April 6th, 2009

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Today, I planned on recording a finalized guitar track for the song Summer Love. However, after creating an initial click track, I found that I needed to diversify to my actual song. So, I did not record anything today. Nevertheless, Dr. Wolek recorded a classmate of mine playing drums in class a few weeks ago. He then made every member enrolled in the course mix the drums together. In order to accomplish this, we had to try and isolate every piece of the drum-kit. I attempted to do this and abandoned my original plan for today.

I isolated the kick drum by using equalization to enhance its low frequencies and to take out as much leakage from the rest of the kit as possible. I then added compression, as well as a noise gate to cut out ambient noise from the rest of the drum-kit.

I isolated the snare drum using equalization to enhance the middle frequencies of the snare and take out any leakage from the symbols, high-hat, and the kick drum. I also put a limiter on the snare to keep it from peaking.

I tried using equalization, compression, a noise gate, and a limiter to isolate the toms, but I ended up simply muting the track because the overhead microphones were picking them up better than the microphone which recorded them.

I isolated the floor tom by using equalization to dramatically boost the low frequencies of the instrument while allowing some higher frequencies to pass, which gives the floor tom a very full sound. I increased its gain, but I had to add a limiter to it because its volume output was so sporadic. I also added a noise gate to further cut out the snare, high-hat, and cymbals.

I isolated the high-hat by using equalization to enhance the high frequencies and to eliminate any leakage from other the other elements of the drum-kit. I also added compression and a limiter, to help with the dynamics of the instrument and eliminate any peaking.

I panned the two overhead microphones left and right in order to add stereo quality to the piece. I also adjusting the acoustic positioning of the kick, snare, high-hat, and tom in order to increase this stereo aspect of the recording.

  • Click here to listen to this recording of drums.
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