Award‑winning American producer, engineer and mixer Jacquire King has an impressive CV that includes the likes of Kings Of Leon, Buddy Guy, Shania Twain, Tom Waits and You Me At Six, among many others. The track ‘Starting New’ by Ole 60 contains a drum sound he cites as a favourite.
“We recorded ‘Starting New’ at my studio where the live room is a very natural and neutral‑sounding space. This main space is 6 metres by 4.5 metres and has a lot of flexibility because one end is tighter/drier versus the other side which is a little splashier/brighter. I typically set the drums up in the tighter‑sounding area so the close mics are nice and focused, but also want to capture some bigger drum ambience as well. The trick is to leave the live room door open to the hallway to be able to capture the lively spill that happens outside the main space.
In order to capture ambient sounds from the main room, I would leave the door to the live room open and capture the sound of the chamber.
“The idea comes from when I was working at Blackbird Studio in Nashville. Their large studios are equipped with echo chambers, and Studio D has that space as a pass‑through from the control room to the main recording room. In order to capture ambient sounds from the main room, I would leave the door to the live room open and capture the sound of the chamber. For drums you end up having a very large reverb sound that feels like an arena, which you can use very subtly to fill things out, or go heavy with it to really transform the picture.”
Dining Out
“While there is some flexibility in my space, you can’t get a bombastic big room sound out of it. You can compress some room mics and get some distance and excitement, but by propping the door open with a sandbag and putting a mic on the stairs that are in the hallway, you can get a very similar result to the chamber idea from Blackbird. The go‑to favourite at my studio is a Coles 4038 for capturing that drum sound. The hallway and the stairs open up to a dining and kitchen area, so there’s a lot of open space that is activated by the sound spilling out of the studio. The resulting track can be balanced in very low so that it brings in a little bit of extra air, and when you have some drum fills or you want something that feels larger than life and back of the room, you just crank it up in the balance. I might also push it up a little bit in choruses, giving me this added dimension. For ‘Starting New’ the Coles track is balanced in fairly prominently and makes the drum sound on this song really shine.
“I also used the [Universal Audio] Hitsville Reverb Chamber plug‑in on the snare drum as well as, a little bit on the toms. This helped round out and connect the whole drum picture. When you listen to this song, most of what you’re hearing as ambience is this large hallway, and the added reverb with the Hitsville Chamber is more of a subtlety in the overall sound. The dimension of the drum kit is largely accentuated by the addition of the Coles mic.”