2. Drums: The drums are the real difference between real recording studios and DIY studios. Before thinking about types of drums and cymbals first consider the context, placement and stereo image you want to achieve for your song. Are they loud? Are they soft? How far back do you want them to sit? Should they be more mono leaving room for the guitars to be the largest stereo image? Or should the drums be the widest instrument in your song?

The second most successful song I’ve made (Zero Is Underwater) its drums were recorded through a phone (https://open.spotify.com/track/6WNX9ALBELtfivFlVUMsTP?si=ab800705e7e14847). The drum take in that song was something i recorded on my phone just to recall what i played. When i went to do my big fancy drum recording with all my mic’s and preamps it flat out sucked and made the song worse. Match the vibe with the sound.

If your like me you probably have access to one beat up low-mid teir drum kit. Well congratulations the tonality and sound of your recording has been set for you. It is now your job to match all your other instruments to your drum recording. Think of it like this: You get into a new flat a modest bedsit maybe a room in a west end HMO oh how lovely. But you notice the main ceiling light doesn’t have a lampshade. Do you immediately go out and buy a £10,000 pound chandelier to install because technically it is the best lampshade on the market? Or do you just get one from IKEA. What works with the room and makes sense. What matters more than expensive stuff is matching stuff e.g. drum shells, drum heads, cymbals and sticks. Change your drum heads it cost 60-100 quid if you don’t want to spend that then your recording will probably suck. You have the money you just don’t want to spend it.

You’re going to suffer when you record drums it involves a lot things falling over and twisting of things that appear to be twistable but don’t move and only hurt your hands. Even Jesus was crucified. What happens when most people record drums is they get fatigued and start getting lazy. The drums need to be tuned, setup so the drummer can play comfortably, the microphones need to be set and adjusted and damping to the drums may need to be applied. This is going to require you to hit record, then listen, then go make adjustments and do this until its right. This is incredibly fatiguing and small and annoying but it’s the difference between good and bad recordings. You’re going to need to do it this way because your most likely going to be in the same room as the drummer and drums are loud. How you hear the drums in the room and how they come through the microphones can be two totally different things. Get a pair of good noise cancelling headphones and become familiar with them.

Get rid of the resonate heads on your toms and kick. They’re just making it worse and creating extra length and noise and dissonance. You can add as much low end as you want later with R-bass, EQ and samples. You still get the tone of the drum but you’ve half the amount of tuning work that your probably not a total master at anyway. Drum tuning is something people overcomplicate. Tuning you either want it low, medium or high. Use this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLEjrq_TFRg&ab_channel=RobBrown).

It’s better to have a set of bad cymbals than a mix match of good to bad. If your cymbals sound like trash then lean into it don’t EQ them like their pristine Sabian cymbals right out the box. Cymbals are also the one thing you can’t cheat. You can use samples for your kick, toms and snare and get a beat up drum kit sounding really good (if you match them correctly in tonality and tuning). Cymbals can’t be sampled so save up your money and buy a set of 200-300 quid ones if you want to be competitive with the people you probably listen to.

Use less drums/cymbals and create better arrangements. You have 4 bad cymbals and 3 bad toms what will make the recording sound better is if you get rid of 3 bad cymbals and 2 bad toms. Kick, snare, floor tom, hit hat and ride. The minimalism will create a better sounding recording and you are forced to be more creative with your arrangement on drums.

Here’s the most important part. All recording should be is you capturing someone being very good at something. If you practice once a month and don’t really know the parts and the arrangement sucks that’s how it’s going to sound. You’ve captured that vibe into the microphones. When you record you not only capture a technical undertaking of an instrument you capture what most people call vibe. Vibe is inherently abstract and it cannot be affected directly. Think of your technical process as being a line and running parallel to your technical line is another line, this line is called vibe. Each decision you make in the technical realm affects the parallel line of vibe. Vibe can only be changed through a second order effect from your technical decsions.

Can’t quite get on top of the kick drum pattern and the microphone has fallen off its clip and you’ve kind of noticed but didn’t want to fully notice because then you would have to admit to yourself that you just don’t want to stand up and fix another problem in this endless day. Well now that’s the vibe of your recording. Of you being lazy and the drummer not being capable. Sometimes that vibe works slacker rock or something. My point is that you consciously choose the vibe that works for your song. Because you can’t change the vibe with drum editing or eq or any other plugin. It is the essence of your recording now and you cannot go back and change it.