Overlooking the Obvious

Saying that the drum sound comes from the drummer might seem as though it's stating the obvious, but with all the tools available to us these days, it's easy to lose track of the importance of the musicians who are playing on our recordings.

I've seen engineers obsess over the quality of their converters yet not notice that the bass player is playing stuff that doesn't fit what the rest of the band is playing. I've heard them bemoan the fact that they weren't able to buy microphone "X" for a specific application while ignoring the fact that the guitar is out of tune. I've even heard them extol the sound of the preamp on the vocal mic — though they don't notice that the singer can't hit the high notes.

I tend to look at drum recording (really, all recording) with one main principle — the closest thing to the creator of the sound is the most important, with the level of importance diminishing as you move away. So the drummer is really important, the drums are quite important, the microphone placement is pretty important, the preamps less so, and the converters are, in the greater scheme of things, inconsequential. To illustrate this principle, I'd suggest that more than half of the drum sound comes from the drummer's head and hands (well, if you include the ability to tune the kit as coming from the drummer's head, it's more than half). Another quarter to a third of the overall sound comes from the instrument -- that is, the drum set itself, including the appropriate choice of sticks, snare drums, and cymbals. That leaves less than 25% of the overall drum sound as the engineer's responsibility. That 25% includes everything from mic placement to choosing the right signal chain (microphone, preamp, EQ, compression) and all the way to the mix stage.

Does this musician-centric approach mean the job of an engineer is less significant? Of course not — we're supposed to obsess over things that a layperson might consider to be trivial, including those pesky converters. Besides, though I've been discussing the drummer's sound, we as engineers are really responsible for the drummer's tone; these are very different things. The aspects that make a given musician recognizable on a recording involve his touch, his groove, his note choices, and his overall approach to playing. The engineer is the one who makes the drums sound great by choosing the right microphone, the right placement, and every other significant and minor detail.

This really means that, even with less-than-stellar equipment, memorable musical performances can be captured in the studio. But great recordings require both a great musician and an engineer who understands which tools will best enhance what the musician plays.

It's important to note that I don't record microphones or compressors. I'm using that equipment to record musicians. That should be obvious — but sometimes the obvious gets overlooked.