Do your drums sound flat, dull, boring, or just plain wrong? If not, don't worry. This article will explain how you can capture the elusive Myspace drum sound that so many bands seam to love. So, in this article, I'm going to refer to the worst possible drum sound you could possibly fathom as “The Myspace Drum Sound”.

If you really want terrible sounding drums, this article is for you. If you want to sound like the worst recordings floating around Myspace (which could be considered illegal by the Geneva Convention as crimes against humanity), this article is for you.

Micing The Drums

If you absolutely want the worst drum sound possible, all you have to do is put a mic on top of the snare drum, put a mic in the kick drum, and mic every tom. In other words, use only close mics. The brand and quality is not that important. In fact, you could easily use very expensive mics and still achieve the Myspace Drum sound.

This will be one of the most lifeless sounds you've probably ever heard. Go ahead and record it and see what happens. If you have tracks from other drum kits you have recorded. Solo just the kick, snare top, and toms. Now try to mix that with bass, guitar, vocals, and any instruments that tickle your fancy.

You will find that mixing in this fashion sounds nowhere near pleasing and should really help you fit in with the Myspace recording crowd. This is about as far away from the major label drum sound most of us dream as a person can get.

The Quality of Drums

It's very important that you select gear that will help with your question for muddy, lifeless sounding drums. There are all kinds of brands that can help you with this. Use your ears in finding the right drum for your application. I highly recommend drums that have been warped as their ability to tune seams to avoid powerful drum sounds.

Mic Placement

You need to take your time to find the muddiest spot on each drum. There will be places on the drums with tremendously more attack than others. Avoid these spots with great attack like the plague. Go out of your way to find these muddy spots and exploit them as much as possible.

I highly recommend putting the mics as close to the drum as possible. Most close mics tend to be cardioid which means we will get the benefits of the proximity effect.We can get quite a bit more low end by using the proximity effect to our advantage. This is great news because we can get quite a bit more mud out of the drums this way.

Drum Tuning

To make it worse, make sure the drums are tuned so that they sound really dull and boomy. When going for the Myspace drum sound, it is critical to have no definition, but just mud and boom. This will force you to turn the drums up louder to cut through the other stuff and make sure the entire mix sounds incredibly boomy.

We want to make sure that the drums have no attack or “crack' to them. Doing so may allow the drums to cut through the mix and that is exactly what we don't want to do!

Pick The Right Room

The room has an enormous effect on the drums. The wrong room will make a drum set sound alive and powerful. The right room will make that same drum kit sound boxy, boomy, and boring.

If you really want the Myspace drum sound, avoid using a room that makes the drums sound powerful and clear. These are usually high end recording studios that have been acoustically treated with $zillions. Instead, put all your money into gear, video games, or Burger King (the last two are the most popular way of getting the Myspace drum sound).

While, kind of off topic for this article, the major label drum sound (which we are trying to avoid) seams to love using room mics to capture the overall tone of the drums in the room. Normally, the Myspace drum sound entirely avoids this “liveliness”. So if you do happen to be recording in an unideal room (that isn't dull or muddy enough) the last thing you want to do is add a room mic. You could quickly ruin the Myspace drums you worked so hard on. However, if you are lucky enough to have a room with totally uneven frequency response, tons of mud, etc you should be safe. The room mic will still compliment the Myspace tone we are going for. Just be careful not to make the drums sound like they have energy to them (which room mics can definitely add).

Pick The Right Drummer

Without a doubt, one the most important factor in achieving the mystical Myspace drum sound is finding a drummer who has no clue what he is doing. We are looking for drummers with no sense of timing or groove. This is extremely important.

If you find a drummer that can actually groove, you may ship him off to some band gunning for the major labels, because he probably won't help with the Myspace sound one bit.

Also, make sure your drummer hits the drums like a total weuss. Find a person, usually local, who isn't that concerned with the tone of his drums. There are people who work very hard on their instrument trying to find the sweet spots that sound the best. Avoid these types of people. The way they hit the drums could possibly make the drums sound so clear that you lose almost all of your mud you've worked so hard for. So find a drummer that either randomly hits the sweet spots or just doesn't have a clue where they are to begin with. The Myspace drum sound requires it!

Conclusion

Hopefully, this article has given some useful pointers to achieving the long sought after Myspace drum sound. You'll find that proper mic selection, mic placement, drum quality, drum tuning, the room, and the drummer have an enormous influence on the sound of the drums. If any of these is off the mark, you could possibly loose your Myspace drum sound.

There are about 100 unsigned bands (give or take) on Myspace who have chosen not to go with the Myspace drum sound. I guess that's okay. The world needs these rebel “artists”. If you happen to desire a drum sound that is not typical on Myspace or the rest of the world, you may want to flip around most of the statements in this article. In fact, almost every statement is down right backwards in this article (in case you couldn't tell). Maybe you should make a checklist for what could be wrong with your drums (if you are not happy with the tone).

Oh, screw it! I'll make a checklist for you right now. (Note: This is only for bands and recording guys / girls who are more interested in the major label drum sound than in the Myspace drum sound).