You can record everything in your home or bedroom studio – except drums.
Or so that’s what some people say.
The reason people say this is because home studios generally sound small and dull. Nothing like a good live room. And I agree. They sound nothing alike.
That is until you do some sneaky trickery in the mixing phase!
Today I want to show you my favorite method for turning your small sounding home studio drums into huge professional live room drums – and all without using a single reverb!
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
Nice little trick…thanks! I’m sure the method will work even if you recorded drums in another place other than your own home studio. Since I live in a condo and we have strict noise rules I always travel elsewhere to record raw tracks then mix/master at home. By the way Graham I trust all is well after the big blow. Some more nasty weather on the way (I have family & friends in Florida). I wish you and your family well.
Peace
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Maybe its just me, but if youre going to the extent of utilizing drum samples to create room sound, and even a small room sound = reverb, then why mic an acoustic drum kit at all.
I can say without hesitation that I am not an engineer’s engineer. Why do I say this. Well I guess because the process of spending hours mic’ing a drum kit never was all that appealing to me. But when e-drum/midi kits got to where they are now, all that changed.
Today I record everything using an inexpensive Alesis DM6 as a trigger with nothing more than a USB printer cable to my computer. Ive set up different kits via Superior Drummer and Logic X, and most drummers are very surprised at the amount of articulation that comes from such an inexpensive kit.
Of course there are better kits with mesh heads, but most drummers that record in my studio say they prefer the rubber pads when tracking. Go figure.
Still, what I find so great about this process is the ability to change drum sounds/samples to fit the mix. Even a small room sound can be achieved via a small room reverb plugin with the right amount of send from each element of the kit.
To me this makes the workflow process much easier, drummer walks in, auditions different kits, then begins to play. And they you have it–hours and hours of time can now be devoted to song production instead of trying to make a lifeless drum track sound great.
For the life of me I cant understand why people are so attached to the old ways of doing things–especially when working in a home studio environment with limited space, and I have very limited space.
This process makes it so easy for me to also stack drum sounds and add backing loops. Even some of my hardcore drummer friends are surprised at just how great these kits sound, and how flexible the process is when mixing. Only die-hard acoustic drummers reject this process, but even that will change over time–Im sure of it. I said the same thing about amp sims before they got the sounds just right. Now I use nothing but sims.
As a death metal drummer and producer, I wouldn’t ever record an acoustic kick drum for any purpose, but for the snare and cymbals, you really do want the acoustic drums if it’s at all feasible. There is just so much nuance there, especially in the cymbals, that samples can’t replicate no matter how good your e-drums are. Of course it’s fine to augment the sound with samples, and that way it’s not even very difficult to control the sound.
I’ve never used a real amp in my life and I’m pretty sure I never will.
Samples are easy and sounds good. But, there is something about the AIR, the actual sound waves. It does something to the final product. If you only use samples and digital instruments, the mix will end up sounding a little lifeless. Might be what you want, though.
Im not knocking this process by any means, cause it really is helpful for enhancing drums. And Graham provides so many useful tips that help readers achieve better recordings and mixes.
But this is a recording revolution right? And if we’re not moving forward with the tools available to us, then we’re stuck not only in the past but in our minds as to what will make something sound good.
And what makes someone believe that the air wasnt part of the sample either. I mean, someone might fall over dead recording samples without any air in the room wouldnt you think. Check your samples, often times they load into an app already sniped a bit and just need to be adjusted some.
If I could say one thing here that might make a tiny lasting impression, it would be this, the average listener doesnt hear what we hear, and they might never notice the transients you think are essential to the sound. By the time it hits their listening device or playback medium, all they care about is if they like the music or not. Only other musicians and engineers critic the reverb on the drums–not the average listener who doesnt even know what reverb is half the time.
As engineers and producers its our job to care about every sonic aspect of the music. But one thing Ive learned over the years is most people could care less how its recorded, they just either like it or they dont–and most times that has very little or nothing to do at all with the recording or mixing of the song.
Songs are like aural pieces of art, and art has always been subjective to the one viewing or listening, because people either like it or they dont. Years ago I was part owner of an art gallery, and at the time people would often ask me what kind of art I liked, and my response would always be the same, the kind that sells. We simply could not devote valuable wall space in the gallery to art that didnt sell. It didnt matter how much I liked it or not, it mattered if people bought it. It simply wasnt possible to stay in business displaying art that didnt sell. The same thing could maybe said today about these aural pieces of art.
That’s just it–samples and digital instruments weren’t the only things being used.
Anyway, what’s the difference? We can record and comp things, and at least in the box, we do all of that in digital. All those ones and zeroes aren’t air, and the playback of what those ones and zeroes represent aren’t usually via THE air that was there when the part was recorded. Even if we went back to tape, we’re still not dealing with actual air, but an electromagnetic approximation of what we did to that air in some place with some thing; and comping would mean splicing tape or transferring the signals from one magnetic medium to another.
If you really saying that samples and digital instruments are fake, I’d like to remind you that ALL art presented in any kind of medium is intrinsically fake, as is the perception and interpretation of the subject matter. In other words, a representation of anything in a painting, photo, sculpture, recording, or other media, can never be the real thing, nor can it ever match the actual experience. I don’t get the “real” experience of live drums from Neil Peart, John Bonham, or Stewart Copeland from a recording. Even hearing them in concert from a distance over a PA is not the “real” experience of being right there on stage or in the practice room with them…or being them, or playing drums myself if I could.
Art isn’t supposed to be “real” in this sense! We accept the layer of non-reality as given, in favor of the message, even if that message is, “Shake your booty mindlessly all night long to this [insert EDM genre here] track.” There is no getting around this basic fact, even if we had the technology to stimulate our senses or implant memories using data. It’s also not our job to try to change this.
If the samples and digital instruments sound lifeless, that’s either the fault of the people that made the music, or the “fault” of the listener who was expecting something “real.” In the end, though, it’s all in our heads, only in the air because of speakers, and only in the air well because good speakers are playing back a good song recorded and mixed well. We, the creators, must take responsibility only for making sure that the message is clear, and nothing distracts from its transmission. That’s our job! If that means using samples, comping, programming a drum machine, or even playing each part of a kit one hit at a time and assembling drum parts painstakingly from that, I’m all for it!
Nothing wrong with this method. Many people still prefer to hit actual drums. Feels different and can affect performance.
Awesome! Nice process… great sounds!
(Glad you made it through the recent weather storm… glad to hear you and your family are safe).
Thanks Graham… for all that you do!
-Dave
Thanks Dave.
YES to the Super Nintendo in your studio! How do you get anything done with that in there?!
I guess I’m just a disciplined person 🙂
1) I wish you would show us how to set this up. For instance, how do you get the samples to trigger from the audio tracks?
2) You can call this ‘not reverb’, but of course reverb is exactly what it is, even though you do this without invoking a reverb plugin. The room reverb is built in to the samples.
It is really no different than invoking a convolutional reverb of a room sound using a reverb plugin, plus that way you are not married to the exact sound (ignoring compression) of the 3rd-party samples, bc you have much more granular control. And it does not require triggering.
If you have only drum samples and no recorded drum tracks, this technique (convolutional room reverb plugin) can and should be used, bc drum samples are typically dry. And it works very well to give a final product that sounds like drum tracks recorded in a good room.
Never thought to use drum samples like that. Thanks for the tip.
Great trick!The project is sounding very nice.
I was actually curious, but, in the end, you ARE using reverb – just not a plugin, but the natural reverb of the room (someone else’s room instead of your own) instead. That is the purest form of reverb there is. Plugins try to emulate that.
So the technique is adding room reverb mics from samples, instead of some recorded on your actual kit, in your actual room. You could go for drum samples altogether, while at it, not just the room mics. But I get it, you can have the actual drums, for a natural sound you can control, and you only use room mic samples for what you can’t get yourself.
I love the elongated tail effect you get through compression. I just don’t get the slow attack, I was expecting a short one, to cut down on the transients.
COULD YOU ELABORATE ON THAT?
And the song sounds awesome. I at least like, many times love, most of your songs. Which is great.
Thanks!
To be fair – the attack settings on an 1176 compressor are ALL fast. Even the slowest setting. I mostly just do this by ear. I turn the Attack and Release all the way to the extreme right and left and back and forth until I hear the drum room sound huge.
Aha, thanks a lot. Now it makes esense.
Cool tip. I have Trigger. I use EZ Drummer and Superior Drummer. I only mic kits if I have to do remote recording. Not here in my apartment! So this tip oughta work with the Toontrack programs or any MIDI drums when you need that extra ambience. Bounce the Midi tracks down to audio, or separate the instruments to dedicated channels, probably just the kick and snare, maybe toms too. Add the Trigger samples as demonstrated.
What a great tip. I always wanted to try this but never really thought about using room samples. I am going to try this with my Joe Chiccarelli samples which I highly recommend. I’m sure there are other great one’s as well.
Just wondering….do the samples have to be similar in pitch or timbre for this to work right?
They don’t have to be – but use your ears.
Hey. Thanks for the tip. Just curious if anyone has ever tried Reamping drums to get reverb I.e record your drum tracks then play them back in some nice room and mic that. Advantage is you could spend hours recording the drums but maybe reamp a few songs in the space of 30 mins. Interested if anyone’s ever tried it
Just a note about your title: People record drums in small home studios all the time. What you really can’t record in your home studio is whale-song.
Here’s a tip for you…up the humidity in your small drum room…and back off the microphones.
Glad to see y’all made it!
My question is a bit of a sidetrack–or is it a side chain? ;P I was wondering if you could ever use mikes in adjoining rooms (doors open, of course) to try to expand the reverb space while recording?
It seems to me that it could work out to be something akin to a large reverb chamber with the right execution. Of course, we could use additional delays and reverbs, EQ, limiters, gates, and whatever else is needed, to enhance what we get.
I’m mainly interested in things like mike choice and placement, phase correction, etc., and the final results. I think we can assume that there might be other practical limitations, such as lack of equipment or room treatment, housemates and pets, neighbors, noisy neighborhoods, etc.
I’ve heard of people using bathrooms and stairwells for reverb chambers, miking up different places, aiming the mikes creatively, and so on. I don’t see why multiple rooms couldn’t get usable results in a similar manner.
Anyway, thanks in advance for answering!
You certainly could do this. You would just want to make sure your tracks aren’t doing any phase cancellation.
What samples are people using for this process?
Apart from the ones mentioned in the clip, what others are available?
Thanks for sharing. Slick Trick!
Hey Graham,
Is this song – Blessed is the man available online for listening?
I’d love to use this in our prayer meeting. Love the songs you come up with.
Thank you!
Next month!