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More kick drum from a one mic recording?

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  • 23-07-2016 5:35pm
    #1
    stateofflux
    Registered Users Posts: 1,563 ✭✭✭


    Hi,

    quick question. i did a demo recording with a shure sm7 on the drum kit. sound is good and crisp. but the kick is a little low. How can i make it a bit more prominent without affecting the overall sound?

    Not sure if eq or multiband compressor is the way to go

    any advice appreciated.


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    #2
    Dravokivich
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Music Moderators, Politics Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 22,360 CMod ✭✭✭✭Dravokivich


    To be honest, if it's just meant to be a rough demo, it shouldn't really matter too much. If you explain how it was produced to anyone they should understand why it sounds as it does.

    Kinda hard to advise without hearing it. We don't know how faint the kick is, or how much more you want.

    If you try to boost it by EQ, everything else going on in that range will come up. Such as any whumming from Toms.

    If you use Compressor, you may end up affecting the levels of everything else in the kit. Could end up sound quite squashed with the compressor needing to compensate for the low Kick Drum.

    Might also be an idea to sample it and program it in? Depending on how you might get to mix it.


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    #3
    fitz
    Hosted Moderators Posts: 8,124 ✭✭✭fitz


    SM7 isn't a sensitive mic, you'll need a preamp with plenty of gain, but I can't imagine there'd be a problem with level using it in a kick.
    What gain level are you hitting on the way in? As long as you're gain-staging is ok and the SM7 channel is at a healthy level, I'd just be turning everything else down as a first step. What level is the kick peaking at?

    EDIT: ah, I misread you...the whole kit was tracked with the one SM7?
    In that case, I'd try making a copy of the track, shelve off everything above 80Hz, and then play around with narrow boosts between 40 and 80 on that track.
    I'd also be tempted to try just using that copied track to identify where to add kick samples, but all that could just be p*ssing into the wind.

    I'd be more inclined to accept that it's just the way the kit is going to sound, and run with it. Maybe do some aggressive parallel compression to dirty things up and add some excitement, and let the bass be the thing that carries the low end of the mix. Think Favourite Game by The Cardigans, which I'm pretty sure was tracked using a single SM57 overhead, and it still sounds awesome.


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    #4
    stateofflux
    Registered Users Posts: 1,563 ✭✭✭stateofflux


    fitz wrote: »
    SM7 isn't a sensitive mic, you'll need a preamp with plenty of gain, but I can't imagine there'd be a problem with level using it in a kick.
    What gain level are you hitting on the way in? As long as you're gain-staging is ok and the SM7 channel is at a healthy level, I'd just be turning everything else down as a first step. What level is the kick peaking at?

    EDIT: ah, I misread you...the whole kit was tracked with the one SM7?
    In that case, I'd try making a copy of the track, shelve off everything above 80Hz, and then play around with narrow boosts between 40 and 80 on that track.
    I'd also be tempted to try just using that copied track to identify where to add kick samples, but all that could just be p*ssing into the wind.

    I'd be more inclined to accept that it's just the way the kit is going to sound, and run with it. Maybe do some aggressive parallel compression to dirty things up and add some excitement, and let the bass be the thing that carries the low end of the mix. Think Favourite Game by The Cardigans, which I'm pretty sure was tracked using a single SM57 overhead, and it still sounds awesome.

    Thanks Fitz. that worked a treat. by copying the track over and doing the narrow boost with comp. I just mixed the two tracks to get the right balance.


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    #5
    The Codemaster
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 38 ✭The Codemaster


    stateofflux wrote: »
    Hi,

    quick question. i did a demo recording with a shure sm7 on the drum kit. sound is good and crisp. but the kick is a little low. How can i make it a bit more prominent without affecting the overall sound?

    Not sure if eq or multiband compressor is the way to go

    any advice appreciated.

    Was the mic overhead? Back in the day when we did 4-track recordings (i.e. 1 mic for drums), I found the best place was to have it popping up in between the snare & toms (instead of overhead). It's closer to the kick and picks up the toms/snare/cymblas very well too.
    Otherwise you gotta use 2 mics (1 overhead & 1 for kick) - but on a 4-track that's seldom a luxury. But that's what we used to do and it did work better if restricted to 1 mic.


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