrower or wider than this ‘natural’ imaging irk me.
This can be quite tricky sometimes, because of the overheads. If you set the overheads so that the panning matches the tom close mics, the snare and kick are often off centre. If you set the snare and kick at the centre then the toms probably won’t match up to the imaging of your close mics. I also want the hat and the ride to be at similar levels, but when you change the level of one side of the overheads the imaging changes with it. It’s always a tricky operation, and the finished set-up is always a compromise.
As a side note, I don’t give a crap what my recordings sound like in mono because I’m mixing in stereo. I never refer to mono for any reason.
I’m in the process of potentially overhauling how I record drums.
Most of what I record is aggressive rock/metal/punk: lots of fast stuff with details that need to be audible but are limited by physics. There’s no way a person can play 16th notes on a ride bell at the same volume as the washy open hat in the next measure.
Right now, I use a three-overhead approach plus close mics and rooms. It’s a spaced pair, spaced pretty widely, with a center overhead mic as well. It’s wide with some available beef and punch depending on the choice for the middle mic.
I’m considering going to an X/Y in the middle and adding cymbal spot mics wide instead (plus the usual compliment of spots and rooms). Natural and phase coherent in the middle with some exaggerated width possible with the spots (they’d be high-passed as hell to help reduce phase problems, too) - especially since these genres are always so dominated by wide guitars.
I think this is a good approach, spot mics on critical cymbals like hats, and ride make sense in this context. Experimentation is your friend. The main challenge as you already alluded to is phase coherence, but you sound like you have a plan to address it. I’m curious to hear if this change gets you more usable results.
I wasn’t sure which vid you were referring to, that was based on that old movie. But it SURE looks like what Rob Zombie used as a template for “Living Dead Girl”. Thanks for helping me figure that out! :beerbang:
