Get Better Recordings By Improvising

Sometimes no amount of great gear or mic technique can help you get the recordings you need. What if you just have a bad sounding instrument and time or money won’t allow you to make any changes? You need to improvise and experiment, and most importantly, never give up until you get what you need. Let me share an example

Via Robert Couse-Baker Flickr

The Drums Didn’t Sound Good

I do a lot of mobile recording for bands. I pack up a portable studio, fly somewhere, and setup shop in people’s homes, churches, and other random buildings to record for 2 to 4 days at at time. Since time is short and I’m not in a permanent recording studio, we usually have to work with what we have in the moment.

In one recording session the original drummer had bailed on the singer for some reason. The artist secured a replacement drummer just days before recording was scheduled. This guy was quick enough to learn the parts and was prepared to play, the only problem was his drum set had been in storage for months and was both out of tune and sporting year old heads. Yikes! Not what I had in mind.
 

Sometimes Less Is More

Upon listening to the drum kit in the room (you DO listen to the instrument before you mic it up right?!) I knew we had to start with tuning. While the drummer tried to tune up his toms to get less “thud” and more “punch”, I realized the kick drum sounded flat as paper. He had stuffed it full of pillows and blankets. There was no where for the air to move inside that drum! This had to change, so while he tuned I started pulling out all the junk inside his kick drum.

After about 10 minutes we had at least a better sounding kick and tom sound. The snare wasn’t too bad so we left it as is. The next glaring issue was one of his two crash cymbals sounded just dreadful. No musical quality whatsoever, just noise. He would hit one crash and it sounded fine, then he would hit the other and it sounded like a toy drum set. Solution? Take away the bad crash. I told him to simply adjust his playing to use only one crash cymbal and the ride.

Adjusting How You Play

Which brings me to the other main issue. His ride cymbal was super loud and dominating in the overall sound of the kit. With no other ride cymbal to replace it with (my first choice) I had to improvise yet again. I asked him to play it as softly as he could for moment. The result? A totally different ride cymbal sound.

The moment he let up on the ride and tried his hardest to play lightly, the tone changed and it brought balance to the entire kit. It was harder for him to make this adjustment because it meant one more thing on his mind during recording, but it was the make or break difference between an amateur drum sound and a cohesive and balanced kit. Sometimes it’s not what we play, but how we play it that makes the biggest difference in the recorded sound.

Get Used To Improv

Recording music is truly a game of improvisation. Nothing is ever quite perfect in the studio so you have to make adjustments on the fly. If you go into each recording session prepared to improv as needed, you’ll be ready for whatever comes your way and you won’t panic when something doesn’t sound right. Take your time, make some tweaks, and see if things sound better.

How have YOU had to improvise in the studio before? Any success?