First I'll introduce myself.

My name is Drew, and I'm a producer/keyboardist. Though I know quite a bit about engineering, I try to keep myself away from it to allow my musical creativity to flow better.

My residency studio:

-Pro Tools|HD 7.1
-HD 3 Accel
-Control 24
-Focusrite Red Pres
-UA 2-610
-DynAudio Air 15/Air Bass 2 5.1 Surround
-McDSP CB and FB
-Focusrite D2/D3
-TL Space
-TC MasterX3
-Waves RennMax
-Fairchild Compressors
-Moogerfooger
-Guitar Rig2
-Stylus RMX
-Minimoog V
-And Other Various Digi Bundled Plugins

Getting beyond all that...

Most projects I send off to be mixed professionally. I have a side project of my own, that I'm working on. Since I'm don't want to send these tunes off to be mixed until I have a full album's worth, I decided I would mix them myself for the time being.

I have access to all this great equipment, and I am now needing some mixing help. Currently, my problem is drum sounds. I'll give you a rundown of what I have done so far. Starting with mic technique: Close Miked.

2 Mikes for the Kick-one internal Cardoid one Subkick External.
2 Mikes for snare Cardoid top Large Condenser Bottom
1 Condenser for hats
3 mikes for the toms 2 condensers for the hi and mid tom, one cardoid for the low tom.
1 "crotch" mike with high compression
2 Overheads, condenser, equidistant to the snare
2 Condenser Room Mics,

All mics are phase aligned to the overheads.

What I am wondering about after all this, is what can I do to make the snare have that modern day country big room snare sound? i.e. Rascal Flatts "Mayberry" or similar? Or how about general mix principles for the drums beyond what I've already done?

Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

Can I get a *bump*?

I'm not exactly familiar with the song you mentioned, but I do know a few things about mixing a snare. If your looking for the big room sound then most of that sound is going to come from your reverb. The longer the decay time the bigger the room sound, just don't get too carried away and make it sound too unatural. Try about 750ms of decay with about 10ms of pre delay. Of course mess around with it but thats a good place to start. Also I like to boost the 4kHz-5kHz range to get a little more snap. The exact frequency will vary depending on your snare, but again a good place to start. Try it out, and keep toying with it till you find a sound you like, hope that little bit helps.


-Mike
www.michaelspranger.com

to get more bottom end out of it, boost it around 150-200Hz with a narrow Q.
For more snap or stick sound, boost it somewhere around 3-5Khz. since you have your overheads you should low shelf cut it at about 10-12KHz.
also, if you follow this method, you should sweep around 400-700 Hz at narrow Q and boosted all the way, listening for that honky, cardboard snare sound, you then want to pull this out all the way. these EQ settings will only bring out the best of what the snare has to offer, so make sure you are using new, well tuned heads, propper dampening, and a good drummer.

They are sound replacing the snare ,if not everything else toms, kick etc..., in those recordings. So basically even though they're getting a really nice recording they're putting a MIDI sample of a snare underneath every snare hit and blending the two. That has a lot to do with that "sound". But also you should try what the other two replies say as well.

You said it, "big room sound snare". Record the room as well as the drum.

www.elementalrecordings.co.uk

I'll reply to each item, then tell you where to pan and how to design reverb for the snare:
2 Mikes for the Kick-one internal Cardoid one Subkick External.
delete the external mic, how are you supposed to control all the bleed into that mic? i hope the other is inside the drum--which is the only reason to cut a hole

2 Mikes for snare Cardoid top Large Condenser Bottom
delete the bottom

1 Condenser for hats
fine

3 mikes for the toms 2 condensers for the hi and mid tom, one cardoid for the low tom.
hyper cardiod for all three, deal with what you have. you want tight pickup patterns

1 "crotch" mike with high compression
delete it

2 Overheads, condenser, equidistant to the snare
x/y? i locate them above the cymbals i'm most interested in. x/y works but I generally want specific instruments and will let less played cymbals sort themselves out.

2 Condenser Room Mics,
delete them

kick; noon
snare; 1:00 to 2:00
hat; 3:00
small rack; 3:00
large rack: 9:00
floor tom; 7:00 or hard left
overRight; hard right
overLeft; hard left

Mix design is all about the stereo field. When you look at the kit, that's where each instrument is located in the field--locate other instruments as you see them on stage. Voc production is another story.

In the groove, the reverb should cut before the kick drum plays--tight equals clean and punching. Focus on the big picture, every decision I made cleaned out the kit. We don't want all that extraneous junk. Use compression to control peaks and enable you to turn each kit instrument up louder.

When you EQ, listen to each instrument and hear the frequencies you don't want and cut them out. IOW, remove the junk and keep what you want. Think about SSL mixer strips, they have EQ and dynamics. Why? Because you should record what you want to mix. People who say not to use dynamics and even EQ during record are deliberately misinforming, ignorant or way to conservative.

It's not about developing a habit of using compression for X all the time. It's about listening to what is there, i.e. if I minimize the dynamic, i can turn it up louder and the peaks won't overload the A/Ds. If you over compress, the dynamic punch is lost.

rtp405, not sure why you would make some of the recommendations here. For instance, removing the subkick. There is no bleed with the subkick. It is only to add the lowest registers of the kick drum and unless you have the bass cab right up on it you will not get any bleed. Michael Wagner, Phil O'Keefe and dozens of other engineers are using the subkick. Listen to the latest Kings X album, it is all over it. Drew, roll of everything above 200Hz or so and bring it up under the interior mic. Remember to flip the phase on both of the kick mics.

Keep the bottom snare mic but use the polar pattern to keep the kick sound out of the mic. Again, flip the phase on the channel. A little goes a long ways. Too much and you will take the meat out of the snare. On Mayberry I hear just a bit of the snare wires. Just adds a bit of sizzle to the sound. It sounds like a hall reverb, maybe 2 sec. I don't hear much low end in the verb, they may have rolled that off (not a bad idea in general with the snare). It also sounds like they pulled back on the verb while he was doing the side stick in the middle of the song. Remember a little verb goes a long ways. listen to the snare verb in the context of the whole kit as you add it in. You don't want it to sound artificial in the sense that the snare was recorded in a much bigger space than the rest of the drums.

For the overheads if you are talking about equidistance like a Glyn John setup, that works great. I prefer Johns method over the recorderman version, just my own take on it. Either give you a nice sound with minimum phasing.

I would track with the room mics and see if they sits right. Room mics can be tricky if the room itself is not really nice to begin with. I don't know your room. It never hurts to put up a mic to get the room. If it works great, if not don't use them.

FWIW, I doubt that they used drum replacements on the Melt album. That album and all their albums were cut at Lyric Street in Nashville. I don't see them tainting the sound of their SSL 9000 board with drumagog. They would redo the track. I think Dan Huff was involved in the early records with them, he would make them retake the track rather than replace the drums.
_________________
Kent
www.venuestudios.com