I wanted to follow up my previous blog with some audio to go with the pretty pictures. If a picture is worth a thousand words then audio associated with that picture should be worth at least 1006, no?

You can download the audio here:

Mighty Mongo Drum Track

This may require a bit of explanation. This is one of the first tracks that we recorded for the session and what you hear is what you saw in the previous blog as well. What I’ve done with this track was to break it into pieces so you could hear the parts of the drum track, and then hear it in context in the full mix.

The start of the track (which is at the end of the intro of the song) is only the close mics and OHs. It’s noticeably close and dry. That may seem surprising to some who notice how big the place looks in the photos. That is the genius of recording in a big theater! You get big and fat along with clear and balanced. Big rooms always sound better than small rooms when it comes to acoustic neutrality. For sure there are some excellent sounding small rooms but all small rooms will impart some kind of acoustic signature on your OHs and ambient mics. There’s just no way around it.

As you listen to the audio track notice:

• At 16 seconds it fades to only the room mics. This includes the B&K’s way out in the room and the mono ribbon mic which was in front. Notice how big the room sounds yet it still retains some clarity. (You will have to pardon the out of time GTR in the background on this part. We did a guide GTR track that was actually in time but due to it being at the other end of the theater (about 100 feet away) and facing away from the drum kit (though cranked!) it sounds behind. It all disappears once the rest of the tracks are added.) 
• At 26 seconds it fades into the full drum mix: close mics, room mics, and my full drum buss processing.
• At 39 seconds the full mix fades in. This is the whole enchilada though it’s not mastered.
• At 54 seconds it fades back down to the drum mix only.
• At 1.07 it fades back down to the close mics only again.

It can be surprising how much the ambience can get swallowed up by a full mix. Remember that sometimes you need to place mics and EQ the drums, particularly the kick and snare, so they will have the needed clarity once the full band is added in. I often think that a kick may be too “pointed” when I am building the drum mix but am quickly reminded that the point softens a bit once you have bass, GTRs, keys and vocals in there.

It’s best to leave your EQ options open until you have a real final mix together. Everything in the mix is connected and will affect each other, especially if you are compressing/limiting the mix-which has become a necessity when the client wants/needs a loud master.

I don’t know of any clients who don’t want a loud master, but, that’s another story.

If you have any questions about this or any other blogs, don’t hesitate to contact me!