How To Get The John Bonham Drum Sound

There is no greater truth in making records than this: "The recording is governed by the performance." This may seem obvious, but many times the implications of this are not. There are two main areas where this truth manifests itself. The first is in the emotional impact of the music and the second is in the sonic signature or sonic possibilities of a recording.

Even with the best gear in the world or fancy recording techniques, the heart and soul of a recording is the emotion and the feel of a performance, and of course the songs. When I have discussions with musicians about production and they begin to confuse production with "great drums sounds", I tell them that good production is about getting the songs and the performances to a point where the drum sound does not matter, and then getting great drum sounds. Many of the recordings that are classics in the history of rock, pop and jazz actually sound quite bad when compared to other records of the same era or many records of today. Some of these recording are marred by unintentional distortion, poor mic technique and downright awful drum sounds, but these classics still stand up on the radio next to modern multimillion dollar productions because the songs and the performances are great. A great song and a great performance will transcend any limitations of "sound quality".

In my career I have had the pleasure of working with many performers that I consider brilliant and monumental. I will often get compliments on the sound of these recordings. While I am grateful for the appreciation, I always know that with some of these performers, I could have hit record on a boom box in the middle of a room and it would have been a great recording.

Much of being a producer is like being a cheerleader and a coach at a basketball game. My job is to find ways to inspire the team and help develop strategies to reach the end goal, but ultimately it is the players on the field that are going to win or loose the game. Fancy editing or postproduction tricks can make the game look more slick on TV, but it won't change the fact that it was a dull game and pur team lost. Jimi Hendrix was like Muhammad Ali at his prime: a fantastic athlete full of style and charisma. If you look at old TV footage from the 60s or 70's of Ali, with production values that pale by today's television standards, its still exciting. The same is true for Hendrix. Listen to a poorly recorded live concert and its him! Its Hendrix with all the fire and passion that is his legacy. All the trickery and experimentation on the studio albums only gives us new insight into his vision, but the heart of records is great songs and great "left hook" performances.

I was recently mixing some back catalog material from the 70's for the band, King Crimson. The task at hand, in addition to presenting unedited versions of songs that had been previously edited to fit on vinyl, was to improve the sound quality of the previous mixes. While I was able to make mixes stand up next to a more current sonic standards and give the listener a new perspective on this classic music, the real heart, soul and validity of the records was in the energy and passion that the musicians brought to great songs. Mixing the records for the King Crimson "ProjeKcts" was another interesting example of this. Engineer, Ken Latchney, approached the recording of the tours in a way that from night to night, the sounds on tape were very consistent, almost identical, so that when we mixed the live album we could combine performances from different nights into one cohesive album. When it came time to mix the album, some nights would sound fantastic and almost mix themselves and other nights just did not sound so good and took a lot of effort to mix. The actual sounds on tape from night to night were consistent, but the performances of the band from night to night made all the difference in the world. When the band was hot, the sound jumped out of the speakers and on an off night, all the studio tricks in the book could not make it "sound good".

As a young self-taught producer, I had not fully grasped how much recordings were governed by performance. The sound quality of my recordings were inconsistent, and I could not figure out why some sessions "I" managed to get it right and other sessions "I" got it so wrong. Why did some records sound really good and others not when I was using my same bag of tricks and the same equipment in the same studio. What experience finally taught me was that on some sessions I got lucky and had great players, and other sessions I failed to recognize what I needed to draw out of the players to make a great sounding record. I began to learn this when I would be mixing a record and the drummer would say to me that he wanted the drums to sound like AC/DC or some other great rock band. Try as I might, I could not get the drums to sound like AC/DC and finally I realized the obvious. Beyond the differences in recording techniques, I had the wrong materials to build the house the drummer was looking for. The building blocks of the AC/DC sound are Phil Rudd hitting straight, simple, hard and right in the pocket. The records in question I was doing had a drummer playing much more like a jazz drummer than Phil Rudd. I was trying to build a brick house out of crystal. Crystal will make you a fine jazz chandelier, but it won't build you an AC/DC style brick house.

Many of the recording or mix techniques you use in the studio to capture the spirit and energy of one style of playing will actually work against another style of playing. If a musician or producer is going for a particular sound on a record, that sound is built on the performance. If the performance is wrong there is nothing that will get you to where you want to go.

You could never take a performance by Tommy Lee on a Motley Crue record and make it sound like Elvin Jones on a Coltrane record or visa versa. The sound of a record is governed by the performance.

Over the years I have produced a lot of rock records where the comment has inevitably come up that the "drums should sound like John Bonham". I worked on several of these albums and tried to bring to the records some of the elements I understood to be "Bonham-esque": the deep kick drum, and the big sounding compressed room mics and in almost every case this approach did not serve the records as we hoped and we ending up going for a different approach. So I decided to set out and do some academic research. What exactly was the Bonham drums sound and what was the secret to making that drum sound work on records. The result of my research, published here for the first time in Fuse magazine.... drum roll please..... John Bonham plays drums on those records!

As I type this column, disc three of the Zeppelin box set is on the CD player and "achilles last stand", my favorite Zep song of all time is blasting away in the background. The recording of the drums sound very different from "when the levee breaks", which proceeded it or "Dancing Days" which proceeded that. And everything on the disc sounds very different from my bad VHS copy of the film "the song remains the same" which I taped off VH1 in 1989. Different locations, different engineers, different years, and completely different mix styles, but the interesting thing is that they all have that "Bonham drum sound". The credit for a catalog of beautiful sounding records certainly goes to Jimmy Page's production and the great engineers that found ways to capture the power and beauty of Bonham's playing on those albums, but the credit for the Bonham drum sound ultimately goes to Bonham.

The only reason I have chosen drummers to pick on, is because they are the most clear example of how performances affect the sound, but they are certainly not the only ones. I recently did a record where the guitarist was wondering why his guitars did not sound like the guitars on a Tool or Metallica record in the mix. The answer was simple: He was playing more like Neil Young than James Hetfield.

All other factors being equal, better performances will always "sound" better, and bad performances will never sound all that good. When a drummer and bass player finally lock into a groove, the kick drum sounds better. When a singer really gets the emotion of a song, the vocals sound better. When an orchestra gets the feel of composition, the whole group sounds better. Music is ultimately about communication. Regardless of the stationary we write a letter on, its what we write and how we say it that matters. Shakespeare on a paper bag is still great literature, and leather bound pulp fiction is still just pulp fiction. But a leather-bound collection of Shakespeare, now that's something!

Sound Techniques

In the summer of 1965, a new recording studio opened its doors in London's soon-to-be hip district of Chelsea. For a decade to come, this bijou ex-dairy would produce some of the finest British recordings of the era.

John Wood in the Sound Techniques control room, you're a fan of British '60s and '70s music, particularly psychedelic folk and folk-rock, you'll no doubt be familiar with a little tagline gracing the liner notes of some of your favourite records: "Recorded at Sound Techniques, Chelsea". John Cale, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Incredible String Band, Jethro Tull, John Martyn, Pentangle, Pink Floyd, Richard Thompson, Sandy Denny and Steeleye Span were just a few of the luminaries to grace this unassuming but hugely important English recording studio.

The early '60s was a time when the majority of studios in London had a reputation for being stuffy and oppressive: manned and administered by scientists in brown lab coats, who had little interest in the 'nasty' guitar music that had so rudely thrust itself upon them. But by the middle of the decade, these studios' dominance was being eroded by a handful of hip new young independents, bristling with young, enthusiastic engineers and producers with as much passion for popular music as the musicians they were recording. By the end of the '60s, Sound Techniques had firmly established itself as one of London's finest studios, drawing in anyone who cared about the quality of their recordings. Just take a listen to Nick Drake's Bryter Later or Judy Collins' In My Life and you'll know exactly what we're talking about when we refer to the unique 'Sound Techniques sound'.

Sound Techniques was the brainchild of Geoff Frost and John Wood, who in mid-1964 were both working at Levy's Sound Studio in New Bond Street, a very busy 'jobbing' studio where they spent much of their time producing 'copycat' versions of current hits for Woolworths' budget Embassy label, as well as laying down tracks for proprietor Morris Levy's own Oriole label. Geoff had been Chief Engineer at the studios since 1959, while John had joined the technical staff in '62. Their decision to start their own venture was partly due to the fact that they wanted to be their own bosses and partly because Morris Levy had just sold out to US giant CBS records, leaving the pair with some uncertainty about their future employment.

As was often the case with the music industry in the '60s, there was no grand design or meticulous planning involved in their decision.

"We decided we'd start a recording studio," John Wood tells me, "and with that wonderful ignorance-is-bliss mentality and impetuousness of youth, we thought we'd just get on and do it and do a better job than Levy's so Geoff left in the September of 1964 and started looking for premises, and that was it!"

The variety of different skills that Geoff, then 28, and John, 24, brought to the table helped ensure that Sound Techniques had an excellent grounding for future success. In his role as Chief Engineer at Levy's, Geoff had taken the lead technical role building and maintaining the equipment in addition to engineering sessions. John, meanwhile, had previously plied his trade in the cutting room of Decca Records prior to his move to Levy's, training his acute ear through many hours working with their classical catalogue.

The finance for the venture came via Geoff's savings and a loan from Barclays Bank, and the company was duly registered at Companies House in December 1964, after a name had been decided upon during a swift but inspired telephone conversation between the two entrepreneurs.

"Geoff rang me up from Peter Godfrey's office, who was our solicitor, saying, 'We've got to have a name for the company!'," laughs John, "and I'm sitting in the control room at Levy's, and there's a Pultec on the rack and an Altec compressor and I see Pulse Techniques underneath Pultec so I said, 'Well, what about Sotec or Sound Techniques?' and that's literally where our name came from. And it was a great name! The biggest mistake we made was not registering it across the world!"

As far as the studio premises go, Geoff and John already knew the kind of thing they should be looking for following Geoff's visit to the United States in '64.

"I got on a plane to Nashville to look at the American studios, to find out why they got so much better sounds than the English studios," Geoff tells me. "There was an incredible difference in the sound. American stuff was open, it was loud — the stuff from British studios was very sort of twee and dull. The sound coming out of America, particularly from Bradley's, really impressed me personally. So the first thing I did when we got off the plane was, after finding a hotel, I knocked on Bradley's door and said, 'I'm a chief engineer from London, is it possible for your chief engineer to show me round?' and they said, 'Well, of course!' And Bradley's was by the far the most impressive studio I saw and just the kind of studio that John and I wanted to build. It wasn't full of deadening materials like English studios were — with English studios the idea was to make everything as dead as possible, but Bradley's just had a very minimal acoustic treatment with a very high ceiling. They also had very minimal equipment. In order to make the English sound more and more American, English studios were buying up more and more equipment. But Bradley's had a very simple desk — I think it was an ex-broadcast desk, a Bendix or a Gates or something like that, and they had outboard EQs — they had Langevins, and all the Langevins were locked in at 3k 8dB boost position and left there!"

These deceptively straightforward lessons would be an important influence on the Sound Techniques story.

After months of trawling estate agents and trudging the streets of the capital, Geoff finally found a building with some potential. Situated near to Chelsea's King's Road and hiding down the end of a small alley, 46a Old Church Street was part of an early 19th-century dairy. Part of the ground floor belonged to a pottery, while the other part of the ground floor and the first and second floors were both available to lease. The deal Geoff and John negotiated included a clause giving them permission to remove part of the second floor to give them the height they required to get a 'Bradley's type sound'. A team of Polish builders was duly set to work to knock out the middle section, leaving the left and right sections in situ to be developed into the control room and an office respectively, both of which would be accessed by separate staircases leading from the live room. An eighth of an inch of asphalt was laid on the floor to dampen the sound to an extent — another Nashville tip — then covered with carpet, although the original gradual slope from the dairy days was left as it was, possibly contributing to the room's sound once they commenced recording. The time now came for a minimal amount of acoustic treatment.

"We cleaned the place up, put double glazing in where it was convenient to, where it wasn't convenient we didn't bother," says Geoff. "As far as acoustics go, John and I went around clapping our hands, and we'd say, 'Ooh, we need something up there!' but bearing in mind we were so short of money, we did as little as possible! Underneath the office, we left the old-fashioned lath-and-plaster ceiling, which did great things for strings."

The first mixer to bear the Sound Techniques name was custom-built by Geoff Frost and John Wood, and sold in order to fund the building of a desk for the studio the construction work had been completed, it was time to build the first Sound Techniques mixing desk. At this point, John Wood also left Levy's, and he and Geoff spent the next few months building the mixer in the middle of the studio's live room (see 'Sound Techniques Consoles' box). With regard to other equipment, John and Geoff were again limited by their rapidly disappearing budget, so they opted to build as much as they could themselves. They could not afford complete Ampex tape machines, so they managed to negotiate a deal in which they bought just the decks, leaving Geoff to build the electronics for three machines — one two-track, one four-track and one mono — which they housed in second-hand consoles purchased at the BBC's redundant equipment stores in Chiswick. Geoff also built four monitor speakers using a design from electronics bible the Audio Encyclopaedia and housed them in a single cabinet to "make things more rigid". The monitor speakers would change progressively as the studio's fortunes improved, and in 1968, as more 'rocky' artistes began to filter through the doors, the studio underwent a revamp, including the installation of an eight-channel desk designed by Geoff and more sophisticated acoustic treatments to make things a little less 'live'.

However, John and Geoff did splash some cash on an EMI limiter, a couple of Altec compressors and a slew of top-quality microphones including Neumann 67s, KM56s, KM54s, AKG D19s and an RCA ribbon. The studio would later move to 16-track and ultimately 24-track by the mid-'70s, and other later purchases included Neumann U47 microphones and Fairchild 660 limiters.

As far as reverb was concerned, John's preference was to buy an EMT plate but their funds had almost run dry, so the pair opted to use what little spare space they had to build an acoustic echo chamber by the front door out of a pre-fab garage kit of parts. But aside from the fact that it was a very small space, it also filled with water whenever it rained heavily so, not surprisingly, as soon as they could afford it they bought their first EMT.

Happy with how the studio was sounding after a few demo sessions, the two men decided that it was time to open for business — but London's music-biz fraternity was not exactly beating the doors down in anticipation.

"We put one advert in Kemp's music directory, which cost a bloody fortune, but we never had a single enquiry!" recalls Geoff. "We were sitting around waiting for the phone to ring for weeks and it didn't ring. In the end, I think we were about three days away from going bankrupt and the phone rang, and it was Frank Barber, who did all John Schroeder's arrangements at Levy's. He said, 'I've got a client who's looking for a studio. He wants to book it for four days a week for about four months and I can't find anywhere where we can get in!' so I said to Frank, 'All right Frank, just let me look at the diary!', and I did actually get the diary out and looked at all these blank pages — and I said, 'Well, Frank, I think we can probably move things around a little!'"

The client turned out to be prolific classical soundtrack composer Phil Green, who had been contracted by 3M to produce around a staggering 2000 tracks of soft orchestral 'elevator music' that they were planning to market with a new cassette-based system they had developed for retail outlets and hotels. Sound Techniques got the gig, and John and Geoff were left thanking the gods, although the first day's recording didn't go quite as planned.

A plan view of the layout of Sound Techniques. The control room and workshop were upstairs, leaving the central part of the live area with a high ceiling. "The interesting thing was that we'd always thought that we would put the strings in the middle of the room, where we had twice the ceiling height, and that they would sound good there," says John, "and we thought we'd put the rhythm section at the end under the office. On what must have been the first day of the Phil Green sessions, we put the strings in the middle, the rhythm under the office and I think we probably had brass as well under the control room — and it just didn't work. They complained they couldn't hear, they couldn't hear the rhythm and they couldn't hear this so we had to change the whole thing round and we ended up with the rhythm in the middle, the brass one end, and the strings under the office — and it worked fine!

Afterwards, that became our standard setup and the interesting thing was that the low end of the studio, where we would put the string section, had a sort of natural resonance around 500-700 Hz or something, and you would get this really big string sound from a small section. That was one of the things that I suppose we were quite lucky with or famed for in latter years the string sounds on the Nick Drake records people are always going on about!"

The Phil Green sessions proved to be a turning point for Sound Techniques Ltd and the work began to trickle in, largely because potential clients were so impressed by the tapes they heard. By this time, the company had also received orders from other studios for mixing desks, so Geoff immersed himself in console manufacturing in the upstairs office-cum-workshop while John settled into the role he would fill until the mid-'70s: Sound Techniques Studio Manager.

The original Sound Techniques 'Chelsea' mixer built by Frost and Wood, in the control even more significant turning point came when Elektra Records began booking time at the studio. Sound Techniques was recommended to the US label by mutual friend and EMI engineer Malcolm Addey. The first Elektra recordings to be made at Sound Techniques were two orchestral concept albums based around the signs of the zodiac and the sea, which John engineered with producer Mort Gamson. Elektra had decided to record in England for the same reason that 3M had opted to with their 'elevator music': British string players were both cheaper and of a higher quality than their American contemporaries. At the end of one of these sessions, the musicians needed paying, so Elektra head honcho Jac Holzman instructed his UK Office Manager to go down to Chelsea loaded with the lucre. The manager's name was Joe Boyd.

It would be the records that Joe worked on with John Wood for both Elektra and, later on, Joe's Witchseason Productions company that would first expose the Sound Techniques sound to the music-listening masses. Wood and Boyd immediately hit it off during Joe's first visit in early 1966. The early projects they worked on together were quickly recorded, straight-to-master-tape recordings of artists such as Alisdair Clayre, Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, and the first Incredible String Band album. It would be during the recording of this latter record that the two became very close, and their relationship both in the live room and the control room would later bring the best out of Sandy Denny, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Pink Floyd and Richard Thompson, to name but a few. The way they worked was in no way your typical engineer/producer relationship — they worked in partnership.

"In some ways, some people found it a curious relationship, but for me it's the way I like to work with anybody, really," explains Joe Boyd. "I get nervous if I feel people are pulling their punches around me — you know, if someone disagrees with what I want to do, I want to hear about it and then at least I can make up my own mind. I want as much information as I can get, and John is very gruff and ready to speak his mind. He never suffer fools gladly and he's never shy of voicing an opinion. I find that a very good way to work because I want to know what he thinks of everything I'm doing — sometimes I had ideas that worked OK on paper but didn't in reality, and he'd sober me up when I was getting carried away with what the possibilities were, because John was always looking ahead to the mix and what would actually work."

There is a distinctively rich, colourful sound and style that filters through not just the Joe Boyd records but many other Sound Techniques recordings, to the extent that people have referred to it as the John Wood sound or the Sound Techniques sound. As with all the great studios in the era before excessive multitracking, the individual facets of a particular room gave each studio a unique sound, and the Sound Techniques live room certainly contributed to the great sounds it produced, with the high ceiling in the middle, the space under the office on the right-hand side that gave such a big string sound, and the sloping floor. The natural leakage between microphones would allow the room's character to come shining through.

John Wood and Pat Donaldson (standing) with singer-songwriter Allan Taylor (rear left) and drummer Dave Mattacks in the Sound Techniques control room."It did have a bit of an ambience to it. I think it made a difference, whereas most of the pop records of the era were done in much deader environments," says Livingston manager Jerry Boys, who moved to Sound Techniques as an engineer in 1968. "In a place like Sound Techniques or Livingston, you move your mics away and you get some space on it, so you can use that if you want to.

Even with close-miking, you'd think it wouldn't make a difference but it does!"

"With a medium-sized room that isn't too neutral, you can get a honk out of the room, which sometimes you like and sometimes you don't," says John Wood. "In a way, that one end of Sound Techniques, under the end opposite the control room — the low part of that coloured things, but it coloured them to your advantage, particularly the strings, which is why we got the string sound we got. You would never have expected to shove the strings in such a small area, but you could shove maybe 12 players in there and that space worked for you! It wouldn't work for you if you put a drum kit in there, because it would not be the right kind of coloration, but it did work really well for strings."

Just as the strings sounded great under the office, a band's rhythm section was almost always placed in the centre of the room under the high section of the ceiling, again using the particular idiosyncrasies of the old dairy to bring out the best in the sounds that ended up on tape.

Another factor in the unique sounds of many classic studios was their reverb, whether this came from echo chambers or echo plates. At Sound Techniques, John Wood used to spend a lot of time tweaking his EMT plates to perfection.

John Wood and Geoff Frost (right), 1978."They were certainly very nice plates," says Joe Boyd. "They certainly shaped my approach — I can't mix without an EMT now, really! Those plates were one of those mysteries that John looked after."

"We took a lot of trouble over them," says John Wood. "Again, studios are very much characterised by the sound of their reverb, or then they were, anyway. Empirically, echo plates were a bit eccentric because they would depend on how you set them up, they would depend on the weather, where they were — a hot or cold part of the building. Everybody had their own ways of messing about with these devices, and I spent a lot of time deciding how I wanted to use them at different ratios — you could put delay on them, and the sound would depend on what EQs you sent to them. You'd fiddle about with all the parameters, including the mechanical ones, until you got the sort of reverb that you wanted."

Bassist Rick Kemp was a regular player on Sound Techniques sessions.

Another vital ingredient in the great records made at the Chelsea studio was the quality of the musicians that were employed on the numerous sessions there, and this was no happy accident. Over the years, John Wood built up a close pool of musicians that he would regularly draft in for recording sessions, and tended to keep away from the usual suspects of the session-man circuit. If you take a look at the liner notes of LPs recorded at Sound Techniques during this period, you'll notice the same names cropping up again and again, including Dave Mattacks and Gerry Conway on drums, Danny Thompson, Dave Pegg and Pat Donaldson on bass, Richard Thompson, Jerry Donahue and Simon Nicol on guitars. These musicians knew each others' playing backwards, so when they turned up for a session, there was not only a great social cameraderie, there was also a musical telepathy. In this respect, you can draw likenesses to the house bands that US studios like Chess, Motown, Sun and Stax regularly used, helping to give their records their own unique sound. And just as with the great records produced in those great spaces, John's ethos was always to record as much as possible completely live. There was certainly no love lost between John Wood and the 'fixers' who still presided over many of the session men and women in the late '60s.

"We never used a fixer for a string section on the Nick Drake records," says John. "On his first record I rang the LSO, and I used to book all the strings that way. The others never sounded any good they'd be a lot of deadbeats who'd be out of the pit or whatever. The regular session musicians that you got in the '60s, or the early '60s anyway, were very jaded — they really were quite snooty, a lot of them, and so I never really got them in."

The atmosphere of Sound Techniques is something many of those who recorded there have talked about. It was laid-back and relaxed, with neither the clinical hospital-like feel of some studios, nor the indulgences of the rock-star lifestyle. The closest thing to luxury available was a couple of pints of ale at The Black Lion pub across the road.

One of the most famous Sound Techniques-built desks was the original Trident Studios console."There was absolutely no attempt to make it impressive or luxurious," Simon Nicol tells me. "It was functional. The concrete staircase and the galvanised hand rail could always have done with a lick of paint. It was clean, but in comparison to studios I came across later on, where some of the lobbies outdo five star-hotels — that was not the case with Sound Techniques. Function came above form, substance above style, and that was the ethos of the place. It was a very social business too — I suppose in other places you might have ploughed a natural division between the band and the staff, but when we did take a break to go to the pub, we all went out together! It was always just a very cool place to be."

"It was much funkier than places like CBS or Abbey Road, the bigger studios that people had spent lots of money on," says Dave Pegg, "but those studios never had very good ambiences as far as I was concerned. Sound Techniques was like coming home to us — and there was the cake shop next door and the pub opposite — I remember the pub opposite really well!"

"I can remember the feeling of the place," says Verity Adams, who worked at the studio in the '70s as Office Manager. "I just can remember the lovely atmosphere of the place, and that's what I think must have been partly responsible for the wonderful music that came out of the studio."

Above all, of course, the quality of those timeless Sound Techniques recordings also has to be credited to those that made it all happen: studio engineers Jerry Boys, Harry Davies, Victor Gamm and Roger Mayer, and of course, the two entrepreneurs who started it all, Geoff Frost and John Wood.

The Sound Techniques studio under the stewardship of John Wood and Geoff Frost came to a sad end in 1974 after the lease ran out. The existing landlords wanted to sell the building but Geoff and John could not raise the finance necessary to meet the (then) high valuation of £120,000 that had been put on the property, and were unable to find an alternative space that was both viable and affordable. This, combined with the fact that the pair could see that the record industry was entering a period of decline, led them to take the difficult decision to opt out. John Wood continued in the music industry, becoming a successful freelance engineer and producer, while Geoff Frost continued to use the Sound Techniques name to run a burgeoning software development house. The Chelsea studio freehold was bought by Olympic, who continued to run it as a going concern until the early '80s, when it was eventually sold off and converted into executive flats.

However, the magic of the place will always live on through the records it helped create, and there's little doubt that the musicians who had the good fortune to record at Sound Techniques during its decade-long heyday will always hold onto their fond memories.

"The '60s was a very different time, a very special time," remembers Robin Williamson of the Incredible String Band. "Especially in London, the whole city had an atmosphere and a magic about it a Peter Pan kind of Neverneverland. It was just very surreal, and Sound Techniques was very much a part of that."

At Levy's Sound studio, Geoff Frost had designed and built a raft of equipment and, aside from engineering sessions, had developed the technical skills and understanding that would enable him to design and build mixing desks not only for Sound Techniques but for studios across the world. Again, there was no grand design to move into equipment manufacturing:

John and Geoff simply did not have the finance to purchase a desk from anyone else in 1964.

The Sound Techniques team take their System 12 for a seaside outing."We never started out to manufacture mixers for anyone other than ourselves," laughs Geoff. "It came as a bit of a surprise when people saw the first desk at Chelsea and said, 'Cor, this sounds great, can you make one for us?'"

The desks that Geoff designed for Sound Techniques would also help characterise the sound of the records made at Chelsea and, of course, later on at the other studios they supplied.

Trident and De Lane Lea (at both Kingsway and Wembley) bought a succession of Sound Techniques mixers over the years, as did Sunset Sound and Elektra Studios in California. Initially, these desks were made in the little office in the studio above where the string sections used to be placed.

"We were making mixers up there," says John, "And as soon as the red light went on, it meant stop drilling and hacking about and hammering, and there were two or three people working up there!"

The Mildenhall factory unit where the Sound Techniques System 12 desk was assembled. The biggest manufacturing success came in 1969 when Geoff and John collaborated to design and build the System 12, arguably the world's first compact mixing console. Forty or so of these desks were sold, and effectively mass-produced at a small factory in Mildenhall, Suffolk. The idea for the System 12 came during a brief beverage stop on the A1.

"It must have been about '69, and I remember John Wood and I were sitting in a very early forerunner of the Little Chef in Hatfield coming back to Suffolk from London," recalls Geoff.

"It was pissing down with rain, we were fed up, so we went in for a cup of tea, and I was moaning about the fact that every time we made a mixer, it was me who had to go and install it and lie on my back with hot solder falling in my face. So we were talking about this, and also about the fact we felt that the potential market for the A-range was becoming largely saturated, so I said 'I think we should build a smaller desk that we can virtually mass-produce as a complete unit. It could have a patchbay in it, and after it leaves the factory and it gets to the studio, all they need to do is plug their mics in!' I remember John having to continuously go up to the waitress to get more napkins, which he used to sketch out his ideas and functionality, and I used to sketch out my ideas for the circuitry. By the Monday morning I had the drawings for a prototype!"

Sound Techniques equipment and modules are now extremely scarce, and when they are discovered they change hands for vast sums of money. The technical secrets that Geoff implanted into each mic amp and circuit board have helped secure Sound Techniques gear a reputation for being some of the finest ever made.

 

6 Awesome Tips And Tricks To Sound Better When Recording Vocals Audio Issues

Have you tried recording your own singing voice in a studio?

It usually doesn't sound anything like you thought it would the first time you hear it. It can almost sound… bad.

You know you sound good and other people have told you the same thing.

So what gives?

Don't worry. Just like many singers, you may sound horrible the first time that you studio. But that's not how it has to be forever. You can significantly improve your sound through these tips and tricks on better vocal recordings.

1. Prepare Before Recording

Do not rush into the vocal booth before you are ready. Standing in a studio about to record vocals can be very intimidating for new singers. So practice a lot before recording.

Try recording yourself prior to hitting the studio and listen back to note what you like and correct what you don't like. Establish the right key and smooth out any range difficulty. Your vocal technique should be good enough to avoid wasting time in the studio with lots of takes and auto-tuning. That also means it's better to have your lyrics and melody memorized so you're not fumbling around.

2. Microphone Technique

Your preparation should also include standing in front of a microphone. In the studio, microphone to mouth distance remains constant. Since you will be standing relatively still as you record your song in a studio, it will be better to get used to it beforehand. Singers with little experience behind microphones make fidgety head movements, which can ruin the recording. Common microphone techniques are:

Volume Control

Move closer to the microphone as the volume gets softer and farther as the volume gets louder. This will help level out volume fluctuations, which can help reduce the amount of compression needed later on.

Avoid Popping And Sibilance

Pronouncing words containing P's and B's that produces extra bursts of air is known as popping.

Sibilance is the excessive hissing when producing S's and F's sounds. You will not notice these extra bursts of sound in daily conversation but will be painfully obvious in recordings.

Adjusting your angle and distance from the microphone can help reduce traces of popping and sibilance.

Control Breath Sounds

Turning your head to the side with each breath will help avoid those breathing sounds that need to be edited out later on.

3, Select The Right Microphone

Before you start recording, run through a verse using different microphones at a time.

Record three separate tracks without changing the EQ and volume settings then listen back. Doing so will help you choose which is the right microphone for you. A microphone mismatch can distort the quality of your voice. Match the personality of the microphone to the uniqueness of your voice to sound great in recording.

4, Shape Your Vowels When Singing

Shaping your vowels allows you to give more emotion when you are singing. It also allows you to use your voice to flow within the instrument track. Vowels are the sound of your voice, let the consonants take a secondary role. Good studio singers know how to shape their vowel sounds and use them to end their words with more character.

5. Communicate Through Your Song

As you sing your song, the lyrics must become your own communication.

Mean what you say phrase by phrase - use emotion.

Your phrasing should relate to your emotion and should be believable within the style of the music. Making your lyrics and emotions pop through a recording is important to coming up with your own unique style that is felt by listeners. This also comes back to comfort in the studio - not being nervous and doing what you can to avoid those nerves (like memorizing your songs, practicing beforehand, etc).

6. Song Delivery

Let your voice and emotion reach through your recording to your listener's heart. Bring out the same energy and believability as you would in a live performance to create an emotional effect. It can be hard in the studio.

But to accomplish this, imagine that you are singing to someone. Sing the song as if the person is in front of you and the lyrics are directed at them. Connect with the listening audience as you would to a live audience. It will shine through on your recording.

Mistakes and flaws become more visible after recording. If you do not like the way you sound, just follow these steps and practice more. It won't be long before you improve your vocals and head towards becoming a professional singer that can belt out a great recording in a single take. You can do it!

10 Simple Steps To Recording An Awesome Drum Sound

A great drum sound is the core of a great mix. If the drums sound fantastic, you're off to a great start. If the drums aren't working, nothing will sound as good as it should.
This is the first of several posts I have planned on drums, and I'm starting at the beginning - how to mic up a drum kit.

Obviously there's no one right answer to this, it depends on the kit, the room, the player and the material. But I'm going to suggest ten techniques that in my experience will help you record the best drum sound you can.

You might want to check out my post 10 Rules For Achieving Outstanding Music Mixes , too - taking special note of points 2 and 4:

Before starting recording you need a decent kit, and a decent space to record it in.

Otherwise you'll be fighting an uphill battle from the outset.

There are basically two ways to record drums - using the overheads for an overall sound and supporting it with close mics, or building the kit up from individual close mics and using the overheads mainly for cymbals. Personally, I use as few mics as possible whenever I can. Especially for an open, live sound, you can sometimes get a great result even using just kick, snare and overheads.

So, without further ado:

Start with the overheads Put up a stereo pair and see how the kit sounds. Are you getting a good, balanced result ? If so, use it ! This only works with decent players - if someone isn't hitting the toms hard enough, or is overdoing the cymbals, you'll have to get more surgical. Decide early on if you want to use the overall sound of the kit from the overheads, or if you need to get more separation.

Overheads” don't need to be overhead If you like the overall sound of the kit, but it just sounds a little unbalanced, don't be afraid to move the overhead mics. If you plan to filter out all the bass and build up the rest of the kit drum by drum, then fine - put them right over the cymbals. But don't just set it and forget it - experiment with the overheads in front of the kit, parallel with the toms, and even behind the player pointing at the drum skins. Listen, and put them where they sound right.

Tape cheap PZMs to the wall One step further from the last point - if the drums sound good in the room, try using PZM ( pressure-zone mics ) taped to the wall in front of the kit, to capture just that quality. PZMs are (often very inexpensive) mics which can give excellent, spacious results on all kinds of instruments. Even if you just blend in a little to add a live feel to a close-miced kit, this can be a great technique.

Mic close and steep There are several schools of thought on this, but I have always found that it's best to point the individual mics almost straight down into the drums - say at 70 degrees or so - this way you get the most weight and body to the sound. You can use the overheads to get the more open sound of the kit and of the sticks hitting the skins - use single mics to get separation and punch.

Move the mic around the drum head If a drum sounds good in the room but disappointing in the control room, move the mic. An inch closer, an inch back, pointing more towards the centre of the skin, more to the edge - listen and find the sweet spot.

What does the drummer hear ? Try putting a mic over the drummer's shoulder - after all this is where he makes his playing decisions from. Along similar lines to point 3, try heavily compressing this signal and feeding just a little into the mix - it can add great energy and feel.

Try micing the front of the kick Many kick drums have a hole in the front (as you look at the kit). You can try sitting the mic there, or use it to get the mic right inside in front of the beater - or, you can ignore the hole and just mic up the drum skin from the front, as you would any other. Often this gives a great, natural, punchy sound. Listen, and choose what sounds best.

Forget about the hi-hat This one is very personal to me, but to this day I've never willingly used a hi-hat mic in a mix. I always prefer to rely on the overheads. There is often so much spill on the snare mic anyway that you're always trying to get rid of hi-hat, not add more ! But, maybe it's just me : )

Tune the kit I probably should have started with this point, but perhaps it's a little less interesting than the others. However it's just as important, if not more so. Tuning the kit is a whole blog post in itself and it's not something I can claim to be an expert on. But briefly - the tuning of each drum is critical to it's sound. If the skins are too slack or too tight, the drum won't sound or ring as it should - and if the tension is uneven, you'll get very unpredictable results. Tricks like adding tape or other damping materials to the skins are also useful. (Edit - If you're interested in learning more, check out this post : The secret of a great drum sound )

Tune the recording space, too. It should go without saying that you need a room where the drums sound good to record them in - but don't forget that you can have some influence over this. If you're in a rehearsal studio where everything is carpeted, even the walls and sounds dead as a result - get some sheets of plywood in to add reflective surfaces. If you're in a big concrete garage where everything is too bright and lively, add carpets, packing blankets and duvets - or even better, make yourself some gobos - more on this in a future post, too.

Get the world's greatest drummer Or even Lars Ulrich Oops, sorry, I said ten steps, didn't I ?

Check the phase OK well the whole 10 steps” thing is blown now so I might as well add this excellent suggestion from Danny in the comments When blending multiple mics, it's essential to make sure they are in phase with each other. I think I'll do a whole post on phase, but the short version is:

(1) Add the new channel
(2) Toggle phase reverse on the channel
(3) Pick whichever sounds fuller and stronger.
(If it sounds hollow”, it's wrong)
(4) If neither sounds good, move the mic or patch in a delay
(5) Repeat, but listening in mono !

There are other, more outlandish ideas for getting great drum sounds, but I tend to save those for special occasions. Stick to the suggestions I've outlined here, use the best mics you can lay your hands on and Listen, Listen, Listen.

If you found this post interesting and would like to find out more, especially if you want to hear some examples of how different mic techniques can sound, I strongly recommend Graham Cochrane‘s excellent Drums Boot Camp It shows you how to get a great drum sound with only one mic and builds up from there, with loads of tips, suggestions and examples - and then moves on to a whole new section about actually mixing drums, covering EQ & compression plus using gates and expanders, reverb and more.

8 Tips For Getting A Great Bass Guitar Sound — Pro Tools Expert

It's one of the things we get asked a more than anything else when it comes to recording instruments, how do you get a great bass guitar sound?

If you are a veteran to recording then this list should come as no surprise, but if you are new then try these and see how much difference they can make to getting the right bass sound on your tracks.

Quality Counts

They say that a bad workman blames his tools, that's partly true, give a great bass player even a cheap instrument and they will do amazing things. However it's not just about the playing but it's also the sound of the instrument. Get a great bass guitar - bass is one of those instruments that shows when the money has been spent. That's got a lot to do with the wood and the quality of the instrument - with bass you can hear it!

String Theory

Try Different strings; they all have different sounds. A decent bass player will already know this, but if you are new to bass then take a trip to a decent music store and get some advice on the different types of strings and their different weights, you'll be surprised by how much they can affect both sound and performance.

Tone Bank

Experiment with the tone before you record, most basses have a huge variety of sound just built into the pickup pots and switches. Some tracks lend themselves to nice low non-descript brooding bass sounds, other tracks work better with a more punch mid tone. If you have a good amp then use it and use the tone built in; again there's a vast amount of variety with a good bass amp. Spending some time before you hit record can make a heck of a difference.

Style Council

Experiment with the playing style - some songs need hard finger style playing and other songs need a pick style - it can make all the difference. Try a few takes with a few different styles then listen back. A pro bass player will also use several different styles in one song to help differentiate between sections.

Mic Check

Try different mics on the bass cab; ask 10 engineers which mic to use and you'll get 10 different answers, but some favourites are Sennheiser 421, EV RE20, Shure SM57, AKG D12 or 414. Experiment with mic positioning on the cab and distance too, both have a bearing on the final result.

Tracks DI And Amp

Try and get a track of both the amp and the DI sound by using a splitter before the bass hits the amp and then try them both in the mix afterwards. Often the final bass sound in a mix will be a combination of both DI and amp.

In The Mix

Once you have your bass tracked then try adding a boost at around 80-100Hz, be bold and then add a compression to keep it all under control. If you have a DI and a cab take then use one to accentuate the bottom end and the other to give some detail, for me that's normally the mic take. Transient shapers are a great tool when mixing bass, they allow you to add punch, reduce it, extend sustain or even pull the bass forward or push it back.

Experiment With Augmentation

Try adding in a synth bass line with the original, this trick has been used a lot on some top tracks over the years. Another nice trick is to copy the bass part with an identical guitar part and mix them together. Or try adding in a kick drum sample to add and edgy punch to the bass line - you'd be surprised at the results.
These are some of our favourite tricks and tips, what are yours?

History Of Sound Fusion Recording

By Arthur Noxon

In the early days of recording, it was all about making live mono recordings of acoustic bands, a bunch of mics wired direct to tape. Next came the multitrack and recording evolved into click tracks, isobooths, post processing and mixdown sessions. Then the digital age showed up. Acoustic recording was out, sampling and DI was in and everybody's cousin had a home studio.

But times keep changing. The home studios have evolved into more sophisticated studios and the bands themselves have evolved. Now days there are more mic companies than ever.

That's because studios are doing more micing and less direct. Studios and bands want to do live, ensemble recording. Even rapping is going in this direction. Today's studio is actually recording more real music, air breathing acoustic sound, than ever before.

But some things never change. Open up a mic we get two kinds of sound. The first is exactly the sound we wanted to get, the direct signal from the talent. The second is exactly the sound we didn't want to get, the sound from the room. We usually end up needing a cleaner signal at the mic and so our goal, as recording engineers, is to figure out ways to boost the direct signal and cut the room signal.

By following in the footsteps of the last few decades of recording, we try to get an acoustically dry signal, as close to an acoustic DI as possible and then perform the familiar post processing on it to get it into the mix. To do this, we have to build acoustically dead spaces. To do that, we have to kill reflections, all reflections.

But, in so doing, we are also throwing the baby out with the bath water. Who'd have guessed that some of those hated, hunted and hammered room reflections actually help make real sound, sound real? Well, in the olden days, recording was full of this type of real sound” and today, by implementing a few acoustic tricks, recording can once again, sound real.

The Mic is a 2 Channel Acoustic Premix

In any room, the mic acts like a two track acoustic premix: The direct signal is acoustically mixed right in with the room signature; reflections, echos, reverb and general room noise.

And most of the time, the room signature track is too loud. Our job is to boost the Signal to Noise Ratio, the (SNR). To do that we need to either boost the direct signal or fade the room noise, but usually it is some combination of both. What we want is an acoustic fader but air faders, like air guitars, don't do much for sound.

We boost the direct by getting the talent to eat the mic and reduce the mic gain back down to zero VU. But now our talent sounds like a radio DJ and that just might not be the sound effect the producer wants. In addition, we lose control on dynamics, plosive and proximity effects. To regain control we add the wind ball, dial in EQ, compression and limiters and hope for the best.

Another way to increase the direct to room signal strength ratio is to change the mic pattern. Start closing it down, narrow the focus pattern of the mic, stopping somewhere between cardiod and shotgun. But the tighter the pattern, the more colored the voice, like singing into a mail tube, and we go back to EQ, compression and limiters to try to doctor the track into a semi-real sound. Also moving the mic around the room can come up with some spots that don't sound as bad as the others. But they usually are no where near the studio window.

And all this time, the talent is locked in a head halo, with the producer saying sweetly: That was great, but this time, a little more emotion and a little less movement”. Despite the best of everyone's efforts and tricks of the trade applied to boost the SNR at the mic, all too often the desired effect for the song is either lost or destroyed.

The other way to get a better SNR at the mic is to just dump the room. Kill the room and get pure sound flowing into the mic. Forget EQ, compression and limiters. Just set the mic up in a soundproof anechoic chamber and one would think we have the ultimate recording space, essentially it's acoustic DI, all direct signal with a -80 dB noise floor. Later, this very dry signal can be revived by post processing, add some warmth and depth with a little delay reverb and some sparkle with a spank from an exciter.

Dry Recording Rooms

When working in dry rooms, any reflection is audible and sounds bad. All it takes is one reflection and the sound we are trying to get picks up a hollow effect. It's the Comb Filter effect. This is when the desired signal is combined with a lower level and time delayed signal, in other words, an early reflection. The combination imposes a harmonic set of cancels and adds onto the original signal spectrum which sounds like the direct signal was recorded at the bottom of a drinking glass. Dry acoustic recording is very sensitive to the presence of early reflections (comb filter effect), late reflections (echo), fast repeating reflections (flutter echo), boundary loading, mode coupling and finally reverberation. Still, dry recording seems to be the primary tool for today's recording engineer.

The rule of thumb in a dry recording studio is the best room is a dead room.” Engineers are trained in AE schools and the school of hard knocks to hate reflections. Engineers hunt them down and kill them (reflections) with fervor, whenever and where ever possible. One might say that recording engineers suffer from a mental condition called reflecto-phobia. It started somewhere in the 60's when multitracking and post processing became available. Highly infectious, this impaired judgment condition reached epidemic levels in mid 70's spread to nearly every recording engineer, producer and audio instructor in the industry.

Today, reflecto-phobia is rampant. Music is proudly recorded in acoustically sterile environments. Fueled by fears of comb filter coloration, every single reflection, near or far, that might ever hit a mic has been systematically exterminated over the last 30 years in recording studios. Most of today's so called live rooms” are now completely reflection free zones”.

With the purge of reflections nearly complete, today's studio music is now completely composed out of separate, sterile, acoustically dead tracks. Preparing these tracks is not much different than being the make up artist in a sonic funeral director, where dead tracks are fluffed and stuffed and somewhat brought back to life by the paint and sparkle tools found in the FX rack.

Human Listening

When people listen to sound, in contrast to microphones, they generally just listen to what they want to hear and pretty much dial out the rest. People can be located pretty far from the talent, compared to a mic, and not even notice the sound of sound in the room. They just hear the talent. People are able to naturally tune the room out and focus in on the talent.

The engineer with a mic has to work hard to tune the room out and focus in on the talent.

A person (as well as other critters) is a biological signal processor, not an electronic one. We use a different mechanism to hear than what is built into microphones. A by-product of our hearing system is that we automatically mix all early reflections right into the direct signal and end up hearing one composite direct” sound. Early reflections are those that arrive within about 1/30 second following the direct signal. It doesn't matter where those early reflections come from, they just add together (correlation signal detection) in a way that makes the perceived sound be significantly louder than the direct signal. This sound fusion process creates a composite direct signal which has easily more than twice the sound power than the direct signal alone.

Although it doesn't matter to the sound fusion process where the early reflections come from, we aren't confused by where the direct sound comes from because of something called the Precedence effect. We cue in on the direction of where a sound comes from by tracking and locking on where the original sound signal comes from. The process of knowing where a sound comes from is called echolocation.

There is one adjustment to echolocation that has to be mentioned here; the Haas effect. Very early reflections, those arriving within 5 ms of the direct signal, will distract us from knowing exactly where the direct signal is coming from. The perceived direction of the direct signal is somewhere between the location of the direct signal and the location of the very early reflection.

People like early reflections. Just step outside, into the middle of a large grassy field, and we can barely hear ourselves, let alone carry a tune or talk to anyone else. That's what the DI (direct inject) version of life sounds like. Go back inside the house and everything sounds fine and you can carry a tune or a conversation. We're made to hear direct + early reflections, and to mix them together into one direct” sound. And this process helps us hear more easily what is going on.

The traditional, studio-dead sound tracks lack life, the quality of sound that makes sound seem to sound real, natural. Yes, there's always the fix it in the mix” perspective to dry recording. That means lots of time and money gets spent trying to bring back to life, dead sounding tracks. But studio recording was not always done like this.

In the early days of recording, the luxury of dead studios didn't exist. Engineers had to record live, entire acoustic bands. They made good records in those days too. Part of their recording process inadvertently included the sound fusion process. Their mono mixes were chuck full of delayed early reflection type signals and there lies the reason they sound so whole, so much like a real recording of a real sonic event.

The Early Years

In the early days of live band recordings, 1950's, they had one, maybe two takes and then the session was over. The idea was to use a number of mics distributed throughout the group, adjust their position and gain and get a live, hard wired mix down direct to tape on a mono track. Their goal was to capture enough signal to recreate the sound that was heard when sitting in the room. Those days are far from the idea of recording separate tracks in isobooths at various times and in various parts of the country and then mixing them together a few months later.

A good example of the tail end of the early days recording technique was in the RCA Victor StudioB in Nashville back in the 50' and early 60's. This topic came up during an AES Sectional presentation on the Quick Sound Field (QSF) recording technique, held there in 2003. The QSF is a modern way to acoustically capture sound fusion at a mic. StudioB had finally been renovated but it wasn't open to public yet. The room was full of engineers, a lot of new ones who hadn't even been in the studio since it closed and some ole timers who worked there when they were young. After the QSF presentation was over, the question and discussion time quickly lead back to the recording techniques that used to go on in that room.

StudioB is a shrine. It's enough to just stand there, inside that room and wonder upon all those hallowed vibrations. The ones that hit the floor tiles and bounced off and those that lie buried still in the wall and ceiling tiles. So many early greats worked and played there. Elvis and the Jordanairs, Roy Orbison, Everly Brothers, Chet Atkins and many more recorded in this old RCA Studio B.

The QSF lecture reminded the ole timers about recording in this room. They talked about the mic setups and how the band played all together, at one time, one song from start to finish, direct to tape. And that was how they made records.

This was all well before multi tracking and mixing capability became available in recording. When multi tracking came, in the 70's, StudioB accomodated the growing interest in this new sound” of music. The room was deadened and hosted a small village of iso sound shacks lining the walls. Eventually Nashville was overrun with recording studios and StudioB closed. Now it has been renovated back to the glory of its former years. All the sound shacks are gone now and the room has been returned to it's original, one big recording room, configuration.

Back in the early days, the room had a 3-mic gain and mix to tape Ampex. Later, more mics were added. There was no isobooths. At best, there were gobos. In this environment, each mic got signal from every instrument. For example, if there were 12 mics and 6 talent sources, there would be at least one direct signal from each talent source arriving at each mic.

That means that there were at least 12 different signal path versions of each talent source after mixdown. And then the early reflections have to be added in; floor bounce, glass bounce, other instruments and what not.

The net result after mono mixdown would be that each talent source would have at least 12 direct signals, with time delays ranging from 4 ms out to 25 ms, and levels ranging from zero VU down to -16 dB on the track. And then there would be the reflections, off instruments, floor, glass and what not, filling in the mix with even more random time offset signals.

In a 12 mic setup there would actually be captured up to 30 or 40 distinct time delayed signal paths for each talent source. That qualifies as a Sound Fusion effect recording.
The QSF Takes Shape

It all started in 1983, shortly after the TubeTrap was invented. A cylinder shaped bass trap was designed to stand in the corners of rooms. It came with a built-in treble range diffusion panel covering the front half to keep the room brightness up. Rotating the Trap acts like a treble control and changes the brightness of the corner. Bass traps are usually located in corners because that's where the bass builds up the most. The TubeTrap was the first factory built, UPS shippable bass trap.

It didn't take long before the bigger studios across the country, always looking to try something new, started buying pallet loads. The seasoned engineers in those days didn't ask questions. Their ears would tell the truth, if these tubes worked or not. These big studios already had lots of built-in bass traps and didn't really need much in the way of tuning up, except in a few iso or drum booths.

Curiously, it was the treble range panel that caught their ear. The engineers fooled around with these acoustic cylinders and eventually set up in a semi-circle pattern, a Stonehenge, with the dead side of the Tube facing in. They got what they expected, the room dialed out and inside, that all so familiar, Studio-Dead. Then they rotated the traps and set the bright side in, and all of a sudden, they got a sound they didn't expect: Studio-Live. The room disappeared and the spotlight hit the talent.

The engineers called the factory to report their discovery and each engineer discovered the same thing. They discovered an acoustic space they hadn't heard before and that sounded good, very good. They dropped a mic inside and it still sounded good, very good. Eventually the factory replicated these set ups, measured and analyzed what was going on and reported it in a series of AES papers. The Quick Sound Field was born.

The first QSF I saw was in a local studio located near the original TubeTrap factory in Eugene, Oregon, run by relocated LA engineer, Steve Diamond. We had about 30 Tube Traps and were busy tuning his live room when I noticed Stonehenge in front of the window and Steve saying Check, check, testing one , two…”. He bolted those Tubes down right then and they stayed there till the city tore the building down, some 1000 BiMart commercials later.

A short time later at Pierce Arrow Recorders, in Chicago, engineer/owner Sam Lynn Halonen was experimenting with his first load of TubeTraps. He called in about how he could get great horn sounds. Later, he got more instruments mic'd, including drums, inside the Stonehenge pattern. More recently Sam used the QSF to remic a dry studio recording of an opera singer to add life and dimension.

Reports keep coming in, describing new ways to use the QSF effect to get good sound. The QSF setup created a Haas saturated track. It created a boost in the direct and produced a great signal to work with. It cut room so effectively that it wiped out the need for room acoustics. The QSF produces the acoustic gain adjustment needed at the mic without destroying the desired effect for the song. In fact, the effect for the song is enhanced and can be dialed in. The QSF seems to be a natural for any engineer who has the chance to work with it.

Finally a cure to lifeless sound has been found. Inoculation process requires that tracks be recorded in a Haas Saturated signal, the exact opposite from a Haas Sterile Signal. With some 30 to 60 random time offset Specular Reflections accompanying each direct signal, there is no comb filter effect and the track is completely full of acoustical life, ie, music. Formerly dead mixes can be remixed through an acoustic process of sweetening by playing the dry mix through an acoustic package that creates a plethora of early reflections.

Caution, the RT-60 of the early reflection package needs to be in the range of 1/10 second and a very early time gap is recommended to be set at about 3 ms. This cure was discovered when big studio recording engineers started fooling around with TubeTraps in the mid 80's, endorsed early on by Pete Townshend (Eel Pie Sampling Room) and for the last 10 years with Studio Traps by Bruce You've got to hear this” Swedien.

Variations on Sound Fusion Effect Recording

During this early period, the ASC TubeTrap factory got a few calls from engineers who heard about the QSF sound. One had been doing a radio for many years. He said he developed a magic black box that was his trade secret. It gave him a voice edge over everybody. He put a whole bunch of amplitude adjusted time delays into the box. Fed his mic into one end and got a synthetic QSF sound (direct + a whole lot of random time offset signals) out the other end. The time delays matched exactly the QSF window of about 25 ms. He welcomed us to the club and figured it was time to let the secret out of his magic voice-box.”

Another engineer contacted the factory and told his story how he had hooked 30 some mics up over the top of a classic opera singer. Each mic was located at a different distance and angle from the talent. He just added them all together and ran it out to the house sound system. He said the sound was fantastic and used the technique many times. He effectively collected some 30 random-time off set signals, all within the 25 ms time window. Each signal was basically the same signal except for the acoustic EQ due to the off axis coloration of the voice. And, as the talent moved around, the sound package didn't change. The total sound remained the same even though the signal fed into the different mics did change. The listener's brain can't tell which reflection is where inside the Sound Fusion effect time window.

Digital reverb was starting be affordable. The reverb plate was being replaced with a 4 adjustable delay/reverb returns. When ambience was set tight (300 to 500 ms) and the delays set shorter (30 to 100 ms) it produces a synthetic ambience, much like a room. By setting it even tighter and shorter, the Sound Fusion effect could be generated. But the big advantage with the acoustic version, the QSF, is that it controls the presence of natural ambience in the room at the mic while adding close and natural flush of early reflections into the acoustic mix at the mic position.

Pete Townshend, NED and Sampling Booths

A little while later digital sampling got started. Synclavier was looking for a Sampling Room and they knew it had to be something different than a vocal booth. ASC built a QSF sampling booth and Synclavier loved it. That booth and the Synclavier followed AES around the world more than once.

Pete Townshend (Who) had heard about TubesTraps was at a session in LA and ran into Bruce Swedien (everybody) and asked him about TubeTraps. Bruce had already checked them out and thought they were all right, he liked them. Pete called the factory a little while later and before long, he had outfitted his Boathouse, a small sampling room with non-parallel walls and round windows at Ell Pie Studios, into a world class sampling room.

Pete was blown away by the sound he got in that room. He wrote the factory and told us his story. It went something like this: The Boathouse was so smooth that no one could hear which fader ran the nearfield or farfield mics. They sounded the same. For the first time ever, I had to tape along side the faders, labeling the two mics, so my engineers could remember which fader was the nearfield mic and which was the ambient mic.”

The factory asked if he'd consider endorsing the QSF Sampling Room and he said normally, no” but in this case, he'd be glad to, because recording engineers needed to know about the QSF. And so, three rolls of Hassleblad negatives later, Pete Townshend became the first star to endorse the QSF recording technique.

Deep Space Vocal Booth

A little later, Rockwell Corp contacted the factory. They were doing voiceprints for training astronauts. They were working with something like a 10 open mic studio talkback system, where everybody could be heard, all at once. Only one problem: There was just one send/receive channel, in order to keep the weight down. They decided to chop and sequence the open mic signals so that one transceiver could carry all signals. Chopping the signal train was not a problem, but reconstruction was. How to recreate someone's voice when you only have 1/10 sampling of the signal? They needed a hot vocal booth to help them develop a voice reconstruction algorithm.

They chose the QSF system. The ASC factory built, shipped and even set up the booth. This room was made out of alternating half round TubeTraps and Plexiglas strips. The see-through walls created a very open feeling. Rockwell engineers used the QSF Sampling Booth to get the most room-free, information-filled version of a person's voice that was possible.

They chopped it up and figured out an algorithm to reconstruct a person's voice chop sequence into a reasonable facsimile of the voice. The plan worked and the rest is space history.

Evolving the QSF space

These high performance QSF Sampling Rooms worked great for sampling but they were a little too fast for live talent work. A standard iso booth might have an RT-60 of 0.4 seconds and have as few early reflections as possible. These sampling rooms were running an RT-60 in the range of 1/10th second and sported diffusion rates of 1000 random, time delayed, early reflections (distinct specular reflections) per second. This means the room was very dead and at the same time, very bright. The acoustic gain produced by a QSF sampling room was about +10 dB above the direct signal. It was a bright anechoic chamber. QSF vocal or iso booths are still bright but the reverb time is set slower, in the range of ¼ second, so it is a comfortable space to work in.

The QSF Stonehenge package was becoming popular and to get the price down and usability up, ASC developed the StudioTrap, a small diameter (voice range) TubeTrap mounted on an adjustable shaft with a tripod base, like a mic stand. There have been improvements over the years. A hand synch grip was added along with a quieter internal slide clutch. The diffusing reflector sheet was moved forwards to increase the top end reflectivity from 6k to something above 7k Hz. But overall, the StudioTrap remains pretty much today, as it was originally conceived and is the cornerstone of the QSF effect.

Ed McMahon has probably the best known voice in the country. And he travelled a lot all over the country. In between scheduled public appearances, he had to do commercials.

Bruce Swedien Discovers the QSF sound

During this time we noticed an interview with Bruce Swedien. It was clear that Bruce was so acoustically in tune that he probably watched sound run around the room in slow motion.

I wrote him, explained a little about the QSF effect and invited him to audition it. Why certainly,” he'd love to. He's always looking for new sounds and ways to get them. He tried it and loved it. After a bit, he volunteered to endorse the QSF. He said and still says: I wish everybody could hear this” because Bruce wants other engineers to get to know the power of the QSF sound and discover for themselves this new recording technique.

A little later, the factory sent a truck load of StudioTraps to join Bruce at René Moore's large home in Studio City to help Bruce make his first mic training video. At the end of that tape Bruce and I kibitz a while about the QSF Effect. It's a great tape and a lot of good QSF techniques are demonstrated.
Bruce continues to ship Red Rocket his original set of 14 StudioTraps, from session to session, back and forth across the US just to be sure he's always ready to add that little kiss of life, the QSF effect, into his tracks. The Studios got so beat up, shabby actually, over the years that the factory offered to replace them, no charge. But Bruce wouldn't have it. Nobody touches his tried and true, vintage gear. Eventually, a fork lift changed his mind and we were able gently repair, update and refinish his set of original StudioTraps and return them, good as new.

Bruce gets to work in the best live rooms in the world. Like a master chef, he adds just a pinch of the QSF effect to the already nearly perfect live room sound. He uses wide spacing of the StudioTraps and randomizes the reflector positions. He dials in a number of specular Haas reflections to bring forward and capture the essence of a live performance.
QSF Comes Home

Most of us don't get a chance to work in the best live rooms in the world. Most of us are lucky to be working in small, home or barn studios, something less than perfect rooms. Here, we set the QSF pattern not open, but tight. The smaller the room, the tighter the pattern, the more intense the Haas reflections, which boost the live effect and at the same time, the room is blocked even more. Typical small room recording does very well with only 8 StudioTraps in a semicircle setup, 4 to 5' in diameter. The tightness of the QSF setup is proportional to the strength of the Haas/direct” to room reverb ratio.

Recording with the QSF is good for everybody in the studio. The engineer gets the desired sound while the talent doesn't get worn out trying to make it. It's easy to find sound you want and the sessions go fast. And there's a bonus. The halo clamp got tossed. No more: That's pretty good, but this time, let's try to emote just a little more and move just a little less.”

While working in QSF, talent is free to groove to the music without causing a shift in the sound at the mic. As the talent moves, all that's changing is the arrival time of the various Haas reflections. However, the ensemble package of direct + early reflections remains at the same level and sounding the same. As with the early sampling booths, you can't tell which signals arrived when, just as long as they are all inside the Hass time package, it's all just one sound.

This produces a track that needs no riding gain, no limiters, no compressors and no equalization. Just dig out your favorite omni or ribbon mic, back away from the proximity effect and go direct to tape, pretty much no matter what room you are in. And there's another bonus. What the talent hears inside the QSF field is exactly what they hear later in the control room. There are no surprises when recording with the QSF effect. A QSF track can be processed and mixed just like a regular dry track. And yes, it will amplitude and delay pan very well.

And so, Jennifer Lopez stopped to say thanks on her last album cover to the whole crew at ASC. It was for staying the course and delivering where's those round things?” the breath of live sound, the QSF effect, into her vocal tracks on the last 3 albums.

 

Tracking The Drum Sound You Want..mike Tarsia

First and foremost in capturing the drum sound is to ask the drummer what feel he is going for. Tell him to bring in a CD that has the drum sound he is shooting for. Keeping in mind the tight/open philosophy below, have the drummer hit the snare in different parts of the room where the snare would fit if the kit were moved there. Listen to the tone and ambience changes and pick an area that projects the flavor that he gave you as a reference. Once you find the area that sounds closest to his vision, set up the drums. Listen to the overall sound of the full kit and imagine how and where the microphones should be placed again using our tight/open guide. Remember, it is easier to get the sound right in the room than fix it in the mix.

DRUM MIKING PHILOSOPHY

There are varying philosophies to art of recording drums. Let's go over 2 of the main camps here. As you develop your own sound you will most likely synthesize these basic viewpoints into your own philosophy.

1. TIGHT

The idea here is a tight very controllable sound. Ambience is sacrificed for control and most often is added later using a plug in. The microphones are placed very close to their source, so that each element of the kit is miked separately. The overhead mics really turn into cymbal mics and a lot of times the kick drum is covered with a blanket.

Pros: You can control each element
Cons: Drums need more EQ to make them sound correct as the mics are choked. Balancing the levels of each part of the kit becomes the job of the engineer. The drums also need room and reverb plug ins to put air” around them.

2. OPEN AND NATURAL

The concept behind the open and natural approach is that drums need to breathe and should be miked as a kit” The overheads are used as the main sound foundation and the mics on the individual pieces are used as fills.” Getting the overheads to best represent the kit is paramount.

Pros: Drums have a natural, airy sound. They need less EQ, balancing and FX to make them sound good.
Cons: What you captured is what you get. You have much less control of the overall soundscape. If a tighter sound is needed it will take selective EQ, gating and other processes to reign in the sound.

Setting Up

While in the room with the drummer, listen to him play the full kit. Are there resonant tones on the toms from kick drum hits? Is there a piece of hardware rattling? Do the drums sound tuned correctly? Take the time to fix any issues with the drum sounds with the drummer before you put up any microphones. If the kick on the CD reference he supplied has a hard knock sound make sure the drummer is using a wooden or plastic beater and entertain putting a disk on the head. If it has a soft puffy sound make sure he is using a round felt, a little harder than puffy use a flat felt. Hopefully the drummer will have chosen the right heads and beaters to get the sound that he is shooting for. Set up the microphones on the kit using the inexpensive microphone list for drums below as a start point.

Capturing the Sound

Utilizing the compliment of the microphones listed above as a springboard, capture your sound.

While at the recording console/work station, have the drummer play the kick drum. Ask him to play it at the dynamic level that the band will be playing the song he never will… it will always be a little hotter when they are all getting into the groove as a band, so add some headroom when setting levels and set your preamplifier accordingly. Do this with each part of the drum kit and then have the drummer play the whole kit performing the song the band will be recording. During this period you should start roughing in the drum balance and panning scheme to your monitor section.

Once things are roughed in it is important to check how the drum microphones interrelate as phase issues arise when multiple microphones are positioned in close proximity to one another. It is best not to have EQ and dynamic control plug in's inserted at this stage as you may be masking problems that are in the studio. When utilizing the close mic technique, start with the kick drum solo'd in your monitors and then add the snare top, then snare bottom, then toms. After that, add the high hat and overhead microphones. When utilizing the natural technique start with the overheads. Get the kit to sound great with just them then add your kick and snare "fill" mikes. Flip the phase switch back and forth on each added channel to see which one sounds best. Once this is done have the drummer play the song a capella while recording the performance. Play back the music and, again as always, use the supplied CD as a reference guide to what you are striving for. Make any adjustments as necessary.

In short find out what drum sound the drummer is searching for. Decide what miking technique will best represent that vision. Set up his kit in the sweet spot of the room that best projects the soundscape. Pick the appropriate microphones, get good levels to record medium and a balanced monitor mix. And always remember.

5 Unconventional Recording Techniques That Actually Sound Amazing

When most artists venture into the world of DIY recording, they tend to be concerned with how to do everything properly. People ask questions like, "What's the right place to put a mic on a kick drum?" or, "What type of mic should I use on a male rock vocalist?" While playing by the rules is a good place to start when you're learning to record, there's a time and a place for breaking the rules as well. Here are a few ideas to inspire you to break the rules when the time is right.

1. The trash mic

Usually when setting up a mic, you want to make sure the placement will capture the best possible sound from the instrument. Sometimes, however, you just want to capture a sound that you can mess around with later. The "trash mic" is an extra mic (usually a dynamic mic like an SM57) that you use to capture the overall sound of an instrument in order to manipulate that sound later. This is not a room mic, where you try to capture the sound of the instrument in its purest form; instead, this is a simple mono mic that you set up close to the instrument, which gives the instrument a lo-fi sound.

The concept of the trash mic is similar to the concept of parallel processing in the mixing phase: by heavily compressing, distorting, or otherwise affecting the trash mic, you can create a parallel version of the recording that doesn't necessarily sound good on its own, but when added to the mix, gives the instrument a fuller or more interesting tone. This is a good technique to try on drums, but it could work well on any other acoustic instrument as well.

2. The underwater mic

Placing a mic in a tub of water is one of the strangest recording techniques out there, but it's not a new one - John Lennon famously sang into an underwater microphone (protected by a condom) for "Yellow Submarine" (although that vocal take wasn't used in the final mix). Aside from making you sound like you're in a submarine, an underwater mic can also be good for capturing low, wobbly sounds from kick drums. Of course, you'll need to make sure the mic is fully encased in some sort of waterproof material so you don't electrocute anyone. The most common technique is to put a mic in a bucket of water right in front of the kick drum. This will give you another type lo-fi sound that ebbs and flows just like waves of the ocean.

3. Prepared instruments
Experimental recording techniques don't have to be limited to mic placement; sometimes the best way to modify a sound is to change the instrument itself. Since Erik Satie first started experimenting with placing objects on his piano strings in the early 20th century, pianists like John Cage and Hauschka have popularized the concept of the prepared piano as an instrument all of its own. Usually objects taped to a piano's strings are used to create percussive sounds, but they can also be used to dampen the sound, create more sustain, and really create any other type of sound you can imagine.

Pianos aren't the only instruments that can be prepared, too - you can get interesting sounds from guitars, drums, even orchestral strings by preparing them with simple household objects. Sometimes all it takes is a little coin taped to the front of a kick drum to help the drums cut through in the mix.

4. The gear mix-up

Just because a certain piece of gear was designed for a particular instrument doesn't mean it can't work on another instrument as well. Have you ever run a vocal through a guitar distortion pedal to give it some crunch? How about running a drum loop through a guitar amp to give it more life? When you take the limitations off of your gear, you open up new possibilities all over the place.

5. Taking matters into your own hands
Sometimes innovation in the studio can also come from a lack of gear. If you have a sound in your head that you want to capture, but you can't achieve it with the gear you have, maybe there's another way you could make that sound come to life.

Microphone Techniques To Get Great Electric Guitar Sound

In The Studio: Microphone Techniques To Get Great Electric Guitar Sound

Good starting points for capturing and recording the sound you want...
Feb. 19, 2014, by Barry Rudolph

Because of its fundamental importance in popular music, the electric guitar is the subject of intense scrutiny and wide differences of opinions. Just what makes a good guitar sound?

Compared to all the subtle and not so subtle sounds that come out of an electric guitar amp, fidelity judgments of vocal sounds are easy to make!

With good knowledge of the different guitar and amplifier sonic capabilities, coupled with good microphone techniques,we can achieve the ultimate guitar sound that fits” the guitar part, song and production genre.

A good guitar sound starts with a good player with the right amp and guitar all working together. It's unrealistic to rely on an engineer to make poor gear sound wonderful in the control room. Microphone choices and miking techniques are good starting points for capturing and recording electric guitar amp sound.

Microphone Selection

Microphone choice (for me) is as big a part of the guitar amp's recorded sound as the amp and guitar used, volume played and player choice, because the mic type and placement will greatly influence the player's performance and tone.

Dynamics

The Shure SM57 cardioid dynamic is the most common microphone used to record electric guitar. This started back when all the more expensive microphones had already been used in big tracking sessions. Engineers were left with the lowly” SM57 to handle those loud, cranky, noisy guitar amps.

But it turns out that the SM57 is perfect for the task; its frequency response, originally tailored for speaking, matches the mid-range voice” qualities of the guitar. Italso has a compression effect on loud sounds - it squashes nicely, facilitating the engineer's job of maintaining consistent recording levels.

You'll see engineers push a SM57 right into the grill cloth of an amp cabinet, taking advantage of the proximity effect, which boosts low frequencies when the mic is placed close to a sound source. The SM57 locks in a certain size” for the electric guitar, maintaining its appropriate place in the mix without additional EQ or compression.

The Sennheiser MD 421U cardioid dynamic is also popular, offering a wider frequency response (more high and low frequencies) than the SM57. A five-position rotary switch adjusts the frequency response from the flat position, called M (for music), all the way to the contoured S (for speech).

Generally, I find the 421 brighter with less of the compression effect than the SM57. These mics are also more directional, which is important for isolating the sound coming from one speaker in a multi-speaker cabinet.

Condensers

Condenser microphones also work great, but care must to taken to not get an overly bright sound. Your guitar player might complain that his amp sounds brighter than usual (compared to a SM57) and feel he must readjust his recording knob settings. As a result, I place them further away from the speakers.

Condensers pick up more low frequencies from the amp, and this may or may not be a good thing. Pushing a lot of air might work in a heavy metal track, but it also might be inappropriate for a lighter pop song.

I've also noticed certain condensers sometimes add distortion when close-miking extremely loud amps. Occasionally, the metal wind screen can get loose and vibrates. Always use the attenuator pad and maybe the low frequency roll-off. The Neumann U 87 and U-47FET, Shure KSM44 and Audio-Technica AT4041 are all good choices.

With Live Sound, You Can Make Anyone Sound Good
A free subscription to Live Sound International is your key to successful sound management on any scale — from a single microphone to a stadium concert. Written by professionals for professionals, each issue delivers essential information on the latest products specs, technologies, practices and theory.

Whether you're a house monitor engineer, technical director, system technician, sound company owner, installer or consultant, Live Sound International is the best source to keep you tuned in to the latest pro audio world. Subscribe today…it's FREE!!

10 Simple Steps To Recording An Awesome Drum Sound

A great drum sound is the core of a great mix. If the drums sound fantastic, you're off to a great start. If the drums aren't working, nothing will sound as good as it should.

This is the first of several posts I have planned on drums, and I'm starting at the beginning - how to mic up a drum kit.

Obviously there's no one right answer to this, it depends on the kit, the room, the player and the material. But I'm going to suggest ten techniques that in my experience will help you record the best drum sound you can.

You might want to check out my post 10 Rules For Achieving Outstanding Music Mixes , too - taking special note of points 2 and 4:

Before starting recording you need a decent kit, and a decent space to record it in.

Otherwise you'll be fighting an uphill battle from the outset.

There are basically two ways to record drums - using the overheads for an overall sound and supporting it with close mics, or building the kit up from individual close mics and using the overheads mainly for cymbals. Personally, I use as few mics as possible whenever I can. Especially for an open, live sound, you can sometimes get a great result even using just kick, snare and overheads.

So, without further ado:

Start with the overheads Put up a stereo pair and see how the kit sounds. Are you getting a good, balanced result ? If so, use it ! This only works with decent players - if someone isn't hitting the toms hard enough, or is overdoing the cymbals, you'll have to get more surgical. Decide early on if you want to use the overall sound of the kit from the overheads, or if you need to get more separation.

Overheads” don't need to be overhead If you like the overall sound of the kit, but it just sounds a little unbalanced, don't be afraid to move the overhead mics. If you plan to filter out all the bass and build up the rest of the kit drum by drum, then fine - put them right over the cymbals. But don't just set it and forget it - experiment with the overheads in front of the kit, parallel with the toms, and even behind the player pointing at the drum skins. Listen, and put them where they sound right.

Tape cheap PZMs to the wall One step further from the last point - if the drums sound good in the room, try using PZM ( pressure-zone mics ) taped to the wall in front of the kit, to capture just that quality. PZMs are (often very inexpensive) mics which can give excellent, spacious results on all kinds of instruments. Even if you just blend in a little to add a live feel to a close-miced kit, this can be a great technique.

Mic close and steep There are several schools of thought on this, but I have always found that it's best to point the individual mics almost straight down into the drums - say at 70 degrees or so - this way you get the most weight and body to the sound. You can use the overheads to get the more open sound of the kit and of the sticks hitting the skins - use single mics to get separation and punch.

Move the mic around the drum head If a drum sounds good in the room but disappointing in the control room, move the mic. An inch closer, an inch back, pointing more towards the centre of the skin, more to the edge - listen and find the sweet spot.

What does the drummer hear ? Try putting a mic over the drummer's shoulder - after all this is where he makes his playing decisions from. Along similar lines to point 3, try heavily compressing this signal and feeding just a little into the mix - it can add great energy and feel.

Try micing the front of the kick Many kick drums have a hole in the front (as you look at the kit). You can try sitting the mic there, or use it to get the mic right inside in front of the beater - or, you can ignore the hole and just mic up the drum skin from the front, as you would any other. Often this gives a great, natural, punchy sound. Listen, and choose what sounds best.

Forget about the hi-hat This one is very personal to me, but to this day I've never willingly used a hi-hat mic in a mix. I always prefer to rely on the overheads. There is often so much spill on the snare mic anyway that you're always trying to get rid of hi-hat, not add more ! But, maybe it's just me : )

Tune the kit I probably should have started with this point, but perhaps it's a little less interesting than the others. However it's just as important, if not more so. Tuning the kit is a whole blog post in itself and it's not something I can claim to be an expert on. But briefly - the tuning of each drum is critical to it's sound. If the skins are too slack or too tight, the drum won't sound or ring as it should - and if the tension is uneven, you'll get very unpredictable results. Tricks like adding tape or other damping materials to the skins are also useful. (Edit - If you're interested in learning more, check out this post : The secret of a great drum sound )

Tune the recording space, too. It should go without saying that you need a room where the drums sound good to record them in - but don't forget that you can have some influence over this. If you're in a rehearsal studio where everything is carpeted, even the walls and sounds dead as a result - get some sheets of plywood in to add reflective surfaces. If you're in a big concrete garage where everything is too bright and lively, add carpets, packing blankets and duvets - or even better, make yourself some gobos - more on this in a future post, too.

Get the world's greatest drummer Or even Lars Ulrich Oops, sorry, I said ten steps, didn't I ?

Check the phase OK well the whole 10 steps” thing is blown now so I might as well add this excellent suggestion from Danny in the comments When blending multiple mics, it's essential to make sure they are in phase with each other. I think I'll do a whole post on phase, but the short version is:

(1) Add the new channel
(2) Toggle phase reverse on the channel
(3) Pick whichever sounds fuller and stronger.
(If it sounds hollow”, it's wrong)
(4) If neither sounds good, move the mic or patch in a delay
(5) Repeat, but listening in mono !

There are other, more outlandish ideas for getting great drum sounds, but I tend to save those for special occasions. Stick to the suggestions I've outlined here, use the best mics you can lay your hands on and Listen, Listen, Listen.