Drum overheads sound without overheads

[d_matt]

I write my beats using sampled drum hits in my sampler. I don't actually record a drummer (or even have any mics) I mainly use sample cds take individual hits from there and make my own kit.

I'd like to experiment with creating the sound of drum overheads to make my drums sound huge. One idea I've come across is to eq the bass out of the drum mix, raise the mid a bit, and send this through a reverb plug and mix it back into the mix. I have experimented with this but haven't yet got what I'm looking for.

Any ideas?

[8mmOverdose]

Originally posted by d_matt:
I write my beats using sampled drum hits in my sampler. I don't actually record a drummer (or even have any mics) I mainly use sample cds take individual hits from there and make my own kit.

I'd like to experiment with creating the sound of drum overheads to make my drums sound huge. One idea I've come across is to eq the bass out of the drum mix, raise the mid a bit, and send this through a reverb plug and mix it back into the mix. I have experimented with this but haven't yet got what I'm looking for.

Any ideas?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">what you are doing is the same idea i have had in my head, but never tried. sounds to me like you are on the right track.

[Bastiaan]

i think waves Trueverb with some room setting would work.

[Rabidium]

What about one of those room-modeler plugs? That may help you get that sound.

And some guesses... if you're tracking these samples in stereo, try squeezing everything to a mono track and and adding a mono-stereo reverb to it. I've had very realistic results using this trick on loops. I don't know why it works, though. I usually roll off the bottom and up the high-mids as well, to get it sounding seperate from the original loops.

Also, we've been talking about this trick on another thread, this afternoon I had an interesting sound going by reversing the loop, adding a short, tight reverb to it, and re-reversing it. Really short though. This gave it an odd 'natural' quality, that sounded as if the mic was picking up a reflection before the kit. Try it, you may like it.
-Olaf

[dodo]

What is your drum mix? Try a submix of the kit. Compress it about 10:1 and add it back in.

[Matt Zeiner]

in addition to your roomed verb buss, send to a second buss with an eq, light chorus into a second room verb. follow the second verb with an S1 set real wide, and mix to taste. May have to print it to avoid phasing issues, but it works pretty well once you get the basic idea. happy tweaking.

[Thundernut]

You have all had good suggestions, though it's
really much simpler.....get a mic, and run the drum mix through a speaker .....and um, mic it from overhead......Seriously. The most direct way to get what you want is to go ahead and get what you want. works like a charm, particularly if you have a good sounding room with some reflective surfaces and some dampening surfaces.

Word.

Tnt

[Rabidium]

Ha! Thunder, that is a stroke of genius. I don't know why I didn't think of that. The low-tech way is often the best!
-Olaf

[silence_of_stone]

what a neat idea... i am trying to salvage a song that I recorded the drum machine straight to disk rather than using midi, so I cant really tweak the drums too much. This might be the ticket I need to getting those drums to sound a little better. [img]images/icons/cool.gif[/img]

[Agug123]

Originally posted by Thundernut:
You have all had good suggestions, though it's
really much simpler.....get a mic, and run the drum mix through a speaker .....and um, mic it from overhead......Seriously. The most direct way to get what you want is to go ahead and get what you want. works like a charm, particularly if you have a good sounding room with some reflective surfaces and some dampening surfaces.

Word.

Tnt

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">One of the best ideas i've heard in quite some time,I'm gonna have fun tonight [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
High five to you [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]