How would you get this kind of dead lo-fi drum sound?

[DSmolken]

Call me crazy, but I kinda like it. The way the tom fills sound like potatoes being dropped down some wooden stairs, and everything. I'm tempted to record a simple drum kit like this - probably no velocity layeres, just some round robins - as an extra throw-in at the end of another recording session in a few weeks. How to set things up to capture that kind of sound, though, from tuning the drums to mic selection and positioning?

[thecontrolcentre]

Maybes the old tea towel trick?

[Vospi]

From what I hear:
- It's rather high-pitched
- probably no snares involved
- It's panned
- definitely some saturation involved. Try bbtube: http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 7&t=463104

Regarding my last remark: please note that the whole mix (and the whole drumkit) is not that bright; this adds to a pleasing quality and appropriateness of the snare drum.

[DSmolken]

Thanks, those are useful tips.

Though... I've heard of the tea towel thing, but only in reference to drums. Never in any context that would actually involve, you know, tea. Go figure.

[thecontrolcentre]

Thanks, those are useful tips.

Though... I've heard of the tea towel thing, but only in reference to drums. Never in any context that would actually involve, you know, tea. Go figure.

A tea towel is used to dry the washed dishes after tea (evening meal in the UK). A bit redundant in these days of dishwashing machines ... altho they get used for polishing glasses too.

[whyterabbyt]

Thanks, those are useful tips.

Though... I've heard of the tea towel thing, but only in reference to drums. Never in any context that would actually involve, you know, tea. Go figure.

They were originally made from the fibres of the tea plant, which are a bit like jute or hemp. The main manufacturing centres were almost all based around the town of Agglethorpe in North Yorkshire. Its actually a little known fact that the entire Yorkshire tea industry was based on recycling the scrap leaves which were left over from towel manufacturing.

[kbaccki]

No tea towel there, but maybe some muffling... like a little strip of felt with an appropriate amount of duct tape. Or just duct tape can do wonders. E.g. tape in a triangle pattern over the drum head is a classic. Masking tape is a suitable substitute in a pinch. Actually, what I hear there is a just a cheezy crap drum kit, highlighted by dead sounding toms. Tea towel is reeeallllly dead, for example the sound of the toms in the video below. Or the original recording of Come Together, from what I remember. The idea (I think) is to get a really up close sound without too much drum resonance stepping on everything. No, what I hear in that recording above is just crappy sounding drum kit recorded with a couple cheap crappy dynamic mics (like some Realistic by Radio Shack jobbies, and probably in sub-optimal locations for good measure), hitting the tape too hard by like 4dB, and mixed to sound crappy, like everything pushed to the left. Lo-fi, yes. But probably not on purpose. Just find an "vintage funk" kit, or a "ringo downbeat" something or other, or really anything with the name "ringo" or "downbeat" in it would probably work, and use that as a starting point. Honestly, there were two products that came to mind... Tea Towel Drums from Wavefactory and something called "FOS drums", neither of which are available anymore, lordy knows why. Maybe start with something like this -- https://www.drumdrops.com/drum-samples/ ... e-drum-kit -- and crap it up. Narrow the stereo spread way down, no reverb, maybe an envelope shaper plugin to deaden the kick, toms, and snare even more, push the whole kit either mostly left or mostly right, pump that whole thing through a compressor with "analog warmth" and drive it like a rented mule, then on the backend add in some reverb as if you were polishing a turd. There's a lot of ways to approach it, but that's where I would start.

[kbaccki]

I got carried away... to answer the original question on sampling, I would just do some muffling, but not too much. Add per-piece ADSR, or even just release is all you need... for controllable deadness on kick, snare, toms. But you should record it to at least sound good so that it's actually useful for other than crappy lo-fi. If you want simple, hang a dynamic mic about two feet over the drummers head, and another dynamic mic in front of the bass drum. That's like minimalist, and will give you a (literally) basic starting point, like somebody recording their kit in their mom's basement... but it should still sound decent, in my experience. Then separately you can concoct really lo-fi patches with awkward panning, overdriven meters, etc.

[DSmolken]

Thanks, I'll put that advice to use. I happen to be planning a recording session with a drummer who has a crappy kit which he's planning to sell, so we can do something like this quickly and easily. I was also thinking a pair of regular dynamic mics, like Shure SM58s or cheap knockoffs.

I really dig Drumdrops stuff, especially where they recreate old sounds. We don't want to do anything that elaborate, but sort of a cheap version. And definitely record clean and saturate afterwards.

[MogwaiBoy]

Turn up the volume at the very start of this track and you might get and idea...



... vinyl! Old vinyl. Dusty, warped, probably 33RPM so missing a whole bunch of high frequencies, with a less than pristine record needle.

And that's not counting the original recording... which obviously was 100% analog to tape with minimal drum mic'ing and oodles of tube compression.

Wow check out the snare in one of her other songs from that album.



To emulate this I would try a tape plugin on the drum bus, push it hard and kill/filter all the high end.

[DSmolken]

Yup... we might record tomorrow, we'll see if the drummer makes it into town.

I had this album on CD years ago (then sold all albums before moving across the ocean), btw.