105: How To Create Massive Drum Room Sounds From Small Room Recordings

105: How To Create Massive Drum Room Sounds From Small Room Recordings

Big, amazing sounding tracking rooms are a luxury you don’t always have access to. So you need a way to get a great drum sound, even if the room was small and not ideal.

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“Great drum sound” is usually a combination of the punchy transient you get from close mics and the size, length, sustain, width, depth and character you get from overheads and room mics.

On this episode we're discussing different techniques that you can use to get the most out of your close mics and overheads and then we're explaining how to create “fake room mic tracks” to make your drums sound as massive as you want, even if there are no "real" room mics in your session at all!

Things we cover:

  • Ask yourself: Do you even need huge sounding room mics? (maybe dead and dry is ok)
  • (Parallel) Compression/saturation/transient shaping to get length and sustain out of close mics/overheads
  • Duplicating overheads and creating a fake “small room” mic pair from them
  • Using reverb and room IRs (and how to do that properly)
  • Using room samples
  • “Reamping” drum rooms
  • Gating room mics (sometimes parts of a “bad room” are okay - so only let that through!)

Let's go!

>>Click here to get The Room Sound drum samples we've mentioned on the episode (Affiliate Link - This means support for us at no extra cost for you, yay!)

Book A Free Feedback Call With Benedikt:


This episode was edited by Thomas Krottenthaler.

Benedikt's voice on this episode has been recorded with the Antelope Axino Synergy Core.


Automatic Episode Transcript — Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy (click for full transcript)

TSRB 105 - Automatic Episode Transcript — Please excuse any errors, not reviewed for accuracy (click for full transcript)

[00:00:00] Benedikt: I don't always use close Mike's samples actually, but I almost always use drum room samples because most rooms just suck. It's the reality. That's the reason for this episode, most real from rooms suck, 

[00:00:28] Hello and welcome to the self recording band podcast. I am your host Benedict tine, and I'm here with my friend and cohost McComb Owen flood. How are you? Malcolm?

[00:00:36] Malcom: Hello? I'm great. Benny, how are you?

[00:00:39] Benedikt: I'm great too. Thank you. 

[00:00:42] Uh, yeah. How was your weekend?

[00:00:44] Malcom: It was pretty darn good. I got to say, I just had a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. I think things are great. Um, yeah, I I'm, uh, I'm happy camper is good. I'm mixing a killer album right now and having a lot of fun with that. And actually I do have something to talk [00:01:00] about. I have an assistant editor working for me right now. I mean, there, there is like a subcontractor. So there, it's not like the, really my employee or anything, but when you add somebody to your team, It feels like it's a big thing.

[00:01:13] Benedikt: It is, it does 

[00:01:14] Malcom: I know you've had a Thomas, our lovely podcast editor, um, helping you with projects on the mixing front for a long time now. Right? 

[00:01:23] Benedikt: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Like he's how long do we work together? I think it's over two years at this point, he joined the team in late 2000, 19 crazy.

[00:01:32] Malcom: Crazy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's, that's totally amazing. And it's, it's so nice having a team to help with, you know, just making things better, 

[00:01:42] Benedikt: Yeah, for sure. 

[00:01:43] Malcom: run smoother and, and Yeah. it's so great. So, um, Yeah, I, I, I hooked up with a fellow named Stacy smiler. I'm sorry, Stacy. I'm saying last name, right? We've only spoken on like a voice call one time. So everything else has emails

[00:01:58] Benedikt: Yeah. 

[00:01:59] Malcom: and Facebook [00:02:00] messages and stuff like that. Nan Stacy is the bomb. He's just killing it for me. I ended up interviewing a few people and trying out a few people as well, but Stacy just like was instantly the problem solver. And ironically, he, he wanted to do things are no, he didn't want, how do I say this? I had an idea in my head of how I wanted to do things or how I pictured the, our workflow working with, uh, an assistant that I was to bring one on and how we handle like, protocols, collaboration and stuff like that. And with Stacy, he's not approachable user. So like pretty much all of that was not possible, but he just had like, he was like, oh, well, I can just like, what about this workflow? What about this? And he just like was problem-solving and. The other guys, I was looking at use ProTools and it was like, okay, they're way easier to integrate with, but this guy is, he's got to figure it out. I attitude. And I was like, he's the man. He's, he's the guy. And it's been, yeah, it's been great. So very happy. Yeah, I've been so lucky with, [00:03:00] with people to help me along the way, like just an all star. You can't believe like how talented you can find people. I don't know what I'm saying, but essentially

[00:03:10] we feel very fortunate. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:13] Benedikt: Yeah, totally. This is, this is really cool. And the whole Brian, my, my coach that I use, like as a, as a business coach and, um, Brian Hood, he's an amazing dude. He, I think he always calls it the fitspo, uh, skill that you need to have to figure it the fuck out. You know, this is the most important skill you need to have when you want a job in the audio industry or in the creative field, in any capacity, I think.

[00:03:32] Malcom: You just want to do okay at life. I think that's the most important skill. 

[00:03:36] Benedikt: Yeah, exactly. And it's so cool if you work with people who have that, because you don't have to explain every single thing, they often come up with solutions before you even see the problem, you know, like this is so cool too, to have that. So, yeah. Congrats. That's that's huge, man. That's really cool. I couldn't imagine working without Thomas at this point, to be honest, like shout out to Thomas, our amazing podcast editor and, um, my, my sort of studio. I wouldn't want to call them an assistant anymore. At this [00:04:00] point. He's like a studio partner. He just works with me on projects and it's like, it's so I couldn't do what I do without him. So I, I, that's a huge thing, dude. That's really cool. 

[00:04:08] Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. It's so damn so stoked. 

[00:04:13] Benedikt: Amazing. Great. Great, great, great to hear that also allows you to focus on the things that you are best at and more on the music, the creative side of things, you know, so that's what we always talk about on this episode as well, is that we if you can get rid of the tasks that you don't necessarily need to do yourself, that doesn't mean that those tasks are less important. It just means that somebody else can do them and sometimes even do them better than you. And if you can focus on what you are really good at, then you can do even better work. So that's why we always tell bands also to like distributed roles within the band and like, let everybody do whatever they are good at. Like figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of everybody, maybe outsource things that you can't do at all so that you can focus on the most important thing, which is like writing music, performing no, maybe production. Yeah. I don't know. So [00:05:00] this is exactly what we, you do. Exactly what we preach here. What we tell bands to do. You did that in yourself now with your business.

[00:05:07] Malcom: Yeah, it's, it's exactly that just, uh, here's little things that are eight, like it's a technical thing that needs to get done more so than a creative thing, a lot of the time. So really anybody that's diligent and, and really cares about things being perfect can, can do the job if they know how and Stacy's so, so on it, so it's great. It gets me mixing and making musical decisions quicker. And that's what I want. 

[00:05:34] Benedikt: Yeah, totally. I'm at this point where I'm pretty sure that Tom. It's not even capable, not just capable of doing the things that I could do, but he's better at them at some, in some, some level on some level, like, I'm sure I haven't edited much in the past two years, for example. And he does nothing but editing and prepping mixes for me. I mean he does more at this point, but he does a lot of prepping and editing mixes. And when I watch him work, he has got a workflow and some, some [00:06:00] hotkeys and some macros and stuff set up that I don't have. So he sees actually faster than I am now. And he's just sent me a video a couple of days ago, actually, where I got him a stream deck. So I have one and I got him one too. And like a day after he took it home, he sent me a video of him building some crazy multi-multi action, macro, whatever thing, we just pushed a button and then the mouse flew over the screen and clicked something and then something else happened. And he just immediately built this chain of things that happened on his screen. And I was like, yes, 

[00:06:27] Malcom: Awesome.

[00:06:28] Benedikt: that's so cool. Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:30] Malcom: Wicked, right? 

[00:06:32] Benedikt: Cool. Good to hear that, man. Congress, can't wait to hear what you, how this develops and, um, yeah. What that enables you to do.

[00:06:40] Malcom: Definitely. All right. Well, that's actually not what we're talking about today. Believe it or not. 

[00:06:44] Benedikt: No, that's not what we're talking about, but it's exciting. So what we're talking about today, something different, but before we dive into that, I want to encourage you to book a coaching call with me because you can do that for free. You can go to the suffering cording mat.com/call, and you can apply for a free coaching call, [00:07:00] because what we're going to talk about today is something that is very unique to each situation like we give you, like, we're going to talk to about it in broad terms, of course, and we give you some actionable advice, but the issue we're talking about is very different from person to person, from band to band. So if you want to address your personal situation and figure out how I can help you with yours, uh, with your problems in regards to that, you can just book a call and I can listen to. Whatever that sounds like on your side and then your room. And I can give you advice on how to improve that. So now go to the self recording band.com. After listening to this episode, self-reporting ben.com/call book a call with me. And the thing we're going to talk about today is dealing with with drum recordings that have been recorded in a small room, but you want them to sound like a big room. So naturally this is something very unique to each situation to each space. That's why I encourage you. I encourage you to book a call and talk about it with me in person, because every, every room is different and [00:08:00] your result that you're going for is going to be pretty unique and different too. So some people want a very dry in your face, not ambient sounding drum sound, and other people want a very bombastic, huge sounding drum tone. And yeah, it's going to be unique. I have to listen to it. I have to see like, hear what your room sounds like and I have, and then I can tell you what you can do about it. What we're going to focus on in this episode today is the letter where I said like, you want a bombastic big sounding drum room, but all you have is the small sort of jam space or practice room, all this recording that somebody made an a in a small room and you now have to turn it into something huge. That's what we're going to focus on today. So we're basically turning a small, sounding, tight sounding, dries out and kit into something that sounds like it was recorded in a massive drum room, 

[00:08:48] Malcom: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The, this is like the voodoo trickery episode. 

[00:08:53] Benedikt: exactly. Now, why would you want to do that? Or why is that important or why is there, why do we do this [00:09:00] anyways? I mean, obviously you want a big room and you don't have lens or that's the main reason, but the reality is also in this. This is why we wanted to do this episode. The reality is that amazing sounding tracking rooms are just electuary and most people don't have access to those. Like, you might have a big room, but that doesn't mean it sounds really great.

[00:09:17] Malcom: absolutely. Yeah, definitely. That's really important. I think is we had a band Rascals. My, my band old band, I should say, had a. Our 2,500 square foot warehouse, that was our rehearsal space. And we had the whole damn thing. So it's a very big space. We had a half pipe in there, like for skateboarding and stuff. Like that's how much extra room we have. We just threw a skate park into it. And we're like, oh, this like sounds so huge. And we tried to record in there and it was like unbearably bad. It was just so echo-y and live and terrible. 

[00:09:54] Benedikt: Yep. That's what I said. That's what I meant. Like sometimes rooms, like they can be big [00:10:00] and you think it sounds massive, but not every big room sounds massive 

[00:10:03] Malcom: Nope. Nope, 

[00:10:04] Benedikt: or not in a good, 

[00:10:05] Malcom: Yeah, yeah. exactly. It sounded plenty big, but just way too big. yeah, in the case of this is something to consider people is like the, the, the decay time of things and how quickly they start making noise after you hit him. You know, so you've got that sustained. And in this case, even the echo and, and also because of like the hard surfaces in that particular environment, like flutter echoes as well. And we kind of had all three. So by the time, you know, if you hit a kick and then a snare and then a kick, the first kick might still be ringing by the time you get to that next kick. And it's just getting muddier. And it's, it's like when you have like, the feedback turned up too far on a delay, it just starts becoming worse and worse. It's awful. 

[00:10:46] Benedikt: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah. So don't do that. If you're like, if even if you have access to a big room, like you might, I mean, no, just don't just don't do it if it, if you're not sure that it's great because it will not, I was just thinking it will not only affect your [00:11:00] roommates. It will also affect the close max if the room is like that. So in a room like that, you don't, you chances are, you can't even use the roommates. So, uh, the, the close max. So in that case, I would probably up for something smaller and then do what we were going to teach you in this episode and turn that small room into something that sounds massive but controlled. So you need a way to get a great drunk. Even if the room was not ideal, this is what, what this is about. And I think that that's my definition. Not, not that, not definition, but that's how I view it. Like I think great, grim tone drum tone is I can't talk today for some reason. Great drum tone is usually a combination of the, to me at least, of the punchy transient you get from the close mics and the length and the sustain and width and depth and character and all that you get from overheads and room mics. So close mics will be yeah, punchy, they have the body, they sound direct and upfront and close. And everything else, the further you get away from the kit, the more length and width and depth you get and also character because every room is so unique and you get more of that the [00:12:00] further away you go from the kit with the mics and the right combination of all that, that's what a great drum tone is to me and different blends are appropriate for different genres and tastes of course, but that's, it's usually the combination of that. So it's not only the mics you put directly on the kit. It's a combination of all those. In a really amazing sounding room. All you need to do is find the right blend and maybe tweak the queue a little bit and stuff, and you get a great pump tone, but that's not the reality for most people. So we're going to teach you different techniques to get the most out of your close max and overheads so that they sound a little longer, bigger, you know, more massive, like more vibey and not just pokey, small transients, but also we'll show you techniques to create fake roommate tracks. If you just don't have a big room to put roommates in. So there is ways there are ways to turn that small sound and kit into something that has been tracked in a huge live room. But in one that sounds controlled not only huge.

[00:12:55] Malcom: And I think this is like a little secret, but I would actually prefer to be [00:13:00] in that scenario in the scenario of having a small dead room versus a giant live room, that's two to live. I think that's a much better place to be in and to try and fix it from that spot versus the other way around. You're going to be a happy camper, 

[00:13:16] Benedikt: Yes, absolutely. Totally. Now the first thing is, and I mean, we of address that already. We're going to focus on the fake drum rooms thing, or how to turn a small sounding room into a big sounding room. But obviously you've got to ask yourself, do you even want to need the huge sounding room mic? So maybe you're hearing this and you think, oh, I've got to turn out drum kit into this massive thing, but maybe you don't like, there's plenty. There are plenty of great productions where there are no roommates used at all. It's just upfront close my explicit overheads and it's really dry. And it's the perfect thing for the project. So if that is the case and you dig that sound, then don't worry about this. Obviously you can always experiment, but there is no need for every project to have this huge, these huge sounding roommates, maybe dries. Okay. That's the first question. Of course, you got to ask yourself, but if you [00:14:00] want the massive sounding, huge sounding roommates, then these next things that we're going to talk about are for you.

[00:14:05] Malcom: Yes. Yeah. Dry is okay. It's again, make those decisions, make them early.

[00:14:11] Benedikt: Yeah, I actually think, I mean, I wonder if you agree my outcome. I have the impression that right now, currently a lot of more dry sounding things are released, like in the rock world. Like the, it's not like there's still the huge room, my thing, but again, I hear a lot of indie rock or like yeah, a lot of also heavier stuff that sounds pretty in your face. That might be a touch of room mix, but it's not this bombastic long sustained thing. Um, some of the stuff is like bone dry. Sometimes. Like there might be ambient guitars or like raw long vocal, reverbs and stuff, but sometimes combined with like very, very dry drums. So I hear that more and more now. 

[00:14:50] Malcom: Yeah, it does seem to kind of have come back. I'm I'm currently having like a little phase of like heart gated stuff. Um, and that can be really fun with making it sound like it's a big room, [00:15:00] but not giving it the length necessarily just that kind of ambience, but cutting it off with a gate that can be really fun. 

[00:15:06] Benedikt: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. But I think drum rooms will always have a place for this. That's what we do this episode. And in our love dorm rooms, I just love a great sounding drum room. So the first thing I do personally, if I want, if I have this very tight, small sounding thing, but I want it to be longer and more roomy, more ambient, all that more vibey as well. The first thing I try is to manipulate the close max and the overheads to give me more of that before I reach for a reverb or the techniques that we're going to show you. So what you can do is, and I do that most imperative been parallel because I don't want to kill the cool Transy punchy transience that I have. So parallel means instead of like compressing saturating or manipulating the coast mikes in any way on the channel itself, you make a copy of that channel or you send it to. Similar to what you would do with a reverb. And then you apply the [00:16:00] processing there and blend the process signal with the dry signal. So that way the dry punchy, transient, uh, heavy signal will be, will stay intact. And you can add in the sort of steroid to mangled signal that you're going to create with compression situation and stuff. 

[00:16:15] So, and 

[00:16:16] Malcom: mentioning that some plugins have a wet, dry knob right. On them as well, actually. Tons do as 

[00:16:21] well. Um, but yeah, there's, there's just different ways you can go about this and there's advantages to those different ways, but that's another topic, 

[00:16:28] Benedikt: totally. I don't know why. I always forget about that. I forget about mentioning that because I, I just like the classic workflow, um, with a separate feeder for those things, I really use mixed lineups 

[00:16:39] Malcom: I'm the other way around time. I'm almost always a mixed, giant up guy. Cause I'm lazy. 

[00:16:43] Benedikt: Yeah, exactly. I don't know if, for my mind it, for my brain, it just makes more sense. I always think of it as like what I would do on a console for whatever reason. 

[00:16:51] Malcom: Yeah. Yeah, no, it makes sense. It totally makes sense to see we're going down the rabbit hole here. But for me, I I've got like this, like a little like mental [00:17:00] anxiety around having the same source, go to different channels and have the possibility of delay compensation issues. Even though that it won't be the compute, like these computers are good, the technology is solid, but I it's like for my own mental anxiety, it's like one thing I don't have to think about. So I avoid it at all costs. 

[00:17:19] Benedikt: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. I can see that. I can see that. And your approach was users or latency. Compensation has been an issue not too long ago. 

[00:17:26] Malcom: Yeah. It's, it's solved. It's working really great, but I, I it's just, yeah. A carry over for me. 

[00:17:32] Benedikt: Yeah, Yeah, I can see that. All right. So, and what I actually do there on the parallel bus is, or with a mixed drive, whatever you want to do is pretty heavy compression combined with usually with saturation and some transcend shaping to get length and sustain out of those clothes makes and overhead. So what I try to do is I try to kill the transient a little bit, make that less pokey, make that a little more. yeah. Uh, like I want to add length and take away the, the, the, how do I [00:18:00] say that? The spike? Yeah, let me get less spiky. Yes, exactly. Saturation clipping achieves that compression with slow attack time, fast attack times achieves that limiting achieves that you can use a transient designer or some sort of envelope, shaper or transient shaper to get rid of some of the attack or to boost the sustain the length. And when you do that, you create a more, a longer, more, yeah, less, less spiky signal with more sustained and all that will breathe more. It will have more of the shell tone. It will sound dirtier as well. You get more of the symbol bleed and that sort of stuff also. So there's that, but then you can blend that sort of destroyed signal, uh, with the punchy close mix. And you'll what you'll notice is that it will sound like it has more ambience and more air around it. And it sounds, yeah, it sounds longer. It sounds fuller. It's the overall average perceived volume goes up. So you have the same peak volume, but the average. Volume, the loudness goes up. So all of that, but without destroying the transients, [00:19:00] which would happen if you would apply a lot of compression on the tracks themselves. So that's why I do it in parallel. That's that's one way you could 

[00:19:06] Malcom: Um, it's. So when you think about sound it's, this is worth mentioning. I think you hit the snare drum and you on that close mic. You're going to hear that, you know, instantly that big smack. Now the sound travels from That drum very quickly and hits the room pretty much in activates and you get your room sound right. Which is often what we're trying to capture with room mix. but on that close mic, it is hearing that, and it happens after the hit, you know, the time that sound moves through time. And so there's, you might call that pre delay in a way it's like built in pre delay, um, which is a feature in a lot of reverb plugins where you can make the reverb happen a little bit later. And, and that's kind of happening naturally in a room. The size of the room kind of dictates how fast that happens actually. But so when you do what Benny just talked about and kind of turn off that sustain, make that sustain louder, you're kind of literally turning up the room, ambiance [00:20:00] that, that room. Um, that has been activated that split second later is now more present in the mixed signal. Um, so it's it's as if you've added room signal to your direct source.

[00:20:11] Benedikt: That is a hundred percent correct. Yep. I agree with everything you just said. Yeah. That's what you do. So that is the first step and it might also already give you the impression of a bigger room then the next thing. And I wonder if you do that as well now come, the next thing for me that I often try is duplicating the overheads and creating a fake pair of like a fake small room Mike pair from the overhead duplicate. And I'm going to explain the second, how I do that, but do you do that at.

[00:20:37] Malcom: I, so I do make fake rooms. I don't know if I always use the overheads though. Um, and sometimes I do, but they're not always, Yeah. Okay. Okay. So yes, yes. But I think this is probably one of those things where there's, there's multiple ways to do it. So yeah, I'm totally stoked to hear what your process is because you have, you. do always have a very natural [00:21:00] space around your drums. So I really love like the natural sound of your drum in your mixes. Um, so maybe this is some secret Benny Saucier. 

[00:21:09] Benedikt: Awesome. Thank you. okay. So I don't do that on every project, but I often I actually pretty often try it at least. So what I do is I will duplicate the overhead track and then, and it works best with it. What attracts, where the overheads are more kit mix than just symbol mix. If they are primarily symbol Nikes, then it doesn't work as well. I want a lot of the shells in the overheads to make that work really well. So if that's the case, if that's, for example, if it's an X, Y pair, or if there's a mano overhead in the center or something, then it works really well. So I duplicate the overheads. I apply pretty heavy limiting to the duplicate. So I try to get rid of the transient as much as possible. And I use a limiter like the or the Brainworx BX limiter, or what it's called, like some of the, of those trashy or sounding limiters that really kill the.[00:22:00] So I want to get rid of the snare and Tom transients. I don't want to affect the symbols too much. So I don't want the weird pumping and artifacts and the simple and the symbols, but I want to even out the snare transients and I want to add length and like kill the transition a little bit. Then I will go in and filter out the, let's say around three, three to five, K, maybe two to 5k, like trashy sort of harsh symbol stuff. I don't do a low pass. Usually I don't, I don't filter the, the top end entirely. I will make a broad, I will scoop out the upper mid range and like with a very broad like filter. But I leave some of the air on top in there. I just feel, it sounds more natural to me if, if it filters completely and you've put the filter very low it's that it has the sort of low-fi sound that I sometimes want. But most of the time I don't. So instead of doing that, I just filter out the hardest stuff. Then I will do maybe another instance of like smoothing out this harsh stuff by using something like sooth or something, you know, like I really want to get rid of all [00:23:00] the nasty cymbal stuff in the overheads, in the duplicates, not the actual overheads, just because in the next step I will add heavy saturation or distortion almost to. Mike's with something like the capita or devil luck from Santos Soundtoys works really well. Um, you could apply some soft clipping, like anything. You could try different types of distortion. And if you do that and if you use it heavily, it will create a very sustained longer, more vibe-y more roomy sort of sound, but it will also bring up all the nasty symbol stuff. So before I hit this thing, I will make sure I get rid of all that because it will come back in any ways, um, by, with, uh, with all the saturation distortion. So that's basically what I do. I kill the transient, I get rid of the nasty assemble stuff, and then I destroy it with some, some sort of saturation distortion, something like that. And. If I blend that with the overheads and I do all of that while keeping an eye on the face, that's very important. So that's also a reason why I don't [00:24:00] like to apply a low-pass filter or I don't even use, I also don't use a high pass filter unless I did the same thing on the actual overheads. So I try to duplicate the stuff that manipulates the phase. I know it gets, it sounds very complicated at this point, but it's so important because if you blend that back in with your overheads, you don't want to mess with the clarity of your symbols. You don't want to mess with the actual snap transcends if there are some in the, in the actual overheads. So if I use any sort of filter on the actual overheads, I just copy over that same filter to the duplicate and I don't, and I try to avoid adding any additional filtering or any drastic stuff on my duplicate that will mess with the face, with my actual overhead. So I, I keep an eye on that and if I can't do that for whatever reason, or if the saturation that I'm using messes with the face, then first of all, I try to flip the flip phase and see if that's all set. And if it doesn't, I'll just press. The new, the fake room, Mike pair that I created and I will like align it landed up with the overheads, like visually I would just print it. So I see the way for them [00:25:00] and then I will end it up and then it will be in phasic and that's just so important. And, um, the last step I do in this process is when I killed the transient, I got rid of the harsh stuff. I brought up what I can bring up by saturating it, all the vibe, all the, the sustain, all the rooms sound that is in the signal. I bring that up with the saturation. Then the last step is I'll add, I typically add an air of a cool sounding room, not a reverb, not a long thing, but I add an impulse response to that fake, um, roommate to the duplicate to make it sound as if it's been tracked in a, in a room further away from the kit. So I have some pretty amazing, um, IRS that are really like, I have one from Kirpalu office, actual tracking room that God city recording sound, recording room. That I really like the sound of that just sounds like a room, not like a reverb, but I love it on drums, especially. Yeah, I just, for example, take this and see what that sounds like with my fake roommate pair or a yeah, by compare it with some different ones, but usually that's, that's one of my go tos. I [00:26:00] have my own that I use of my room that I really like. And sometimes I have it like the, the, the wet, dry thing on the IRR. I have that a hundred percent wet oftentimes. So I'd just get the room sound basically. And yeah, sometimes I it's a blend, but oftentimes it's actually really a hundred percent wet. And then I've usually at this point, I have turned my overheads into a pair of fake room mikes. That will be a little dollar, a little more distant sounding that will be less punchy, that we'll have less of a transient that will be longer. And if I blend that with my typical overheads, my normal overheads and my close Mike's I'll I have a pair of Rhumbix. Oftentimes I hope that all makes sense. It's hard to explain. I just

[00:26:42] Malcom: Yeah, well, I've got some questions. That'll probably, I'm sure our listeners also have. Um, and so my process pretty similar, uh, just to compare notes here. Generally I am looking for room mikes. I'm trying to remove the symbols. I just wish that somehow I could [00:27:00] record a drum kit with symbols, but. somehow get the room mic without symbols. Um, if I could figure that physics out, I'd be a God. 

[00:27:08] Benedikt: Yeah. 

[00:27:08] Malcom: Um, unfortunately it's totally impossible. So there, but it's something I'm always thinking about. Like, I'm always trying to make my room mix as dark as possible so that the symbols are pretty well out of it. Like as out of it as I can be well tracking. And, and that is actually something I recommend self-reporting bands do all the time because small rooms, the symbols really loud, really loud in them. so like, You know what? I always have luck with throwing a new mic on the other side of the door, into the studio. It just like, it seems like the, the, the lower mids and low-end and stuff get through that way better than the symbols do. So try that out, everyone, you know, it keeps working for me. And every time I recommended or also work so big fan of that. But anyways, uh, I, so because I'm trying to avoid symbols in my roommates, I do a similar thing in that I [00:28:00] am duplicating staff or sending them to a, uh, this is where I do a bus oddly rather than a duplicated track. But, um, I tend to send my close mix to it. Um, so I'm sending, you know, my snare kick Tom's maybe, um, whatever I want. And I usually do sneak in a little bit overheads but just not, not that much. And then I do the same thing. I just mangled it beyond belief, be harsh, whatever I can, um, often Sue and stuff like that. And Yeah. and then distort it. Um, and then I use some kind of reverb or IRR to make it sound like it's in a room and farther away. Right. And then blend it, blend it into taste. Uh, and it has been a total lifesaver for some, some drum sounds it's just like needed a little bit of space around the kit. And this was the solution. 

[00:28:52] Benedikt: Okay. So I guess your question is why do I use, the overheads and how I addressed the assemble issue probably

[00:28:57] Malcom: Uh, my, my real [00:29:00] main question was what I our loader do you use, and we should just quickly explain the IRR thing, because we we've talked about it on previous episodes, but it is like a more advanced thing. So I think we should just kind of quickly go over that. 

[00:29:15] Benedikt: Yeah, for sure. First, before I do that, I want to add before I forget, I want to say something to what you just said. Actually, I don't like just having the shells as roommates in the room. I like the length, uh, of symbols in rheumatic. 

[00:29:29] Malcom: Just a mystery, how we get along. 

[00:29:33] Benedikt: totally. totally. I mean, I'm, I'm all I'm I'm with you. I totally understand that. I love darker room mikes and I don't want any harshness of the symbols. I'm not saying that, but I feel every time I hear a drum sound where it's clearly just room samples and not room mix. So the, the symbols are just the overheads, but they put like room samples on the coast mix, which we'll talk about as well later in this episode, I oftentimes feel it like, it sounds a [00:30:00] little disconnected to me. I feel like symbols in a room and in room mikes have a length to them. There's a, there's also sustain a depth of width to a symbol being hit that I love. Like there's, if you crash a ride, for example, it gets, this is long tail, you know, as it that you don't in a, in an overhead, it sounds more explosive and short and in the room, it sort of builds up and it's kind of out of control. But I, I, for some reason I just liked that if it's just enough and. So I'm actually happy to have the symbols in there. I just don't want the harsh, upper mid-range stuff because that masks the guitars. And it's like, obviously it only works with drummers who know what they doing. Like if they hit the symbols way too hard and the shells way too quiet, this doesn't work at all. But if the internal balance is right, then I actually like having the symbols in there and I like to keep the top end just because that sounds more expensive to me. And it's definitely not as it doesn't bother me as much, but I want to get rid of everything in like the lower highs, the upper mid range, all that nasty stuff, as I said, but I want to have some in there. I want to have some [00:31:00] of the low end of the symbols, like with the big symbols, the ride stuff. And I want to have the shimmer adds a delicate thing, but 

[00:31:06] Malcom: It is a delicate 

[00:31:07] Benedikt: It I kinda like it in there. And with the close max, that's the final thing here with the close mix. I do that sometimes, but usually I really do it with the overheads only, just because I feel like they already sound a little more distant and the. I don't know, it reminds me more of what room mikes sound like to me already, like then compared to close Mike's. So with close max, I have the proximity effect. I have a lot of punch in like the direct vibe of it that I just don't have in roommates usually. And with the overheads, it's more balanced. So again, assuming that the drummer hit the shelves hard, and I have plenty of the actual kits sound in there, it works very well. If that's not the case, I'll have to do it with the close Mike's because there's just a, it w it wouldn't be like stick attack in the roommates. And that's just not enough. But if I feel like there's the whole drum in the, in the overheads, then it works.

[00:31:56] Malcom: I think this brings up a phone conversation room mikes. If, if [00:32:00] you're like me, Benny and most people who have the luxury of recording in the studio with many channels, you probably have more than one room up. Um, there, there's probably a close pair and then a far pair, and sometimes there's a medium pair and sometimes there's something that's ridiculously just an experiment in a totally different room or whatever. But that is like, that is something that I love love having. And it's not normally a luxury for self recording bands, unfortunately. Um, because of channel counts the, you know, you, you can't have both because you need to have all your clothes mix as well kind of thing. But they're, they, they really do different jobs. And I think maybe listeners that's important, important to know that like that close man. Kind of situation, uh, close room mic that I would never want there, not to be symbols in that because of what you've just said, like the, the decay and that it's full it's essentially like easily as important as the overheads to me. Um, they're they're like just alternative perspective, overheads almost they're Yeah. They're so full [00:33:00] sounding. They are the kit, in a lot of things, you know, they, they sound like. They sound to me most like what I hear when I'm in a room with a drummer. Right. So that's incredibly important. But again, you can't always have that where the far thing that doesn't sound like we hear drums, it sounds unnatural, but it's got this ridiculously cool. When the levy breaks kind of thing going on, um, with a huge giant decay, I think stadium rock, you know, just like larger than life. And that's kind of like, that's when I want no symbols, that's what I want. Just like these giant huge shells. Also, there's a song that has my most samples in it. The riser you said, and I still haven't checked that out. I wanna, I wanna 

[00:33:41] find that, 

[00:33:42] Benedikt: Shit. I've totally forgot to send that to you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

[00:33:44] I'm going to do 

[00:33:44] Malcom: um, that. that just reminded me, me making some noises yet again. Uh, but then the close, the close. Room pair. That is, yeah, I think they're like, they're just different jobs for different reasons. And you know, the reason I'm bringing it up now is that our listeners should [00:34:00] be thinking about what they need to be prioritizing when they're recording their drums. Do they need to make sure they have that long, far away Mike for explosive shells? Or do they need glue that close room pair? 

[00:34:12] Benedikt: Yep. Agreed. So I think we can actually be friends again. 

[00:34:17] Malcom: Yeah. Glad we sorted that out. 

[00:34:19] Benedikt: Yeah. totally. So, yeah. You're right. Totally agree. We should have talked about that in the beginning. I'm so glad you brought that up. Yeah. There's the concept of close Mike's close roommates and far roommates usually, and everything you just said. So yeah, that's exactly how I see it as well. Um, you've probably seen when you look at like studio pictures, you've probably seen a pair of, Mike's pretty close to the kid in front of the kid. Like some people call it front of kit mikes. Some people call them close through Mike's, whatever. Oftentimes it's like a stereo microphone, like there's these big stereo ribbon microphones, for example, that gives you a cool stereo picture of the kid. And they are almost, as you said, like a second pair of overheads. Um, it's it's basically. Yeah. W what you would hear if [00:35:00] you were standing in the same room with the drummer, uh, it's the most realistic selling thing where we want to have the full picture of the song. So that's exactly that. And that's sort of what I'm after, when I do the fake rooms, duplicate overheads thing, because that will never sound like the big explosive, let sapling thing. It will be more of a. A little bit more sustained a little bit more vibe, a little bit more depth in Oso. This is actually create me creating a fake pair of clothes room mix 

[00:35:27] totally 

[00:35:28] now. 

[00:35:29] Malcom: that's, that's so fantastic. And, uh, you mentioned you don't do this on every mix. And then I told you what I do with the direct shells. And I would say I do that a couple times a year. Like it's very rare, very, very, very rare, because I think the next thing we're going to talk about is way more effective at doing what I was trying to accomplish with. But before we get into that, you got to wait listeners. Uh, we should talk about the IRS. We shouldn't skip that. Um, so in a nutshell, I, ours are impulse [00:36:00] responses. Uh, so they kind of mimic the reaction a room would have if you played a sound in it. So it was like transporting your drums into a different room. It's pretty magical. Um, there's also speaker impulse responses, which we've talked about a lot, which I am having a lot of fun with Benny, uh, lately you keep convincing me to keep messing with them and I keep liking it. 

[00:36:19] Benedikt: Awesome. Great to 

[00:36:20] Malcom: Uh, but, uh, but yeah, so now I ours versus. What's going on there. 

[00:36:27] Benedikt: I ours versus reverb. Yeah. So I use, because you asked, you asked me, which I, our loader I used, I use the stock. Cuba is one for that purpose, not for guitar, IRS, but for that purpose, um, it's called reference, I think, or like reverence with a V and, you know, because of reverb, I think, you know, reverence, um, it's a Cubase I R loader and I R is, I R stands for impulse response. It's sort of a snapshot of what the room, of the characteristics of the room or a piece of gear. So basically you create an IR by sending a test tone, like a small blip [00:37:00] of white noise or pink noise or a clap or whatever you want to use. Usually it's like a broadband thing, like a white noise or pink noise thing. You send a very, very short impulse of that. A very short blip into a room, you record that, then you cut off the transient. You end up with a wav file without the transient that just gives you the reflections, the decay and the frequency response of the room, the natural response of the room. And then you can put that wav file into an impulse response plugin loader that turns that into an impulse response. So that's one way to do it. You can just load wav files into those. It's a very simple way that I just described. There's a better way to do that, but it could work like that. I actually went into rooms, just clapping, cut off the, I cut off the clap, transient and just put the wav of the decay that I got into an impulse loader. And it works pretty well. So, what it sounds like totally depends on the signal you send into the room, obviously, and it works best with a broadband thing, like a white noise or something, but even just walking [00:38:00] into a room and clapping could give you an IR that you can use. And there are tons of IRS that you can just buy and load up. So long story short, it's not an sort of an algorithm or like a, a program thing that mimics a room. It's an actual snapshot, a recording of the behavior of a room. And you can reuse that in your session and put it on whatever you want to put it on. So you can capture the sound of a room and then use it in your session. That's what it is. It's similar to how you can capture the sound of a guitar cab and then use it with different apps. It's the same concept. You can do that with every sort of piece of gear, as long as it's not. Time-based like you can't do that with. I dunno, compression, for example, because it changes with, you know, it's like it doesn't work, but any static thing, like an Q curve, a cab, some sort of, yeah, different sorts of types of effects gear, and then obviously rooms, you can just do that. And, yeah, that's the difference to a reverb to me is that it sounds more like an actual room because it [00:39:00] is an actual room in most cases. So whenever my rule of thumb is whenever I want to have the sound of an actual room, I try and I are, and whenever I want to have something larger than life or something, that, that sounds like an effect, I reach for a reverb, and then I want to make it sound like a reverb, like a plate or something, but I rarely use reverb to create the illusion of a room. There are exceptions. And I, I want to talk about that really quickly, because I know that most people, when they think about turning a small sounding drum kit into something bigger, they think rework, you know, that's the natural thing to do. I think that new reach for a reverb we added to the drums. And then why you think it sounds like a bigger room thing is, as I just said, most reverbs sound like reverb and not like an actual room, even if you use an ambience patch like an ambiance preset or something, it's still sort of doesn't sound natural. There are a couple of exceptions though, that work. So there is, for example, there are some room presets or like patches on certain types of [00:40:00] reverb gear that actually worked for me. So for example, um, there's the, the Bricasti, um, what's it called? The M seven or no, what's the, 

[00:40:08] Malcom: And maybe it is M seven. That sounded right. 

[00:40:10] Benedikt: I think so like the famous, because these sort of rework and. There's this revert, what's it called? The slate one, the, the one river plugin that has all of them. I don't even know what 

[00:40:21] it's called. I use it all the time, but I can't remember what it's called. Like slate slate. Digital has this rebar plugin that sort of has a model of every sort of effects thing ever made in one plugin. And it's actually really, really great. And there is a Bricasti model in there. And in the opera casting model, there are some rooms that actually sounded like rooms to me. So this is an exception that I sometimes use, but hear me out that what you need to do in order for that to work, at least in my opinion, is you need to do that properly. And what I mean by that is most people kill their kicks and there's nails and the Toms and all of that. And then they sent those Prost signals in Tusome reverb. And then it sounds like a reverb and it sounds totally fake. So what [00:41:00] I think you have to do is. You have to send it pre you're processing, whatever you do, you have to take the raw snare for example, and send that to the reverb. And then you do your processing, your queuing and your compression, not on the thing that you sent to the reverb and that way, because think about it. You have a raw syndrome. It's probably going to have a lot of mid range. It's going to, you want to add more bottom, uh, more body. You want to add more top into it to make a cut through the mix better. You do all that. And then you send it to the reverb. And what you get is you get this weird sounding top end heavy thing that just doesn't sound like a room. If you duplicate the snare drum and use one of those two, just send it to the reverb, but not to your actual drum mix. So you pull down the fader and make a pre fader send to your reverb. Don't use it in the mix only for the Reeb center. And then you process the dry one and you don't send to that one to the reverb. Then you can add all the top end. You want all the bottom end, you want, you can compress it, you can distort it. You can do all sorts of things to make it sound modern [00:42:00] and punchy, but you'll have this natural sounding snare feeding the reverb, which will sound much more like an actual room. It goes in room. The roommates would hear the natural snare, not the process one. So that is my thought process. So to me, that always sounds much better than sending the process thing into the reverb, unless you want it to sound like an effect like a river then of course sent the process, went into it. So if you want an obvious like plate that is like, you know, larger than life, heavy and whatnot, then, uh, sent the process thing into it. But if you want to create the illusion of a room, try sending the unprocessed drums into that. That's just what I wanted to say. Yeah, 

[00:42:36] Malcom: Yeah, no, I liked that. Um, I don't really do it that way, but I would say that I always end up, uh, like, you know, mixing the reverb signal, like DQ in it or whatever needs to be done to it because, you know, so maybe you're just taking care of that a step earlier. So I like that idea. I'm going to try it. 

[00:42:53] Benedikt: Yeah, you can totally do what you just said. You can totally go into the reverbs return and just queue [00:43:00] it and get rid of the unnatural, like top end stuff that you boost it. But yeah, you can do that. I just liked the other approach a little bit better and I might still eat it. I might still take out some of the top end into simple bleed and the reverb. So queuing reverb is also very important here, I think. yeah, but there's like many ways that lead to the same sort of result. I just, I'm just saying that a lot of people are just lazy and put, just put the reverb on their process, snare drum, and then you can totally hear that. So you have to cue it or you have to use the drastic Lil all you have to do both, but you have to make sure that the river sounds like a room. If you want to, if you want to create that illusion.

[00:43:34] Malcom: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah. Lots of experimenting, trying to find the right, right reverb that she sounds okay. And, and yeah, room room. I, ours are a really cool way to go. I'm really loving how much more real they sound these days. It's really nice. Um, okay. So the next thing would be using drum room sound. So these are jumped samples, just like you've probably come across by now. I think everybody is not living [00:44:00] under a rock has encountered drum samples at this point in their career. But they are not at the close mic necessarily. They are, you know, a capture of the room, sound of a snare drum or the room sound of a kick or a Tom or whatever you want. And you blend that in to augment your drum to give it a room sound. So you might only, especially as a self recording band only have close mix with, depending on your channel availability and Mike, and, you know, maybe just don't have a room like we're talking about in this exact episode that could give you a room sound. So you can just find a drum room sample and blend it in. And this can be awesome. It really can be a, and it can be something that I do even when I record giant sounding drum rooms, because it's like, oh, I have a different room available for this. It's something that you can have in just for parts of the song, you know, you can just be like, okay, the last course has a giant room. The rest doesn't if that's what the song calls for. So it's a lot of power and flexibility.[00:45:00] Don't get me wrong. It doesn't sound the same as the real thing. It doesn't always sound worse though. 

[00:45:08] Benedikt: Yeah, Yeah, I agree. Um, I, that's my favorite approach, to be honest, I love great sounding room samples. It always sounds the most natural to me. It's just, yeah, I don't have room max. Okay. So I'm going to trigger some and we'll get to go. And if you pick the right ones, they totally sound natural to me, it's just, I think it's important to be careful with the tuning and like, you know, they, they chose a certain type of drum to make the drum samples. And if you want it to be really natural and to blend well, it's a good idea to you chose to, to choose something that is in a similar tuning range. and, uh, it just blends well. So, I mean, I've, I've, I've talked about it often on this. I personally just love room sound samples, like the company room sound. I just love the sample libraries and I love them because of the room mix. Most importantly, because compared to like superior drummer, I mean, they have great ones as well, but like compared to a lot of other, now, it [00:46:00] don't want to say anything bad about any, any other drum sample libraries, but compared to most other libraries, they don't sound as massive. They don't sound as they sound more real natural to me, they are smaller rooms. That still sound cool. If you compress them a lot, you can bring up a lot of ambience, but they sound like a room, like a natural ambience. That's what I love about them. And the funny thing about this, these libraries that I like there is that there is always. A snare drum. And I, I pretty much find that with like two, three clicks. Like there's always a snare drum. That's that sounds exactly like the one that I have in front of me. It's, it's really weird how that works. Like Thomas and I have loved about that a lot where I was like, I opened up the Boba gel Labrie I like try two or three snare drums, and then I'm like, boom, listen to that. That's exactly the one that we have in our session here. It sounds like the same thing. It's crazy. I don't even have to do anything to it. It says blends naturally. And with the, and then, or sometimes I open like the Jay library or something. Like I know them so well by now that I hear a snare drum and I'm like, okay, that's the one from JMS. [00:47:00] I pull it up, I load it in. And it's the same thing. And it's weird how that works with those libraries. It only works with those and for whatever reason for me, um, it's, it's really crazy. And if you pick the right snare and maybe you de-tune it a little bit, a little bit lower or higher or something, um, at the right times, and then you solo the room, Mike's only. It sounds as if it belongs to the kit, it's just a matter of picking the right sample for the job. And there are, of course, great sounding, one shots and stuff for, I don't know, slate, trigger and other things. So you, whatever you use, just make sure that you triggering something that actually blends well with what you have there with the close make. It doesn't have to be the same thing. Sometimes. Uh, we are different. SnailWorks just make sure that it works. Like I've used room samples of really high pitched snares combined with a very low pitch, um, close mic and it works, but you have to just listen whether or not it works, you know, 

[00:47:50] and sometimes it just doesn't.

[00:47:52] Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. Picking, picking samples is one of my favorite parts of mixing. I know there's some mixers that hand that off to their assistants. Do you do [00:48:00] that? 

[00:48:00] Benedikt: Not yet. Um, we kind of be sort of started doing that. Um, Thomas is really good at doing that. He, he programs drums for me when we do, when like people just send over like a scratch drum track and they want better drums than Thomas is a drummer. So he's naturally really good at that. So he can program drums. That sound really awesome. And, um, with triggering, we didn't do it because he always adjust the middy and cause it creates many adjust the middy and sets everything up so that they can choose the samples. For some reason, I always wanted to be the one who chooses the samples just because I like it so much. And because I want to make that decision, but we were talking about handing that off to him and I just start with just started getting him the same drum library, sample libraries that I have, uh, so we can collaborate better. Yeah. I like something in me once to choose the sample. 

[00:48:50] Malcom: Yeah. it's so fun. Um, and, uh, it's, it's amazing. Sometimes it's like, instantly, like this is amazing. This looks amazing. This looks amazing. Sometimes it's like, [00:49:00] none of these are doing it. What, like, none of these are gonna fit. And, uh, you can take a while to kind of like find the right ingredients for your drum soup, but, uh, it's always like a really rewarding process. And I feel like even by doing it, even when I'm not really finding something, that's jiving, it's getting me thinking about what's happening in the drum sound already and maybe why it's not fitting. And it's like, okay, I need to figure out some decay times on these, these shelves so that I can blend something in with it to fatten it up. It's such a kind of. It's very explorative. It's good, good fun. Um, and, and Yeah, something, that's something I use a lot as well, generally, you know, like with compression and, and usually there is some overheads and room mikes available with what gets sent to me. So creating the fake room, isn't usually the go-to, but like, like we've said, it is sometimes so, but these, these drum room samples are something that are pretty common for me to [00:50:00] sneak into a mix. 

[00:50:01] Benedikt: almost every single mix I do actually very, very common. I don't always use close Mike's samples actually, but I almost always use drum room samples because most rooms just suck. It's the reality. That's the reason for this episode, most real droop from rooms suck including my own, although it's a real studio, like I have a great sounding room next to my live room, but I have a small, actual life room that is very dry and doesn't give me a great explosive drum sound drum room sound. So if I want that, I can use the room next door or end or trigger, great sounding room samples. So that's yeah. So yeah. I do it on every mixed, almost. That I think what we need to explain real quick is that we only, you're talking about room samples only in this case. So I think most people view drum samples as this one thing. That's usually a blend of the the close mic, the overheads and the room. And with, depending on what you use with most samplers, you can have, you can solo these channels and treat them [00:51:00] like individual mix. So you can only use the overheads are only used the drum rooms, or you can only use the snail close mic. And even with trigger, there are one-shot samples. If you just stay triggered. For example, there are one shot samples that have everything baked into one sample. So there you have no control, but then there are packs that give you the close mic, the snap bottoms, near top, whatever the close rooms, the far rooms or whatever. Um, and you can use all of them. You can make your own blend. You can use a pre-made blend that they often give you, or you can just use. A pair of those and, and only triggered those. That's what we're talking about here. And I think that not too many people do that actually, or I've seen a lot of the artists that I'm working with, where they are request roommates when they programmed drums, for example, and they don't send me roommates. I'm like in the library you used, is there a pair of room mix? And they often are like, yeah, but I, I didn't think we, we need those or whatever, or I didn't, I didn't know how to, how to get it out of the sampler. And so I just mute them or whatever. And then I have to tell them that you can set up multi output routing and [00:52:00] export all the individual things and like, you know, so I just know that a lot of people are not aware that you can have them on separate tracks and treat them like microphones, or you can exclusively use the roommate portion of a drum sample and not use the closed mix at all.

[00:52:13] Malcom: right. Yeah, absolutely. That I'm I'm. there's two schools of thoughts on this. It seems, and there's no wrong answer. Like I know great mixers who want their drum samples just to be like one and done. It's a finished drum sound kind of thing. I'm much more like pieces. I'm like I grabbed something for the dunk and I grabbed something for that 

[00:52:36] Benedikt: Yeah. 

[00:52:37] Malcom: something for the transient. Like I like, it's like pieces, little pieces and uh, like, honestly, it's not uncommon for me to be running like four samples just on like my kick or my snare mixed with my close mix as well. You know? So like, there's like six snare shacks. It's like enormous, but they're all doing little tiny jobs. Some of them are turned down just so far, but I think they're important. [00:53:00] and then yeah, you know, the automation of like being able to bring them up for certain moments and stuff can be so, so powerful and we are totally off topic now. 

[00:53:08] Benedikt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But you're totally right. You're totally right. Like when you do that though, keep an eye on the phase as 

[00:53:14] always the polarity and the phase relationship. 

[00:53:16] Malcom: It's a lot of work to, and in this way. 

[00:53:18] Benedikt: Yep, but you're right. A lot of people do it that way, myself included and you do it too, so yeah, totally. All right. I think you've got the concept a quick recap up to this point, and then we move on. So creating fake rooms from like enhancing the close mix first, then creating, uh, creating fake rooms from what you have the overheads or close max or both then using IRS and or rework to create the illusion of a room and then using actual room samples to add what is missing in the recording and just give you a pair of room mics that you don't have in your, in whatever you you have recorded. So the next thing you can do, I mean, these things that we [00:54:00] just mentioned are usually enough. Like you can get a great sounding drum tone, drum sound and drum room sound from doing all of the stuff that we'd been talking about, or from just doing some of it. That is usually enough, but there are. Two additional things that we want to tell you about. The first thing is what I call ramping drum rooms. It's not really ramping. It's just, I like, you know, to, for lack of a better term. So what I do is I'll send from close max, typically with a little bit of symbolist, depending on if I want to create close my roommates or far roommates, as we've discussed before I sent, I sent a blend of room mix out of the computer into speaker, and that speaker will send that from mix into a room that I think sounds great. And then I will just set up mikes and capture the room. So I have a prerecorded dry drum kit. I created a blend of the things that I want in my room mikes. I send that into a room, turn it up loud and then record it as if they were roommates. And you can take a mobile set up to some [00:55:00] cool sounding room, or I don't know, like whatever you have and, and try and see if that works. That's not something I do in every mix, obviously, but I've done it before because I know my room pretty well. And sometimes. Okay. I think the characteristic of my drum room would work well here. and if that's the case, I have a quick way of just sending it out into my room. There's speakers set up there and then I can quickly set up a pair of mikes, record it, record it back and see if it works. And then I have my room roommates. Sometimes it doesn't work. It's not something I do all the time, but it's something that's a fun thing to do, I think. And you not only to create room mix, but to just to add some unique character, to add the vibe of a certain room to your drum mix.

[00:55:39] Malcom: Toby. Yeah, it's super cool and fun and creative to do. Very yeah. Low on like the list of like first steps, you know, um, everything we mentioned, I would try first because this is a lot of work. But it, you know, it's also pretty cool. It could be unique kind of mix the process fun as well. You know, it's going to be a good time. 

[00:55:59] Benedikt: [00:56:00] Yeah. Do you know, do you know the thing with like, it's totally off topic, but it's also very quick. Do you know the, the creating a fake snare bottom mic thing that some people do where you just put a speaker driver, like not the whole, you can use a whole speaker, but you can just put the driver like a speaker on top of a snare drum, send the snare into that. And then it triggers the snare drum and you put a mic underneath it, and then you have your snare bottom that you didn't have before. 

[00:56:24] Malcom: right. That's so cool. Yeah. 

[00:56:26] Benedikt: Yeah. So it works as any sort of speaker. You just need an impulse basically that that's triggered off the drum. Just some impulse that, that activates the 

[00:56:33] Malcom: Splats 

[00:56:35] Benedikt: Yes. And then you put a mic 

[00:56:36] underneath it and then you have your near bottom that you didn't have before. That's actually a very dynamic and natural sounding. 

[00:56:41] Malcom: That's hilariously. Awesome. Yep. Love it. That's great. That's totally great. There you go. Um, yeah, Marcus, the drummer and band Rascals and co-hosts my other podcast. He just on the weekend was messaging me. He was like, I wanna get spring fever about my drums. Can I send out into my app? I was like, [00:57:00] sure. Yeah. go for it. Do it. And he said, it's some super cool. It turned out. Great. 

[00:57:04] Benedikt: Yeah, 

[00:57:05] Malcom: Um, so Yeah. the sky's the limit with real champion

[00:57:08] Benedikt: Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. 

[00:57:10] Malcom: And you know 

[00:57:10] what, 

[00:57:11] Benedikt: here. Oh, sorry. Yeah, go ahead. 

[00:57:12] Malcom: just to kind of go full circle in my head when I use things like E R E RS, man, we're on a roll today, mondays. All right. Uh, when you, we use things like and send, you know, specific things into it and you know, the store at them and stuff like that. I think of that as rehab and we're just ramping in the box, you know, in my head, it's the same thing. 

[00:57:35] Benedikt: Um,

[00:57:35] Malcom: Easier.

[00:57:38] Benedikt: Yeah, I agree. I agree. I've I don't know if I, yeah, but when I think about it, it's kind of the same thing. Yeah. I send something into a room and then capture it, which is what you do with IRS. Basically. You just do it inside the box. Yep. Totally. All right. The last thing here on our list is something you need to talk about because that is something I don't do very often. And I'm curious to hear how you exactly.

[00:57:59] Malcom: Cool. [00:58:00] All right. So, uh, sometimes when you get a room, Mike, some of it sounds cool, but some of it doesn't. Um, so that could be that the kick is just like, Sloppy terribleness or something or, or like the snare sound? Yeah, like often for me actually, I find that the snare sounds cool, but there's too much symbols or the kick, like doesn't sound good. Once I've mangled the snare into shape, you know, often with room mikes were really destroying them. So I might be distorting like literally distorting and compressing the snot out of it. And that makes the snare sound awesome. But everything else has just gone to hell. What we can do then is, is hard gate them essentially. So we've talked about key spikes, I'm sure. But, uh, the, the quick version is that just like we would use for drum samples, we create little mini spikes or audio blips to trigger drum samples of, and you can also use these to control things like gates and compressors. [00:59:00] Um, so in this case, we're using key spikes, uh, the stick with the snare, for example, we've got key spikes for each snare head. We were sending that and it's telling the gate on my room mic to let audio through only when these blips are happening. So only when the snare gets at the room might play sound now. And you can kind of, it's like kind of creating your own drum room sample. I think of it where you don't have the whole kit anymore. You've just got one drum coming through. But you can really mangle it and just focus on that one drum and the bleed that would have been there is now gone unless it's been hit kind of thing. It is something I do surprisingly often it's never really worked for me as like a like a very forward in the mix thing. It's always like more of like a white noise blast to reinforce a drum almost. It's like, it's really crappy sounding on its own, but I, I forgot to find, you can get like a lot of like an impact, um, timed up with, with either the kick or the snare in particular. And yeah, it's pretty fun. 

[00:59:59] Benedikt: Awesome. Yeah. [01:00:00] I love love it. So yeah, you kind of answered the question that already, that I had in mind, but the way I understand it is you buy by saying you'll only let the good stuff through you mean that you trigger it only off those things. Like if you like the scenario, your trigger, the trigger, the gate off the scenario, like you'd let the gate open whenever. So you don't necessarily just do that on a certain like limited bandwidth, like part of the frequency spectrum, for example, because you could do that, you could side chain something like pro and be, or like a multi-band expander thing to just open up the whatever higher, high mids, low mids,

[01:00:34] whatever. So you don't really do that. You do a full width, full bandwidth, like broadband, but only off the whatever shell you want to reinforce.

[01:00:43] Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I usually have acute it heavily, so like the, the, the high-end even high mids are like eliminated because there's so much cymbal bleed often. And, and I try and leave as much as I can in really, but if it's, you know, if every time the snare [01:01:00] happens, there's this weird, like symbol thing. That's not worth it for me. Right. So I, I really just take whatever I can get. And sometimes it's very little, 

[01:01:08] Benedikt: Yeah. 

[01:01:09] Malcom: sometimes it's like this unbelievably narrow sounding little splat. But it, it can really be worth it. And it does sound like the one thing I would say is that it always sounds totally unique to me. It's like, no drums, no self-respect respect of drum, sample makers gonna put out that sound, you know, like, it sounds awful on its own. They would never be able to sell it, but it fits the drum kit because it's part of it. It's real. Um, so I, like, I never really have trouble with. 

[01:01:36] Um, uh, and Yeah. it's sometimes I in my case, I'm like duplicating the, the room track and then doing this to it for, for each instance that I want. So like, I'll have one that's triggered from the snare. And then I duplicate again, if I also want the kick and have it being triggered by the kick key spikes that are their own independent things happening. Sometimes I will have the, like the gate, [01:02:00] uh, depth, not go all the way, you know? So the depth is how low the volume is when it's not open. And sometimes it's like, I don't want to lose the whole drum kit, but I just want the snares to be much louder than everything else. So it's like quiet gets louder when the snare gets in and it's quiet again. And that can sound more natural as well. There there's, there's a lot of power, key spikes are Awesome.

[01:02:22] Benedikt: Yep. For sure. Yeah. That's great. That's love it. I need to do it more. I think, because again, it's a more natural way of doing it and which I always love. So I need to explore that more. Um, I don't know why I don't do that so often I just rely on drum room samples so heavily because I love them so much and like, but yeah, that's actually a cool, a cool thing. I need to try. 

[01:02:43] Malcom: Yeah, it can be a lot of fun. 

[01:02:44] Benedikt: Great. All right. Um, by the way, the, if you want to try the drum, the, the, the, the room sound drum samples that I mentioned, if you go to the self recording, pant.com/ 1 0 5, it's going to be, um, the show notes [01:03:00] page for this episode. And on there, you'll find a link to room sound. This is going to be an affiliate link. So if you buy through that link, I'm going to get a small portion of the revenue, the amount of the, the, the, the sale. So it doesn't cost any extra to you. It's just a way of supporting us with the podcast is a, putting me more precisely in this case. 

[01:03:20] And 

[01:03:20] Malcom: I'm happy for you. 

[01:03:22] Benedikt: Yeah. And just, I just want to say it because a custody exact same amount as if it would go to the website, but that way you could support me. So if you want to try those out, if you want to buy those, please go to my website, buy through that link. And while you're there, you can apply for a coaching session, as I said at the beginning. So you'll also find the call to action, to apply for a one-on-one call with me a free call, because as you, as you've heard, this is a pretty complex topic. And I have no idea what, which of those things is the right thing to do in your situation. But I will be able to tell you if I hear you drum recordings, I will have an idea of what to do with those and how to achieve what you have in your [01:04:00] head, um, when it comes to drum tone. So just book a session with me, send me the stuff that you've recorded, and I will walk you through some things that I would do to those drums to make them sound more massive. Even if your drum room doesn't sound, man. The way it is right now. So go to the self recording band.com/call, or just to the show notes page of this episode. And you'll find a call to action there. And you can just book a call with me and then we'll talk about that

[01:04:24] Malcom: Yeah, take them up on that. You know, you've got a sound in your head and you don't know how to get there. This is an opportunity to make it happen.

[01:04:32] Benedikt: for sure. All right. 

[01:04:36] Malcom: All 

[01:04:36] Benedikt: this was too complicated. I felt like we went, I 

[01:04:39] Malcom: We 

[01:04:39] Benedikt: know. 

[01:04:40] Malcom: We went down every rabbit hole. We could find, even though we specifically said before we started that we wouldn't do that. 

[01:04:46] Benedikt: Yeah. I'm so bad at that, 

[01:04:49] Malcom: You Benny and Malcolm talking about drum sounds. And what w what did we think was going to happen? 

[01:04:54] Benedikt: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. Hope this was helpful still. By the way, I would love [01:05:00] to hear. What you think of those kinds of episodes? If you could share that in our community, like if you are in the software coding bank, community on Facebook, I would love to hear whether or not you enjoy these longer, more in-depth episodes where we go down these rabbit holes, because if the most of our listeners are like, well, this is way too complicated. I can't follow along. I don't get what they're saying. Then there's no reason for us to do this episodes. But if you actually like it and you want that, the, the like to go deep like that every once in a while, then just let us know. I'd be really curious to learn that actually, because I don't really know. And for us, it's fun to talk about stuff like that, but I, it doesn't make sense if like 90% of our audience doesn't have an idea of what we, what we actually do here. 

[01:05:40] Malcom: Yeah. We want you to actually get something out of these episodes other than like our favorite. Yeah, I don't even know what I'm saying, but. 

[01:05:49] Benedikt: it's Mondays. I sometimes I wonder if Mondays is the right time to record an episode. 

[01:05:56] Malcom: Yeah. 

[01:05:57] Benedikt: All right. Anyway, thank you for listening. Talk [01:06:00] to you next week. Bye. 


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