Studio SOS

Alan Pittaway

Published in SOS January 2003
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People + Opinion : Studio SOS

This month SOS helps Alan Pittaway improve his drum kit recordings, and also helps him get his two Roland multitrackers working together.

Now that samplers and physical modelling processors are so affordable, it's possible to get commercial-quality recordings without miking up anything more than a vocalist. It's hardly surprising, then, that some home studio owners find the task of multi-miking a drum kit a bit of a challenge. So when Alan Pittaway emailed through to the SOS office saying that he was having trouble with his drum recordings, I decided to head down to his home studio in Buckinghamshire and help him out.

Alan is lucky enough to have a room in his house set aside as a studio, and he uses it to record his friends and various local musicians on a pair of Roland VS880 recorders — one an old VS880 VXpanded and the other a newer VS880EX. However, he'd not had much luck in getting the kinds of drum sounds he was after, even with a fairly decent selection of mics and outboard gear to hand.

Once the kettle had been boiled for the first cuppa of the day, the first thing to do was to have a listen to the kit while Alan manned the sticks. Although the studio room was quite large (about 7 x 4m), the carpeting, blinds and furnishings were doing a very good job of damping reflections, so the sound was quite tight. Although I'm not a drummer myself, I felt that the drums themselves sounded pretty good, so we pressed on with setting up mics. Alan's usual way of working thus far had been to set up the kick and snare close mics first, and only then to add in the sound of an overhead mic. However, I fel

The multi-mike setup used for recording Alan Pittaway's drum kit.

t it would be best to start work with the overheads first, because of the lively sound he was after — he had suggested Blondie's recent single 'Maria' as a good reference, so we were treating that sound as our goal.

The overhead mic Alan had been using up to that point was a single boundary microphone dangling from the end of a mic stand on a piece of wire. This was presenting the drums completely in mono and was also messing with the mic's frequency response — boundary mics are designed to be placed against a large flat surface such as a wall, and their responses are significantly different without this assistance. Fortunately, Alan had a pair of much nicer Rode NT1s, so I suggested we use these as overhead mics instead. We ran them first through old Studiomaster console, to provide them with phantom power, and then straight into the VS880EX. I decided to use the newer Roland multitracker because it has slightly better converters, and also because it has phase inversion facilities missing on the earlier model.

After setting up basic levels on the mixer and multitracker, I grabbed a pair of enclosed headphones to check the sound while I set up the mics. Positioning the mics a few feet above the kit on either side, angled downwards towards the cymbals, the sound seemed to be fairly well balanced, so I did a quick test recording. Listening back to this on Alan's B&W speakers, we had an acceptable unprocessed overhead sound, with the cymbals nicely balanced, so we decided to start adding in some close mics to give definition to the individual drums. Before we moved on, though, I asked Alan if he could furnish me with a couple of bricks to weigh down the legs of the boom stands — they were both quite extended, and I didn't want either one overbalancing while we were recording.

That Sync'ing Feeling     Like many owners of smaller multitrackers, Alan wanted to synchronise two recorders to increase the simultaneously available I/O and track count. As I described in the Q&A pages of SOS November 2002, combining digital multitrackers has its limitations, particularly in terms of combining aux buss signals from the two machines, but this didn't worry Alan in his situation so we set to work with hooking the two machines together. The first task was to synchronise the two transports, so that the older VS880 controlled the newer VS880EX. Digging into the master unit's System menu first, we headed for the MIDI Prm submenu and set the MMC Mode to Master, making sure that MIDI Thru Sw was set to Out and SysEx Tx was set to On. Next we went into the Sync/Tempo submenu and set Sync Gen to MTC, ensuring that MTC Type was set to 30 and Source was set to Int. Moving over to the slave machine, we went to the System menu's MIDI Prm submenu and Set the MMC Mode to Slave, checking that SysEx Rx was On. Finally, we opened the Sync/Tempo submenu and set Source to Ext, making sure that MTC Type was set to 30. That's an awful lot of parameter juggling, so here's how it all fits together. We set the master recorder to transmit two kinds of MIDI message: MIDI Time Code (MTC) and MIDI Machine Control (MMC). The MTC messages tell the slave where in the song the master is located, and the MMC commands operate the slave's transport controls remotely. The slave was set to recognise each of these types of MIDI message, in particular the 30fps MTC being sent by the master. With these settings made, the VS880EX responded to the location and transport operations of the VS880, and the playback of the two machines remained in sync once playback was started. Furthermore, with tracks enabled for recording on the slave machine, operating the master's Record transport button enabled recording on the slave machine, even when no tracks were record-enabled on the master. At this point, however, there was only control information passing between the two recorders, so our next job was to get audio from the slave machine's mix buss into the master machine's mixer. A dedicated S/PDIF cable was used to connect from the digital output of the VS880EX to the digital input of the VS880, and then the Master Clk setting in the System Prm submenu of the VS880's System menu was set to Digital. The last step was to go into the VS880's master fader editing parameters and set Stereo In to Digital. Once this had been done, we pressed play on the VS880, and were rewarded with the sound of the VS880EX's mix combined with the VS880's. However, there was one fly in the ointment. I noticed that the master meters on the VS880 were reading lower than those of the VS880EX when only the VS880EX was playing. I couldn't find any reason why this should be the case, so I switched to the VS880's Input Mix/Track Mix mode instead, and used input channels five and six (stereo linked and with the buss switch set to pre-fade) to feed the VS880EX's audio directly to the VS880's mix buss. This gave identical meter readings on the two machines, as I'd expected from my own experiences, so I can only assume that some level offset is automatically incurred by using the stereo input facility in Input To Track mode. I don't like the idea of a mixer doing things to the audio without it being told to, so I suggested to Alan that he get to grips with Input Mix/Track Mix mode to avoid this — anyway, it's much more flexible and also makes bouncing tracks and effects much less hassle.

To start with, I set about adding in the close-miked sound from an Audio Technica DT25 which was already set up inside the kick drum. This was routed through Alan's Focusrite Penta preamp/compressor directly to the VS880EX. After the basic level-setting had been done, we did another quick test recording so that we could experiment with the phasing of the kick mic against the overheads using the VS880EX's internal phase switches — the mic combined best with the overheads without inversion, so we left the switch out on the preamp.

One of Alan's biggest concerns on contacting SOS was that his kick drum sound didn't have enough attack or weight, and this was apparent from the sound we were getting — although a couple of cushions inside the drum made the sound fairly tight, it lacked any real definition. Straightaway, I moved the mic closer to the point where the beater was hitting the skin, to get more of a 'click' at the start of each hit, and then I had Alan patch in one channel of his Aphex 109 EQ between the Penta and the VS880EX. Although we could have used on

An SM57 was positioned looking over the top lip of the snare, pointing towards the centre of the drum and away from the toms.

e of the multitracker's internal digital equalisers after recording, these have a rather harsh sound in my experience (especially when boosting), so I find that I get the best results by doing most of my EQ'ing in the analogue domain while recording. With Alan playing the kick, I used the Aphex to add about 4dB boost in a fairly narrow band at 80Hz for weight, and I also emphasised the beater click with a couple of decibels broadband boost at around 2kHz.

Another audition on the speakers confirmed that these changes had improved the sound considerably, but I felt that a little compression might also help emphasise the attack, so Alan headed back to the kit while I dialled some in. Starting from the Penta's Kick preset, I slowed down the default attack setting to let through the sound's attack, and then adjusted the Compression control until about 4dB of gain reduction was showing up. Once I'd slowed down the release a little as well, to avoid messing with the kick's decay, another test recording was done. Alan professed himself pleased with this sound, so we decided to move on to close-miking the snare.

Alan already had an SM57 set up on the snare, although its positioning was a little out of the ordinary. It was pointing across the drum from the hi-hat side towards the tom-toms, and Alan told me that this was to get maximum separation between the snare and hi-hat. Given the sound we were after, I felt that greater separation between the snare and the tom-toms would be more important, so I repositioned the mic to a more usual position looking over the rear lip and angled slightly downwards towards the centre of the drum — the hi-hat was still about 90 degrees off axis. We routed the mic through Alan's Focusrite Voicemaster to the VS880EX, and set up sensible levels using the voice channel and recorder metering. Another quick recording confirmed that the snare mic sounded best with its phase flipped relative to the other mics, so we engaged the phase button on the Voicemaster. I also activated the Voicemaster's low-cut filter, set at 100Hz, to avoid spill on the mic interfering too much with the low end of the kick drum we'd already set up.

Listening back to the recording, we could hear the snare ringing a little too much, so we tackled the problem at source by gaffer-taping some rolled-up tissue paper at the edge of the batter head in two places. This sorted out the ringing nicely, but Alan still felt that the sound needed more 'sparkle' to it, so I hit the snare while he experimented with the EQ on the Voicemaster. In the end, we added about 4dB of Presence and 2dB of Breath before we were satisfied with the sound.

Alan's Session Notes     "When I asked SOS for help I was having two problems. The first was that I'd been unable to sync up my two Roland VS recorders, so I was limited to recording a maximum of six tracks at a time — I felt like I was driving an expensive car, bristling with features, but with little idea how to use them once the engine had been started. Mike arrived at about 10am (with some alarmingly expensive-looking boxes and mics — thoughts of selling Granny came to mind) and in less than an hour he had them talking to each other. Terrific! Now I can mike up a drum kit and still have tracks spare for guide vocals or a bass line. If you already own a VS880 or VS840, then getting hold of another one second-hand will greatly improve your options. "The second problem was my supreme ability to make a top-notch drum kit sound like cardboard boxes being played in the deep end of the local swimming pool! At first I was confused that Mike spent so long setting up the overheads, moving them around and tweaking the sound. I normally sort out the snare and kick drum first, only then adding the overheads to fine-tune the mix. However, comparing the results showed that this approach had been totally back-to-front and, from that point on, the techniques became more understandable. "Once we'd spent the time getting the positioning and sound of the overheads right, we moved onto the snare and kick mics. One thing I hadn't realised, until Mike demonstrated it to me, was how much the phasing of the mics can affect the overall sound. Fine-tuning the EQ and compression on the way into the VS also made a big difference, although the snare, kick and toms seemed to have strongly defined sounds, so it took less work to get them right. Mike stressed the importance of getting the signals into the VS as hot as possible, to make the best of the converters, and comparing with the Blondie track to keep what we were doing in perspective. "Another thing I learned was to forget dramatic reverbs and delays for my drums, and to work instead with subtle ambience effects on the overheads. Once some close-miked kick and snare had been added to the overheads for definition, a touch of extra ambience made the mix suddenly start to sit together. "And what of the expensive gear Mike brought with him? Well, we managed to sort things out using just my own kit, so Granny is still around! It's tempting to feel a little smug about that, but I have to acknowledge that 80 percent of my studio has been bought after reading SOS reviews, so my subscription must have paid off! However, if they publish the picture of the PZM mic hung up with garden wire then I'll probably sue them..."

At this point we were getting a nice balance of kick, snare and cymbals, including the hi-hat, so we retired to the kitchen for some well-earned lunch! Afterwards we had another listen to the Blondie track to get our bearings and, although we were definitely in the right ball park, we were still a long way away from achieving the large room sound of 'Maria' — hardly surprising really, given that those dru

A bit of rolled-up tissue paper gaffered to the snare drum's head helped to sort out an undesirable resonance.

ms were recorded at a big professional studio! My first instinct was to try to record more of the ambience of the room, so I quickly put up one of Alan's small-diaphragm Shure mics in front of the kit, pointing out into the room to capture more of the room sound. Running this through a Dbx 376 voice channel I'd brought with me, I added some compression and mixed it in with the overheads. Although this made the sound more ambient, it didn't really help increase the size of the perceived space very much, so we quickly abandoned this approach and resolved to simulate a larger room sound artificially.

Alan had a Lexicon MPX100 in his rack and, seeing that I've had good experiences with a similar Lexicon unit in my own setup, I plumbed this unit into the system to see what it could do. We connected the reverb's input to an auxiliary send on the Roland and returned the reverb through the remaining two analogue inputs on the VS880EX — the reverb was fed mostly from the overheads, although a little was also added to snare. With a test recording playing back, we auditioned various Ambience and Room presets first, followed by the Hall, Chamber and Plate patches, but we couldn't find anything to match what we were after, even after experimenting for some time and exercising the Adjust knob. I have to say that I was rather surprised at this — I dare say we could have found a suitable setting if we'd had more time, but editing was too restrictive for us to get results in a hurry. In the end, I resorted to using the internal effects processor in the VS880EX, using the Large Room patch as a starting point. I increased the room size to 22m and pulled the reverb time back to 0.9s to remove any noticeable reverb tail. As a final touch, I increased the density to 60 to smooth out the sound a little, and then adjusted the effects return to a suitable level.

Comparing with our reference Blondie track confirmed that we were much closer to the required sound, although we both felt that a little extra high end was required on the kit overall, so we added a few decibels to the overheads using the Studiomaster's high-frequency EQ, and a few decibels of 14kHz 'air' to the whole kit sound by using Alan's Focusrite Mixmaster patched across the VS880EX's main o

An SM58 was used as a close mic for the toms, and was pointed downwards to minimise cymbal spill.

utputs. We also used the Roland's digital EQ to shelve off some low end on the overheads (-5dB at 200Hz) and the snare mic (-5dB at 500Hz), in order to tighten up the low end a bit more.

Even though the overall sound was now pretty well established, the toms were sounding rather distant. Seeing that we still had inputs free on the VS880EX, we put up a spare SM58 covering the two rack toms to see if we could pull their sound forward a little. We plugged the mic straight into one of the VS880EX's mic inputs and, given that the cymbals were quite low over the toms, I decided to point the mic directly downwards between the two drums to increase the separation. Listening to another test recording showed that the close mic was giving quite a warm tone, where we were after more definition, and also that the toms were ringing in sympathy with kick and snare hits, adding a rather undesirable boomy element to those sounds.

One of the deficiencies of the VS880 multitrackers is that there is no proper gating or expansion available, which would have been my first choice of processing to remedy the tom resonance — the multitracker's Noise Suppressor insert effect is a threshold-dependent filter which is unsuitable for most drum expansion tasks. In the absence of a gate, I decided to try dealing with the problem using the Roland's digital EQ, rolling off a fair bit of low end and low mid-range: -5dB of low shelf at 400Hz and -5dB of mid-band at 900Hz, with a Q value of one. This reduced the ringing of the toms, but also made the close mic sound pretty thin on its own. Fortunately, the tom sound coming through the overheads was quite warm, so the toppy close mic actually helped the overall sound cut through nicely, matching the kick and snare. We didn't have the time to put another close mic on the floor tom, which definitely needed it, but another SM58 fed into the VS880EX's final mic input would almost certainly have done the trick.

An Aphex Anomaly     Before we plugged up the Aphex 109 to process our kick drum mic, Alan noticed that the red overload LEDs on both channels were rapidly flashing on an off, as if high-level LFO signals were passing through them, even though both inputs and outputs were disconnected on the patchbay. I tried adjusting the settings on one of the EQ channels, and noticed that if I reduced the gain on both bands to below unity the light on that channel stopped flashing, which suggested to me that a feedback loop of some type was causing the problem. Plugging into the lower sockets on the patchbay immediately turned the overload LEDs off, which confirmed my suspicions. It turned out that Alan had connected the inputs above the outputs on the patchbay, but hadn't defeated the normalling on those patchbay channels, which meant that the Aphex's inputs were connected to its outputs whenever nothing else was connected, hence the feedback loop.

Like many studio activities, the process of sorting out Alan's drum sound involved a series of small steps, with auditioning of the results at each stage to gauge the effectiveness or our actions. Although the differences at each stage were often quite small, the cumulative effect was a radical change in the sound. Switching back and forth between monitoring on headphones (while Alan was playing)

A first attempt at increasing the apparent room size involved pointing a Shure small-diaphragm condenser mic out into the room to capture extra ambience, but in the end a more useful result was achieved using the VS880's Large Room effects program with the Reverb Time parameter reduced.

and monitoring on speakers also underlined the importance of doing test recordings when you have no separate control room — you can take an educated guess at EQ and compression settings on enclosed headphones, but it's vital to check everything on speakers as well to avoid any nasty surprises.

Although we'd managed to sync up Alan's two VS recorders (see 'That Sync'ing Feeling' box), I advised Alan not to split his drum recordings across the two machines, because of potential phasing problems arising from the inherently unpredictable nature of the synchronisation. I suggested that he should limit himself to six drum tracks and then use the other machine to record any other band members, being careful to avoid spill from their performances bleeding onto the drum mics. Spill could be kept to a minimum by using the COSM guitar amp simulation on the VS for guitar and bass guide parts, and by placing any acoustic instrumentalists or singers in a bedroom down the corridor from the studio. After capturing the drum parts, I'd be tempted to overdub everything else so that I could reuse the various analogue processors — again, if you make the sounds as good as possible on the way into the VS recorder, then you'll usually get much better results than by trying to fix things in the mix.

If band recording is going to be a frequent activity for Alan, however, I'd suggest that he get himself a slightly more flexible mixer to allow him to set up a decent sound for all the band members together. I'd suggest a four-buss console, something like a Mackie 1604 VLZpro or Behringer Eurorack MX2642A. This would allow Alan to completely avoid the Roland multitracker preamps, the quality of which I've always found slightly questionable, and would give him access to phantom power and three-band EQ on every channel. That would free up his Aphex 109 and Focusrite Platinum units for critical tasks. Both of the desks I've mentioned allow channels to be assigned to the four group busses and master mix buss separately, and these six outputs could be fed straight to the VS880EX for recording the drums. Four extra signals could then be fed to the VS880's analogue inputs from auxes three to six on the Mackie, or from the individual channel direct outputs on the Behringer, leaving at least two mixer auxes for extra foldback, in addition to the two auxes on the master VS880. I'd also suggest that Alan upgrades his outboard reverb processor to something more flexible, perhaps an MPX500 if he likes the Lexicon sound, so that he can more easily tweak the sound to suit the job in hand.