How does it translate?

I've been fooling around with recording at my house and came across an interesting point that I thought the readers of Percussion Sessions® would make good use. More often than not, while doing a sound check for a gig where everything is mic-ed up for rockin' and rollin', I would be asked, "Michael, I am hearing a BOING sound from that snare, can we fix that?" I would always be surprised and would have to try not to be defensive. I already was using a muffle style head, I would try to mess with the tuning and would then add some duct tape and tissue to kill the ring some more. At times that would be good enough to get a "that's better," and sometimes the BOING was still there. I was baffled by the whole situation because it sounded great coming from the drum to my ears.

Fast-forward to a studio where I'm trying to mix a song that I just recorded with GreenLand, a new band of mine. I solo the snare drum to do some critical listening and it goes BOING . I try to tune it out using some eq and anything else at my disposal, but it will not go away. The snare sounded great in the studio—still baffled.

Fast-forward again to my own house. I just got my own studio up and running (ah, I Iove not having to drive anywhere to record) and I'm re-recording some of the GreenLand material to try and get some better sounds. I've got the mics just how I want them, the drums tuned just how I want them and I can't wait to get hear what kind of sounds I'm getting. I get some good takes, listen to the snare drum and—you guessed it—BOING . Well, I decide that there are evil miniature ninjas from the planet BOING who, through advanced alien technology, have taken control of all sound waves emitted from my snare drum in an effort to control our simplistic minds and take over Earth. Okay, fast-forward to the next day. I'm a patient man and want to get down to the root of my troubles so I listen some more. And then I hear something interesting. There is a march groove that I do in one of our songs called "Stay" where the snare drum sounds just how I want it to. While contemplating why this should be I have an epiphany....I'm not doing any rim shots during that section!!! In that same instant I'm taken back in time a year or so ago when I watched Ron Ganaway (great drummer, now with Gretchen Wilson, who used to play my current gig with Ricky Van Shelton) and noticed that he didn't use a rim shot for his back beat, which I thought was kind of odd. Now I know that Ron not using a rim shot is a conscience choice. It all makes sense now, the rim shot does NOT translate into a microphone the same way the it does acoustically to my ears.

I love the rim shot. It's powerful and has a lot of attack so I've always used it—always. And I've always gotten complaints from sound guys about a BOING problem. I'm not a sound expert, but it seems to me that the rim shot chokes out some of the body of the sound making the ring and edge of the drum more pronounced than the body of the sound. I did consult a great sound engineer friend of mine, Rick Dauphine, who brought to my attention that a rim shot adds some more bass to the drum as well. But, that bass sound still sounds foreign to the sound I'm hearing acoustically.

I was eager to test my theory. I recorded some more tracks resisting the urge to use rim shots. And guess what? The drum sounded much closer to the sound I'm hearing acoustically. I'm not saying that you shouldn't play a rim shot. I'm saying that we as drummers need to be aware of how our sound gets translated through the microphone. I know that some drummers, like Kenny Arnoff, bury the stick in the head to get a different sound when doing a rim shot. I'm sure that this is done to get a certain sound into the mic. So pay attention to how your favorite drummers play their back beat and experiment with making conscience choices regarding your playing to achieve the sound you want.

To demonstrate my findings, I recorded my snare, unmuffled and tuned to different pitches, while playing regular full strokes followed by rim shots. (For some reason I only played four regular full strokes on the "tuned low" example). See if you can hear the difference. I have also taken some pictures of my mic placement. One SM57 on top and one on bottom.

Check out the audio! (insert tuned low.mp3) (insert tuned moderate.mp3) (insert tuned high.mp3)

I hope that this article has been informative and fun. Feel free to email comments to me at michaeldrums@gmail.com

Happy listening,
Michael