The Tame Impala Drum Sound: How to Mic, Mix, & Select Drums | Reverb — Transcript

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1. 0:00hey guys this is Jessica Burd oh and
2. 0:01Matt Jordan over at reverb and today we
3. 0:04are going to be answering one of your
4. 0:05most asked questions how to get the tame
5. 0:08impala drum sound we're gonna take you
6. 0:10through everything you need to know from
7. 0:12mic selection to drum selection mic
8. 0:14placement and mixing techniques
9. 0:27okay guys let's talk about Kevin
10. 0:30Parker's drum sound for context we're
11. 0:32referring to the sound that you're
12. 0:33hearing on the earlier tame impala
13. 0:34records Kevin was using a 1960s Ludwig
14. 0:38in a configuration commonly known as
15. 0:40super beat and that was with a 13 inch
16. 0:43rack Tom a 16 inch floor Tom in a
17. 0:45smaller 20 inch bass drum so today we're
18. 0:48using a 1950s WFL kit with the same
19. 0:51sizing and shell construction for
20. 0:54Kevin's snare he was using a 1960s 5 by
21. 0:5714 Ludwig super phonic today we're using
22. 0:59a 90s
23. 1:00Ludwig acolyte with the same sizing and
24. 1:04very similar shell construction Kevin
25. 1:06uses a wide variety of cymbals depending
26. 1:09on the song and the sound he wants to go
27. 1:11for it but he generally chooses smaller
28. 1:13more vintage sounding cymbals today we
29. 1:15have a 20 inch K Constantinople and a
30. 1:18set of 14-inch K croquettes
31. 1:21so thicker coated heads lower tuning and
32. 1:24a lot of muffling our key to helping you
33. 1:27achieve that really vintage drum sound
34. 1:29that you hear on those tame impala
35. 1:31records so kevin usually uses towels and
36. 1:34gaff tape to muffle his drums but today
37. 1:36we're using the big fat snare drum donut
38. 1:39and we have it tuned medium-low with the
39. 1:41snares being a little bit looser to get
40. 1:43that really full sound
41. 1:50so for the Tom's we're following that
42. 1:52same medium-low tuning except we pitch
43. 1:55the resonant heads even lower and then
44. 1:57added a lot of moon gels on the top to
45. 1:59get that really punchy sound so for the
46. 2:06bass drum once again we're keeping our
47. 2:08tuning fairly low we've put a pillow and
48. 2:11a t-shirt in here for additional
49. 2:13muffling and there is no porthole cut in
50. 2:15the front head the key here is to have a
51. 2:19rounded punchy kick drum sound without a
52. 2:21lot of resonance so there's a lot more
53. 2:24to Kevin's drum sound than just the
54. 2:26drums themselves so let's take a deeper
55. 2:28look at how to mic it and mix it all
56. 2:35right so the thing about Tim and Paula's
57. 2:38drum sound is it's vintage it's mono
58. 2:41it's tapey and it's a little bit
59. 2:43unconventional there's actually only
60. 2:44four mics on this kit right now and
61. 2:46they're all fairly affordable
62. 2:48microphones so let's start with the kick
63. 2:50drum Kevin Parker has actually been
64. 2:52known to make an unconventional choice
65. 2:53when it comes to kick drum mics using a
66. 2:55shure sm57 this provides a little bit
67. 2:58more of an attack than a traditional
68. 2:59kick drum mic and captures a little bit
69. 3:01more of that upper mid-range growl let's
70. 3:11move on to the snare drum now this is my
71. 3:13favorite part of the sound and it's
72. 3:14achieved with two microphones there's a
73. 3:16sennheiser md 421 on the top of the
74. 3:19snare and then a shure sm58 on the side
75. 3:22of the snare placed about four inches
76. 3:24back
77. 3:26[Music]
78. 3:35now typically you'd see an engineer use
79. 3:37a top snare mic and a bottom snare mic
80. 3:39we're using a side and a top in this
81. 3:42instance which is going to give the
82. 3:43snare a little bit more of a vintage
83. 3:45feel and you're gonna hear the ringing
84. 3:47of the shell of the snare drum a bit
85. 3:49more we've also loosened up the
86. 3:51strainers on the snare a little bit more
87. 3:53than we typically have since we're not
88. 3:55using that bottom snare mic to get that
89. 3:56extra snare sizzle now the fourth
90. 3:59microphone that's on this drum kit is a
91. 4:01large diaphragm condenser that's placed
92. 4:03about five feet above the floor tom
93. 4:06now Kevin Parker has been known to use a
94. 4:07rode k2 and a couple other large
95. 4:10diaphragm condenser x' we didn't have a
96. 4:12rode k2 available to us at the time so
97. 4:14we ended up using a shure KSM 32
98. 4:18[Music]
99. 4:27so why would the mono overhead mic be so
100. 4:31far over to the floor topside a lot of
101. 4:33people speculate about this my personal
102. 4:35theory is that that side snare
103. 4:37microphone is capturing a lot of the
104. 4:39hi-hat it's capturing a lot of the rack
105. 4:41Tom so the overhead is airing more
106. 4:43toward the side of the floor Tom and the
107. 4:45ride cymbal another interesting aspect
108. 4:47of Kevin Parker's drum sound is that
109. 4:50especially on the earlier records he was
110. 4:52not in a very nice studio actually he
111. 4:54was in a bedroom in a house now we have
112. 4:57a nicely treated room here at reverb
113. 4:59with all these sorts of fancy angles and
114. 5:02nice absorption so take this with a
115. 5:05grain of salt you can really get these
116. 5:07drum sounds anywhere you want to even if
117. 5:09it's your bedroom with a four mic drum
118. 5:17setup like this one every microphone
119. 5:19really counts but what you'll hear with
120. 5:22the dry signal of these drum mics is
121. 5:24that it's really not quite there yet
122. 5:25it's really not quite up to the tame
123. 5:27impala drum sound standard so let's get
124. 5:30to mixing even though the mixing process
125. 5:32for these drum sounds is pretty simple
126. 5:34it is very heavy-handed especially when
127. 5:36it comes to compression what we've done
128. 5:38first is gone through each individual
129. 5:40microphone and applied some subtractive
130. 5:42EQ just so we can drive the compressor
131. 5:44on the mono drum buss in the correct way
132. 5:46let's go through those so what we did
133. 5:49with the kick drum is just take out a
134. 5:50little bit of boxiness around 200 Hertz
135. 5:53and then we added a low-pass filter
136. 5:55around 6k to get rid of a bunch of the
137. 5:57cymbal wash since that sm57 was right
138. 6:00out in front of the kit and got a lot of
139. 6:02cymbals in it so we're using to snare
140. 6:04mics what we've done on both of them
141. 6:06with the EQ is rolled off everything
142. 6:08below about a hundred and eighty Hertz
143. 6:09to get rid of some of that unnecessary
144. 6:11low-end rumbly information what we did
145. 6:14with the snare top mic specifically is
146. 6:16we subtracted about two dB around 800
147. 6:19Hertz it was just a frequency that was
148. 6:21popping out a little too much in the
149. 6:22snare chain now possibly the most
150. 6:24important microphone in this drum miking
151. 6:27setup is the overhead we took a lot of
152. 6:29time and care upfront to make sure we
153. 6:31placed it correctly so we could do
154. 6:32minimal processing after the fact but we
155. 6:35did end up taking out around 2 DB around
156. 6:371
157. 6:38three kilohertz for the final mix let's
158. 6:40take a listen to what all these drums
159. 6:42sound like with just EQ applied and none
160. 6:45of the buss compression now let's talk
161. 6:59about what makes this drum sound truly
162. 7:01special
163. 7:02it's a box called the sure level lock
164. 7:04the sure level lock is not your average
165. 7:06drum compressor originally designed for
166. 7:08broadcast applications it's meant to
167. 7:10take things and keep them at a
168. 7:12consistent level no matter what so you
169. 7:14can really really hear the compressor
170. 7:15working and that's possibly the biggest
171. 7:17part of this drum sound so let's talk
172. 7:20about how we applied that what we did
173. 7:22was we took the individual microphones
174. 7:23we sent them all to a mono drum buss
175. 7:26then as a hardware insert within our DAW
176. 7:28we applied the shirt level lock all of
177. 7:30the mics go through that one mono
178. 7:32compressor and you slam the Dickens out
179. 7:35of it
180. 7:37[Music]
181. 8:01so as you can hear that compressor is
182. 8:03really doing most of the tunnel work for
183. 8:06this drum sound now you can find a sure
184. 8:08level lock on reverb comm but if you're
185. 8:10not interested in the hardware sound
186. 8:12toys actually makes a really great
187. 8:14software emulation called the devil lock
188. 8:16that's definitely worth checking out
189. 8:18[Music]
190. 8:55even if you're not trying to directly
191. 8:57replicate Kevin Parker's drum sound
192. 8:59we hope you learn something from this
193. 9:00video that you can apply to your own
194. 9:02home recordings as always you can find
195. 9:04all the gear we use today on reverb the
196. 9:06mics and the drums please let us know in
197. 9:09the comments what other artists you
198. 9:10would like to see us cover and thank you
199. 9:12for watching we'll see you next time
200. 9:18you
201. 9:19[Music]