barry j neely, composer

After doing several rock and metal covers, we decided to go in a different direction. I was asked a few times to do a version of this Rihanna song, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how. 

For one thing, the original is incredibly unmelodic; it’s basically made up of 2 notes. And since I’d rather draw on the source material as much as possible, most of the horns and strings were taken from just that one keyboard part at the beginning. At least when we slowed the song down as we did, the vocal line could do some more variations to mix up the melody.

Our "Mission: Impossible" theme is out!

We went and made this theme, in a very complicated rhythm, even more intricate. It features Crissy J on violin, but it also highlights the talent of drummer Adam Hanson and guitarist Jon Weed.

For music-philes, the original theme is all in 5/4 time. For the 1996 movie, they did a version that was in 4/4. We took it a step further and made a 6/4 version in the middle, after we honored the original theme at the beginning, of course.

Yesterday, the music group I coordinate (and play with, that’s me, direct middle) recorded AND filmed 3 cover song videos. One was for the “Mission: Impossible” Theme, the other the “Daredevil” theme, and finally, which is pictured above, a complete horn-band/swing version of Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money.”

These covers are a chance for me to show my musical arranging skills, show off the musicians themselves (and there is a lot of talent pictured), and just to have fun. I make tough arrangements - odd time signatures, odd beats, complicated and dense harmonies - okay, except for the horns, those just sound great in unison/octaves - and I love to see the musicians excel. I apologize if I stress them out at all.

How much do Youtube numbers mean? When you’re on my musical level where you’re in a no way a star, but think you do some cool stuff, they’re all you got.

It’s hard to describe my mobile recording unit in an Instagram photo. 

After working with a MOTU Traveler for a number of years, and receiving another one left over from a company I used to work for, the outdated Firewire 400 became a hassle. But I could barely sell one for over $100, though they were $800 new. 

Along comes the Apogee Quartet. You can’t see it here because it’s tucked away, custom mounted inside. Why? Because you don’t need surface access to the unit, everything is software controlled! What the Quartet allows me to do is use my MOTU Travelers as 4 mic pres and connect them through the optical interface. Those MOTU units are still great units, so I was happy not to have them go to waste. I know they have quite a few more inputs, but if I want to run at 96k (which isn’t entirely necessary), I could only use the 4 channels anyway. Therefore, Quartet + MOTU1 + MOTU2 = 12 channels. For me, that’s just perfect for recording a full drum set, bass, guitar, and a few more instruments - at once.

With most instruments, you mic single sources: (1) guitar amp, (1) violin. But with the average drummer, you tend to have at least a kick drum, snare, rack tom, floor tom, hi-hat, one ride cymbal and maybe two crash cymbals.

Here I’ll explain working with a standard 5-piece drum kit (this does not include the crash or ride cymbals when naming the drum count). I'm going to be using the tracks from a long time ago project "One Day...Will Subside" because it's one of my better drum mixing examples.

Drummer Jason Wallack spent a lot of time tuning his drums, which makes the recording process a lot easier. 

I use a pretty basic mic set-up when recording drums. Why? Because it works. I don't concentrate on putting a mic on every cymbal, but instead use what we call an overhead mic array. This captures not only the cymbals, but a different perspective on the other drums.

Isolation is the key when recording: I would love the kick drum mic to record only the kick drum, the tom mic only the tom, etc. But with drums, it's hard to completely prevent bleed-through and some microphones just naturally pick up the other drum sounds. There's a lot you can do later on in the mixing process, but I'll get to that later.

kick drum mic - AKG D112 - stuck right in the bass drum through a hole in the front, leave it about 4-5 inches from the drum head that the kick pedal hits against

snare drum mic top - Shure SM57 - placed at a 45º angle, pointed towards the center of the drum head, but close to the rim to pick up a little of the naturally occuring snare head ring

(though this array does not have it, I’ve found it quite essential to have a mic on the snare bottoms as well - SM57 works great ther, too)

floor tom mic - Sennheiser 421 - same placement as snare drum head

rack tom mic - Shure 57 - it’s simple and works for me

overheads - Rode NT5 - a great stereo matched pair

In a large studio circumstance, which I rarely have available, you'd use an additional stereo pair as "room mics", which do just that: record the entire sound of the drums in the room. Unfortunately, the rooms that I usually record in do not sound that great, so I have to concentrate on the individual drums themselves.

For Jason and I, a few hours later, came this...

full set, no effects

Great, I've got my drum kit all recorded, now I'll begin mixing. I actually begin the whole mixing process with the drum set, and I begin that with the kick drum.

Kick Drum

The mic was actually IN the drum itself, but I can still hear the bleed-through of the cymbals.

unprocessed kick drum

I use an equalizer to take off a bit of the high frequencies. Not too much, though as I don't want to kill the "snap" of the drum. And I boost the lows slightly to give it a "kick". In the end, I actually ended up doubling the kick drum sound with a much lower sub-bass, synthesized kick. Digital Performer has a fantastic plug in called “sub kick.” I hate to say this, but I don’t particularly concentrate on the kick that much anymore ‘cause this plug in makes it almost full-proof. But it allows such a great deeper "thump" in the end.

processed kick drum

Finally, I'll throw a limiter on the kick. This way, I can make sure the drum is as loud as possible without distorting. If there are inconsistencies in volume that the drummer made, this will smooth them all out by pushing their volume to the limit without going over a certain volume. A compressor will do much the same, make the softer hits louder and the louder hits softer, but I found a limiter - which is a much harsher effect - to be far more useful on drums given that they don’t need such a subtle effect.

Snare

By far the most important drum for me. I like it loud and I like it hard and I want it to cut through.

Though this is a very 80's sound for a snare, I've always loved the drums from Living Colour's "Time's Up" album:

Living Colour "Fight The Fight" clip

The snare is such a loud drum and given the mic's close proximity, the bleed-through isn't so bad. Plus, you don't wanna kill ALL the bleed-through so that the snare can sound a little more open. One trick I learned is to boost the frequency of the snare around 400Hz, which gives it a nice snap. Other than that, I slightly accentuate the highs and kill any low frequencies below 120Hz. I also throw a limiter on it, just as I did with the kick.

processed snare drum

Toms

Toms - the rack and floor tom - are used quite sparingly in a drum beat, so when I get a good sound, I generally put on a noise gate that completely kills their volume when they're not being hit. These days, I actually just delete any waveforms around the toms hits, which is essentially what the noise gate is doing anyway. But this technique allows you not to worry about getting the settings 100% right (who has time these days??) As you can hear, that also means some of the bleed-through from the other drums tends to rise as well when the noise gate "opens".

unprocessed tom track

You want a general balance between tone and boominess, so I have to pay special attention to EQing the toms. Each tom, with each drummer, is completely different.

processed tom track

Overheads

processed overhead track

As you can hear, all the drums are picked up by these mics. But I make sure to take out most of the low-frequencies so that it only adds flavor of the other drums and concentrates on highlighting the cymbals. There tends to not be too much difference between the processed and unprocessed sound, so I'm only playing the processed sound.

Mixing The Drums

Like I said before, I start the entire mixing process with the drums and I start the drum mixing with the kick. I make sure the kick and snare are tight, almost so that they have the same "snap" sound at the same volume. Then, I add in the overheads. The toms, because I consider them more of a "addition", I mix in last.

The mixing process includes the effects I threw on the drums themselves, which is why this last paragraph may have seemed so easy.

A couple things to watch out for are the boominess of the toms in the mix. Because they have a tone to them, as opposed to just an attack, they have a tendency to sound a bit intrusive, As you will notice by the following clip from Anthrax's "Black Lodge", it might be slight, but they seem to overtake the whole sound and when they go away, it feels like something is missing.

Anthrax's "Black Lodge" clip

I wanted to make sure that this didn't happen and made sure their level was conservative.

I'll alter the mix over time, but ultimately, the mixed drum sounds like:

full drum mix

Finally, to give the drums a little more space, almost as if mimicking recording them in a larger room, I add a little reverb. It makes the snare come ALIVE, which is what I like about it. It may sound like a lot of reverberation with the drums alone, but when I get to the final mix, it makes a little more sense.

same section, with reverb

tom-highlighted section, with reverb

And, ultimately - final mix with everything