9/21/2016 Session Notes: Tracking Drums With The Travis Waltons | Sound On Sound

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Session Notes: Tracking Drums With The Travis Waltons Looking At The Kit
Over The Top
The Practical Craft of Recording Fighting The Flab
More Lows Please
Recording
Maximum Snare
By Neil Rogers Published September 2016 Driven Toms
Room Mics
Hitting Record
Final Thoughts
Drum Tuning
Session Notes: The Travis Waltons’ Drum
Recording
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The two overhead setups: a pair of AKG C414s in cardioid mode, and a stereo gure-of-eight ribbon mic. As
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In a Session Notes column earlier this year (http://sosm.ag/sn-mar16), I discussed how to set September 2016
your priorities when faced with a fairly short time in which to record a band. I explained how I
stripped down a recording session to its bare essentials, in order to get the best result possible
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in the limited time available, and in particular what considerations I made when it came to
capturing the drums. This month, I’ll take you through the opposite scenario: a recent drum
recording session for an album where time allowed for a much more expansive set-up.

I also want to explain some ways in which you can give yourself a little sonic exibility when
recording a whole album’s worth of drums in a single sitting. Why would you want exibility?
Well, in an ideal world, we’d have an extensive pre-production process, and each song on the
album would be treated to a bespoke drum selection, tuning and mic choice to match.
Increasingly, though, such sessions are about striking a balance that ensures enough time and
care is taken with the recordings, whilst making sure you can get what you need done in a
reasonably cost-e ective manner. And whilst drum recording should be a very involved and
enjoyable process, drums are not the only things people will hear; it’s hugely important that Vance Powell: Recording Rock
Uploaded 1 month 4 days ago
enough time and money are left to record the rest of the album with an equal amount of care!
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9/21/2016 Session Notes: Tracking Drums With The Travis Waltons | Sound On Sound
To give you an idea of how much time we’re talking about, we had two days in which to get the
drums tracked for 14 songs. To get this done while achieving the right balance typically means
having a fairly xed drum-kit setup, except for changing or tweaking the all-important snare
drum on a song-by-song basis. In terms of mic selection for a session such as this, I’ll try and
give myself a reasonable number of sonic options that allow me to ‘future proof’ the recordings
somewhat, by a ording me or someone else a little exibility at the mix stage. That said, I still
prefer to commit to a certain aesthetic at the tracking stage, so I’m not left drowning in choices.
Yes, that’s right, I want my cake and to eat it...

Looking At The Kit Recording Drums: What Difference Does The Room
Make?
The kit we had for this session was a good-quality DW (Drum Workshop) one, with fairly new Uploaded 1 month 4 days ago
heads on the toms and snare. The basic con guration was a 22-inch kick, 12x8 rack tom and
14x12 oor. The amount of cymbals present made me a little nervous, because along with the
ubiquitous hit-hat and ride there were three large crashes and a china-style cymbal waiting to
be laid into!

I always make a point of chatting to the drummer when he’s setting up his kit, as...

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