Archives
July 2010
Summer is hot, and so are the rhythms—RECORDING’s July issue is packed full of great information on drums, beats, and percussion! In this issue, we bring you three fantastic tutorials that are guaranteed to get you up to speed on the best rhythm tracks you can deliver.
Joe Albano serves up a doubleheader this issue, completing last month’s miking primer with a long look at drum kit miking, and then walking you through an informative step-by-step case study on drum replacement. Michael Nickolas completes the trifecta with a look at why some recording musicians can’t get drum loops to sound good in their songs... and how you can avoid the simple mistakes that lead to blah rhythm tracks.
We have a lovely slate of drum-centric reviews on tap, with drum-heavy reviews of mics from Earthworks, Mojave Audio, MXL, and Granelli Audio Labs, plus a look at drum-track creation software both well-established (Toontrack DFH Superior) and brand-new (FXpansion BFD eco). We round out our rhythm coverage with a quick listen to percussion libraries from Sony Creative Software and Big Fish Audio.
Also in this issue: another look at the legalities of keeping your music yours, reviews of the newest mic preamp from Grace Design, a road-ready audio interface from PreSonus, and more! If you’re into the beat, you won’t want to miss the July RECORDING!
Pick it up now on the newsstand... and so you get your next issue early (and save on cost), why not hit the big red Subscribe Now button on this page and have RECORDING delivered to your door each month?
Earthworks SR40
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Reviewed by
Dave Martin
Earthworks SR40 |
Reviewed by
Dave Martin
An intriguing take on drum miking, with a mic whose frequency response is stellar.
The folks at Earthworks continue to explore the possibilities inherent in their original QTC1 design (reviewed October 1998), finding new app......Expand
An intriguing take on drum miking, with a mic whose frequency response is stellar.
The folks at Earthworks continue to explore the possibilities inherent in their original QTC1 design (reviewed October 1998), finding new applications for their ultra-small mic diaphragms that are fine-tuned for better suitability in specific applications.
The latest offering from the New Hampshire-based company is the SR40, a cardioid microphone with a wide frequency range and fast impulse response; while it’s not designed to be used only as an overhead for drums, this is certainly an application that seems appropriate given the specs...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Mojave Audio MA-101fet
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Reviewed by
Dave Martin
Mojave Audio MA-101fet |
Reviewed by
Dave Martin
This small-diaphragm condenser mic is versatile on drums and more.
Mojave Audio’s newest offering is the MA-101fet, a small-diaphragm, solid-state condenser microphone with interchangeable cardioid and omnidirectional capsul......Expand
This small-diaphragm condenser mic is versatile on drums and more.
Mojave Audio’s newest offering is the MA-101fet, a small-diaphragm, solid-state condenser microphone with interchangeable cardioid and omnidirectional capsules. The MA-101 combines the capsules from Mojave Audio’s MA-100 (reviewed May 2008) with the electronics from their MA-201fet (reviewed December 2009).
The MA-101fet is a phantom-powered, transformer-balanced microphone featuring a military-grade FET, an ultra-clean amplifier, and a Jensen transformer. For extremely high SPL applications, an internally switchable 15 dB attenuator can be used...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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FXpansion BFD Eco
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
FXpansion BFD Eco |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
The Big Friendly Drum instrument now comes in a cute but mighty entry-level version.
FXpansion has made a lot of friends with its BFD drum instrument. This program, which runs in standalone mode or works as a plug-in within ......Expand
The Big Friendly Drum instrument now comes in a cute but mighty entry-level version.
FXpansion has made a lot of friends with its BFD drum instrument. This program, which runs in standalone mode or works as a plug-in within a DAW, lets you build virtual drum kits by selecting drums from a large and expandable sample library, mike them in various ways, mix them, add effects, and create completed drum mixes using MIDI grooves to play them, all without a real drummer in sight. We’ve reviewed BFD and its sound expansion packs a number of times since its inception; our latest review was of BFD 2, in August 2009.
FXpansion’s latest release in the world of BFD is BFD Eco, an entry-level version of the program that covers the basics of virtual drum kit construction and mixing at an affordable price...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Grace Design m501 Preamp
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Grace Design m501 Preamp |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
The legendary Grace clarity, now available in a 500 Series module format.
Grace Design is well known in the audio industry for high-quality, boutique-level microphone preamps and monitoring solutions. For over a decade, the ......Expand
The legendary Grace clarity, now available in a 500 Series module format.
Grace Design is well known in the audio industry for high-quality, boutique-level microphone preamps and monitoring solutions. For over a decade, the cornerstone of the company has been its solid-state, transformerless, trans-impedance microphone preamp. It comes in 8-channel, 2-channel and single channel versions. Certain terms and traits—uncolored, transparent, quiet, high headroom, fast transient response—describe this preamp well.
Back in the August 2002 issue Recording reviewed the Model 101 mic preamp, updated to the m101 version in the March 2009 issue. This month we bring you the new m501 pre, marking Grace’s entry into API’s popular 500 Series format...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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MXL Drum Cube and A55 Kicker Microphones
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Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
MXL Drum Cube and A55 Kicker Microphones |
Reviewed by
Paul Vnuk Jr.
Affordable additions to the drum mic closet, each with its own interesting character.
Ten years ago, if you could not afford a large-diaphragm condenser microphone, MXL got you in the game and got you tracking.
......Expand
Affordable additions to the drum mic closet, each with its own interesting character.
Ten years ago, if you could not afford a large-diaphragm condenser microphone, MXL got you in the game and got you tracking.
As MXL grew, the company added better internal components (Mogami wiring, anyone?), custom tweaking, and US quality control. Today its products range from sub-$100 beginner mics like the 990 to high-end multi-pattern tube mics like the $1200 Revelation (review coming soon).
With over 40 available models, MXL has a mic for everyone and every source. Since this is our drum issue you can guess what we are looking at this month...
Read more about these mics in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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RECORDING's Showcase Of Sounds
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
RECORDING's Showcase Of Sounds |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
Big Fish Audio Cinematic Percussion, Elemental Studio Percussion, and Epic Drums; Sony Continental Drift and Continental Drift: Aftershocks.
The newest libraries in the Sony Sound Series: Loops & Samples catalog, Continental......Expand
Big Fish Audio Cinematic Percussion, Elemental Studio Percussion, and Epic Drums; Sony Continental Drift and Continental Drift: Aftershocks.
The newest libraries in the Sony Sound Series: Loops & Samples catalog, Continental Drift and Continental Drift: Aftershocks, are world-music libraries, featuring instruments from eight ethnic groupings: African, Asian, East Indian, Arabic, Celtic, Native American, Ukrainian Gypsy, and Appalachian. The material is presented in 24-bit/44.1 kHz ACIDized WAV file format, usable in almost any DAW...
There’s even more material from the recording sessions than has appeared on these libraries, and Sony is making it available to the public in various ways. To accompany this review, Sony has graciously allowed Recording to offer a time-limited link to a special package of samples from the Continental Drift sessions.
These samples, 101 MB in all, include loops that add onto the two main libraries (numbered to dovetail with the existing samples), plus performances on a pre-Civil-War Martin guitar, and are available to all our readers free of charge. Just go to http://tinyurl.com/RecMagSonyBonusContent before July 31, 2010, to download yours!
Read more about this library, and the three offerings from Big Fish Audio, in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0—A Walking Tour
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Reviewed by
Greg Hurley
Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0—A Walking Tour |
Reviewed by
Greg Hurley
Watch us build a drum track with this powerful drum-sample instrument, and hear the results online!
Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 has become my main go-to drum instrument for producing high-quality drum tracks here in my pr......Expand
Watch us build a drum track with this powerful drum-sample instrument, and hear the results online!
Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 has become my main go-to drum instrument for producing high-quality drum tracks here in my production studio. It lets me configure practically any type of drumset for any particular style of music. Whole drumsets or individual drums can be quickly loaded, tuned and then configured much the same way an engineer would do in the studio; if you’re like me and don’t have the space or budget for a drum room, Superior Drummer 2.0 (“SD2”) just rocks...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING, and check out the audio examples below!
1. A basic groove created as given in the article.
2. The same groove with mic bleed:
- Kick bleeding into snare and hats mics.
- Snare bleeding into hats, ride, cymbals, and overhead mics
- Hats bleeding into snare mic
3. The groove from example 2 with compression added:
- Kick: ratio 3:1, 10 ms attack, 50 ms release, 4 dB makeup gain
- Snare: ratio 2:1, 0.1 ms attack, 100 ms release, 2 dB makeup gain
4. The groove from example 3 with eq added:
- Kick: 5-band eq with band 2 at 8 dB/180 Hz/1.5Q, and band 4 at 6 dB/3 kHz/2.8Q. Bands 1,3,5 are flat.
- Snare: 5-band eq with band 2 at 12 dB/122 Hz/4.0Q, band 3 at -8 dB/83 Hz/2.5Q, band 4 at 4.4 dB/4.7 kHz/3Q, and band 5 at 8 dB/10 kHz/1.0Q. Band 1 is flat.
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PreSonus FireStudio Mobile
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Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
PreSonus FireStudio Mobile |
Reviewed by
Mike Metlay
This FireWire interface is compact, rugged, clean, and comes with a wealth of cool extras.
Like its predecessor the Firebox (reviewed December 2006), the PreSonus FireStudio Mobile is a 1/3-rackspace box in the “Max Rack” fo......Expand
This FireWire interface is compact, rugged, clean, and comes with a wealth of cool extras.
Like its predecessor the Firebox (reviewed December 2006), the PreSonus FireStudio Mobile is a 1/3-rackspace box in the “Max Rack” form factor that’s common among other PreSonus products like the HP4 headphone amp and the TubePRE preamp. But the resemblance is mostly skin deep; this new interface offers updated flexibility, more power under the hood, higher-quality sound, and a radically different I/O complement—one that in my opinion will make a lot more users happy than the Firebox’s did...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Once Over—Reviews In Brief
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Reviewed by
Dave Martin and Paul Vnuk Jr.
Once Over—Reviews In Brief |
Reviewed by
Dave Martin and Paul Vnuk Jr.
Granelli Audio Labs G5790; Old Jersey Music Lab Drum Wallet.
... many years ago Shure Brothers manufactured the 545S and the 546; both could be considered as predecessors to Shure’s SM57, and are microphones with short bodie......Expand
Granelli Audio Labs G5790; Old Jersey Music Lab Drum Wallet.
... many years ago Shure Brothers manufactured the 545S and the 546; both could be considered as predecessors to Shure’s SM57, and are microphones with short bodies and a pistol grip that attaches to the mic stand. The short microphone body allowed these microphones to be used in tight miking setups where a ‘normal’ sized SM57 wouldn’t fit. They were (and still are) great for use on drums and in complex percussion setups, but are no longer in production.
Fortunately, the folks at Granelli Audio Labs realized that not only is there still a need for microphones that can be used in tight spots, but that Shure’s SM57 is the right mic—or would be, if only it would fit!
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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A Drum Miking Primer
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Written by
Joe Albano
A Drum Miking Primer |
Written by
Joe Albano
We follow up on last month’s mic locker article and lead into this month’s issue on drums and percussion with a basic look at drum mic setups.
Ah, the drums—probably the single most complex acoustic instrument most project s......Expand
We follow up on last month’s mic locker article and lead into this month’s issue on drums and percussion with a basic look at drum mic setups.
Ah, the drums—probably the single most complex acoustic instrument most project studios will ever record. And there’s no shortage of viable approaches to the task, either, so let’s look at some of the most basic, tried-and-true takes on capturing the skins...
Read all about it in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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The Fine Art of Drum Replacement
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Written by
Joe Albano
The Fine Art of Drum Replacement |
Written by
Joe Albano
When your drums sound weak, you can replace them with better ones... but the process requires skill and patience. Read and learn!
The virtual recording studio has acclimated even the most fervent traditionalists among us to ......Expand
When your drums sound weak, you can replace them with better ones... but the process requires skill and patience. Read and learn!
The virtual recording studio has acclimated even the most fervent traditionalists among us to editing and mixing techniques that never would have been dreamt of in the early years of multitrack recording. While much of what we do in our digital workstations is simply a virtual version of standard analog/hardware-based editing and mixing techniques, other options now open to us have no analog or physical equivalent—tools like MIDI, Auto-Tune, or Elastic/Flex editing, for example, offer capabilities that far exceed what could be done with recorded audio only a couple of decades ago.
Of course, all this after-the-fact control over recorded tracks does have at least one side-effect—it tends to significantly lengthen the process of editing and mixing! “That can’t be changed” or “we’ll need to re-record it from scratch” are quickly fading from engineers’ vocabularies, as a conventional wisdom of “almost anything is possible” gradually takes over. One such technology, that years ago would have required some major hoop-jumping but now has become fairly commonplace, is drum replacement...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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DAW Details
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Written by
David Summer
DAW Details |
Written by
David Summer
Tips and tricks for working with clicks.
A click is just a tool, and those who say it causes the music to become “soulless” and “robotic”, imposing an artificial constraint on their music, need to realize that it’s not the t......Expand
Tips and tricks for working with clicks.
A click is just a tool, and those who say it causes the music to become “soulless” and “robotic”, imposing an artificial constraint on their music, need to realize that it’s not the tool itself that can help or harm your music—it’s how you use it...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Create Your Songs With Drum Loops
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Written by
Michael Nickolas
Create Your Songs With Drum Loops |
Written by
Michael Nickolas
Basic arranging techniques can keep your loop-based compositions musical rather than mechanical.
Think of “loops” and the concept of repeating the same thing over and over comes to mind... which is why some music creators st......Expand
Basic arranging techniques can keep your loop-based compositions musical rather than mechanical.
Think of “loops” and the concept of repeating the same thing over and over comes to mind... which is why some music creators stay away from using them. I feel that very authentic-sounding drum parts can be created using drum loop libraries, once you learn some arranging techniques. In most cases they sound better than MIDI-programmed drums to me, second only to having a real drummer play the part.
While there are other ways of using loops, for the purpose of this article I’ll focus on the arranging of loops from within software made specifically for dealing with loops—ACID, SONAR, GarageBand, etc.. And while there are multi-track loop products available that have all the drums split out by individual instrument, for the purpose of this article I’ll focus on the majority of drum loop libraries that are stereo recordings...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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It's Your Music—Know Your Rights. Chapter 4: The Business End, Part 1
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Written by
Todd Gascon and Bruce Kaphan
It's Your Music—Know Your Rights. Chapter 4: The Business End, Part 1 |
Written by
Todd Gascon and Bruce Kaphan
Turning your music work into a viable business that’s well-established against legal attack is more complex than you may realize, but it’s not impossible, and yields real benefits.
There has never been a better time for us i......Expand
Turning your music work into a viable business that’s well-established against legal attack is more complex than you may realize, but it’s not impossible, and yields real benefits.
There has never been a better time for us independent artists to survive doing what we love to do. But we need to know about the business, and while you can get a bookkeeper to do your day-to-day accounts, you and only you can make the decisions that involve the legal framework for your business. A lawyer can help when needed, but you have to be informed, first and foremost. That’s why we started this column...
As I’ve prepared to launch my new album, for the first time in my life, I’ve had to oversee every single aspect of what in my previous experience was always done by one record company or another. While developing my own solo career, I’ve also produced and engineered many albums for clients, which taught me even more about taking care of the business end...
A great deal of my awareness of how to do business properly has come from conversations with this series’ co-writer, attorney Todd Gascon, as well as from my tax advisor, Martha Norberg. Like so many other musicians I know, I used to think that paying my state and federal taxes was all I needed to do to be in compliance with the law. WRONG!...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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Fade Out
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Written by
Scott Dorsey
Fade Out |
Written by
Scott Dorsey
IC Replacement: Plug-And-Play Audio Improvement.
Back in the 1980s, a company called Precision Monolithics, Inc. was in the business of selling specialized integrated circuits to the audio industry. They had a nice variety o......Expand
IC Replacement: Plug-And-Play Audio Improvement.
Back in the 1980s, a company called Precision Monolithics, Inc. was in the business of selling specialized integrated circuits to the audio industry. They had a nice variety of chips from transistor arrays, compressors, balanced input and output circuits, and a couple of really nice mic preamp ICs called the SSM2015 and SSM2016....
The folks at PMI took conventional off-the-shelf semicustom dies and they managed to implement some remarkably high-performance circuits on them. The SSM2015 and SSM2016 mic preamps used front ends that consisted of a lot of transistors in parallel for very low noise. They were a bit odd for the equipment designer to use because the pin layout was strange (due to the configuration of the semicustom die), but they turned up in a large number of pieces of equipment from the Symetrix SX-202 preamplifier to the Amek Mozart console, and they provided pretty good sound at a pretty low cost.
All this was fine, but then the audio market got bigger and bigger and bigger...
Read more in the July 2010 issue of RECORDING!
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