Day #2 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
Mega Preamp Shootout / Reamping Guitars / Micing Drums
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 | The Redeemer was a tremendous help in improving the tone of the directly recorded guitar. The Redeemer acts a buffer to improve to effectively lower the output impedance of your guitar...I think. |
Anyway, we ran the clean signal that was recorded to disk back through a Reamp box and into the Randall module thing. We messed around with tone for just a little while (nothing too serious) and I have to admit that the amp sounded really great in the room! (The room is small but very live). We mic'd up the cabinet with a Royer R121 ribbon mic (again, nothing too serious) and started recording. We tried out 23 different preamps. I'd guess we are looking at about $50,000 for all these pres (maybe more).
Read all about Preamp Fundamentals I Learned At Michael Wagener's
Drums
On Day #1 we setup a million mics on the snare drum. Okay, it was like 11 or so. After listening and listening and listening, it became clear to my ears (as well as everyone else in the room) that the SM 57 was a boring sounding microphone on the snare top with that particular snare and room combination. I know it's a studio standard and has been used to record a million platinum records and all that. However, it just wasn't the best choice for this snare top in this room. Of course, the lesson here is to always experiment and try to find something better.
So what was Wagener's secret snare drum microphone??
You'll find it in the members only portion of the home recording forum.? Make sure you join the forum first. Read Wagener's Secret Snare Drum Mic.
We ended up with Sennheiser 604s on the top of the toms, SM 58s on the bottom of the toms, AKG 451 on the hihat and a Scheops on the ride. We had a Royer SF12 stereo ribbon mic for the overheads (which we later added a high end shelf to. We used a Korby FET mic as a room mic. It was maybe 2 feet from the crash on the high hat side facing the wall (which was maybe 2 feet from the drumset). We used Frizt, the Nuemman head to get a realistic stereo picture of well as Shure SM55? Elvis mic compressed all to hell with tons of high end rolled off for a trashy room sound.
The Room
You have to remember that this room is not all that large. While the room is about 12'x22'x9' that 22' foot is greatly diminished by the tons of gear in the room. Large cabinets for microphones, percussion, and miscellaneous crap take up nearly 2 feet on one side of the room. On the other side, there 4 4x12 cabinets, acoustic absorbers, mic stands, etc. While the room is acoustically larger than this, the actually working area of the room is probably around 15'x12'. Certainly not a huge room. However, the room was very live because we took down some foam absorbers. While many us attending the workshop liked the VERY lively sound of the drums, Wagener thought it was “out of control”. The lively sound is due to a number of reasons. The most obvious being the concrete floor. To clean up the room sound a tad, we used 8 large corner absorbing tubes. I think ASC makes them, but I'll have to look for sure. Either way, when we placed these absorbers throughout the room (mostly behind the drum kit) the sound went from extremely live to extremely dead. It mega dead and I didn't like it. I think we ended up with 4 absorbers around the kit.
It was amazing to hear how much differently the internal kick drum mic sounded with the absorbers in the room and the absorbers out of the room. There was a tremendous difference. The lesson here is your room is everything! Without a doubt, close mics are greatly effected by the sound of your room. It was amazing being able to record the drummer (who was very consistent) without the absorbers, with the absorbers, and with less absorbers. This allowed us to A/B the tracks later on and figure out exactly what we liked better. It also allowed us to solo each track to find out what we liked. If the kick drum sounded amazingly different with the room sound changed, just imagined what that did for overheads and room mics. The decay time of the room was drastically removed as well by the addition of the tube absorbers.
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The kick drum was unbelievable. Wagener hit the sound nearly perfectly on the first try. Actually, his placement was perfect. He put the SM 91 in the kick drum about halfway in. There was no damping inside the kick drum. No towel, no blanket. There was a damping ring on the head of the drum though. Commander Wagener then put a subkick maybe an inch or two from the front head. No you need to remember that these may not be in perfect phase with each other. We used the Little Labs IBP to align the signal coming from the 2 kick drum mics. Actually, it turns out that the kick mics were very very close to being in phase. However, turning the IPB a few degrees made a nice difference.
- Day #1 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #2 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #3 Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #4 Vocal Recording at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #4 Electric Guitar Recording at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #5 Tracking at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
- Day #6 Nasvhille Studio Field Trip Day at the Michael Wagener Recording Workshop
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Shure SM7B Microphone with Switchable Response |
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Universal Audio UAD-1 Project Pak |
