Analog Drum Recording - How We Do It

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Watch us track an entire song here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d6i5ZKuBea2crKM

[@ScefingScyld]

Great sound! It's so refreshing to see some real recording on YT these days. Good luck with the channel!

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@BlazonStone]

You mean analog recording Digital recording is also real :)

[@nicowithguitar]

This feels like I'm watching a school video haha (I'm currently studying audio engineering) I spotted the little educational moments there like EQing vs. Mic placement! Brilliantly executed haha. That's a thumbs up from me!

[@korolchukpp]

Nice content!

[@agork]

Hard work and lots of practical trial and error makes a good baseline for beautiful sounding easy mixing friendly music.

[@matejsmetana3165]

Nice window to history!

[@MeAndTheBoys_]

Thank you for the video guys. I like how you simulate the real recording situation in the video. I am sure a lot of younger guys will get a nice view into, how things work in the studio. Very good ,informative video, with 0% of any bs. By the way, the snare sounds so good, in tune and popping. and the room has a very nice, short bright echo and a good stereo spread. You've got a really good thing going in there.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thanks! Ludwig Coliseum. is our favorite at the moment, also surprisingly the room mics help a lot with snare sound most of the "depth" comes form there.

[@snarfusmaximus]

Nice selection of CAPI and Hairball pre's there. Lovely!

[@tihinter]

loved that „CONOSLE feed“ 😂

[@wreckingslowcars]

so informative please make more videos like this!

[@m1jman106]

Wow!beautiful old school setup,if i win the lottery im getting one,blue vista lite kit,and reel to reel,so cool

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Those big diameter Ludwig kits sound fantastic. Believe it or not Vistalite is relatively inexpensive comparing to their wooden shell kits.

[@m1jman106]

@fluxmagneticstudios4046 you tune them great too,that seems important,I had the maple kit,like carmine apple and then bonham,600$at Sam ash,this was in the 90's,and they closed recently too,(Sam Ash)new haven,anyway,happy jamming✌

[@wyrlismike]

great retro sound! love this kind of thing

[@alejandromagana1554]

Loved this whole video!!!

[@lovzi9865]

This was really really great. I feel that recording drums is quiet hard vs individual instruments as they are a group. Really great video!

[@ClaudeLavender]

Sweet !❤

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thank you for watching!

[@marcusmagellan]

I subscribed, this is my kind of video, thanks!

[@lovesickstudio41]

Great Video amazing Studio :D

[@hectormoy2713]

Sounds very similar to John Boham's studio drums, awesome!

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

It's the same kit he used live - Ludwig Vistalite. In studio he used the wooden kits mostly. The snare drum is Ludwig Coliseum.

[@Moronmommy]

Good lesson to always mic the batter head of a kick as well as the front if it isn’t ported

[@MadeOnTape]

awesome work, gentlemen, and I hope you put your spaghetti heads back together for the next one!

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Hey Chris! Great to see you here! We surely will!

[@RiotHomeRecording]

Nice set up, I have a 1976 Mci’s 428 console & a JH-24.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thanks! The 428 is a very nice board!

[@m1jman106]

Man them drums sound killer

[@sandersonstunes]

A lot of videos don't show the trial and error part of mic'ing a kit. Having only been able to work with the tracks I'm given, I don't have much experience with how mic placement will affect the sound as well as I know my EQ and compression.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Hi! The micing part is very important and is essentially like having EQ even before pressing the EQ button. Also interesting fact that back in the day the EQs were pretty basic, our console for example has only a 3 band one with a semi parametric mids and the bell is very broad.

[@jason.martin]

Great sounding kit! love the sound of tape, what comps did you use on the Kick and snare and the rest? 1176?

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Hi! There's only an 1176 on the kick drum and no compression on anything else. Sometimes we put another 1176 on the snare but in this case we didn't.

[@goodshade]

Great video!

[@Graceandpeaceband]

For old school drums they would often times put just one mic above the kit and one on the kick drum

[@2010georgian1]

this was so awesome

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thanks!

[@_CUANDO]

gracias

[@westerlu77]

Cool video and supergreat mics overall, but my suggestion is to buy new heads, especially the toms, you can see that they are all stretched out and have to be replaced. That will improve the sound a lot. Good luck!

[@danielsfarris]

Very nice. I hate to Monday-morning quarterback, but it seems to me that the kick needed either tuning or muffling. And I don't mind tape noise, but it did seem a little noisier than necessary. What was the tape machine calibrated to? I used to use +6/250. Overall great drum sound though.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

+6/185nw/m, we probably played it off the sync head directly(you can hear the relay noise when we press play), that's why there's a little bit of hiss. This machine was designed to run at +6 and to be used with Scotch 250, Ampex 456 and alike. Usually the noise floor on this machine can go down all the way to -64/-70 db.

[@hi-friaudioman]

3:45 Those poor jbl monitors!

[@niekdriesschen3376]

Cool, just wondering, why don't you monitor straight off the tape while it's recording? I got a MCI JH24, when recording drums i always monitor off tape to adjust levels, and find myself often hitting the tape way harder by listening off tape then i would by just looking at the meter. the JH16 is a gorgeous machine i bet you can hit those levels way harder!!

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

There's a bit too much bleed from the live room so we usually just do a couple of test cuts to make sure we like what comes off the tape. But yeah, monitoring off the tape is a big one! The machine probably can handle anything you throw at it but the console( MCI JH-636) is a lot more conservative when it comes to levels so it implodes pretty quickly if you cut too hot. Also the JH-16 has a more archaic erase circuit(and an inline erase head vs the staggered one on later machines) so it doesn't always erase hotter cuts thus we're kinda used to keep our levels pretty conservative. But we definitely want to try that sometime!

[@niekdriesschen3376]

@@fluxmagneticstudios4046 Ah I get what you mean, I had the same ''problem'' where my console would start saturating before my tape machine, then i re-calibrated my machine, basicly turned all the input levels way up and the output levels down, in which the machine goes into tape saturation earlier. Hmmm and this problem of the tape not fully erasing with loud levels, that must be fixable? The JH-16 is such a beautiful machine, i'm jalous..it must sound amazing when you'd hit the tape hard. But yeah it already sounds awesome, anyway! Cool studio!!

[@preciseaudioblog]

Sounds huge!! Digital is so far away from that result... wow...

[@Ky6Stringer]

Super Duper! ❤

[@kaiulrich6185]

Your 421‘s are really old, they have amphenol to xlr adaptors.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Yep, they're from the 60s. Great for toms and acoustic guitars!

[@Salantsoundstudios]

Rock it brothas!

[@asherfilms923]

Fantastic video, wildly informative, hated the last 20 seconds

[@MrJoshEsc4p3]

Wow sounds just like Zeppelin!

[@willdenham]

Honestly, I don't think I could judge a decent drum sound without hearing it in a band mix.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Valid point, we have more vids with music in them! Check them out!

[@willdenham]

@fluxmagneticstudios4046 This would be a limitation of my experience. I'm not saying the standard way of doing it is flawed.

[@garethde-witt6433]

First lesson I learned at Trackdown Studio Sydney 1993🙂 not as hard as it seems

[@MrJoshEsc4p3]

3:46 HOT RATS

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Good eye! We love Zappa!

[@nenntmichbond]

How did you get XLR outputs on these old mics?

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

We made an adapter for the AKG d12 which is just an XLR to TS jack adapter with the "cold" lug shorted to ground. For the MD 421 there are some adapters that you can get from ebay to convert those to XLR. The Toshiba mic had a female XLR retrofitted onto it from before. Hope this helps!

[@DaDudeClub]

Thanks for the upload! I've actually enjoyed the final dry mix before verb & eq, at least to me was a great example of mic choice&placement + room techniques. Subscribed instantly for the non-BS non-fluff, real-world and honest production, including the errors/trials. Keep it up!

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Thank you so much! Actually all the "console feed" parts are that same dry mix except it's not coming from the machine playback, just a pass through. It is awesome, nothing can beat a good room and a well tuned kit. Imagine what you could get at Olympic Studios that had 20 foot ceilings, that's why those records sound so good!

[@jamescassidy4045]

What snare is that if I may ask?

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Hi! It's Ludwig Coliseum.

[@gansbikkunn]

Cool lesson, but for some reason all recorded audio in the video drifts to the right channel

[@TheMazo02]

nice 4408

[@willdenham]

Did you guys steal this studio from Glyn Johns?

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

As a matter of fact, probably yes! We "stole" a lot of inspiration from The Great British Recording Studios book and Howard Massey stole it from Glyn Johns and not only! There's a whole treasure trove of stuff in there!

[@willdenham]

@fluxmagneticstudios4046 I'm going to check out that book. I read Glyns biography. He explains and shows a photo of his drum mic placement. I heard that Bonham would mic his own drums at all their sessions after Zep 1. I'm wondering if it was the Glyn setup.

[@eliaguglielmi4580]

Sennkeiser lol

[@TheDonBU2B]

No offense, but I wouldn't put any compression on any of the mics. You should be focused on capturing the best raw sound possible. Should be just mics, preamps and recording. Now I see your using tape to record. My suggestion has only been used with digital recording. Not sure if you need compression with tape recording.

[@fluxmagneticstudios4046]

Excellent point, actually the only thing that has a compressor on it is the kick drum. In 99% cases it ends up being compressed anyway so we put it on the way in. This allows us to free up our 1176'es for other things like snare and vocal compression. With tape some sources need to be compressed on the way in as the noise floor is higher than the digital. Usually those end up being vocals and kick drum.

[@MrBeblis]

Check phase always,