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Drum Booth or Drum Sheild


rocknrollruss

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Agreed. Plexiglass sucks. A buddy of mine has a "low budget" studio in his house. He applied foam on the inside of the plexiglass that seems to do the trick. It's probably not as effective as an isolation booth but for low budget stuff I think he's on to something.
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  • 2 weeks later...

right now I have built a drum room for our drummer and I'm interested to hear other drummers opinions. I'm personally a guitar player but I have dealt with all the studio stuff in my upstairs bedroom. I built the room with double walls and insulation and some other tricks and basically isolated the drums from the rest of the band. I then went with headphones for the drummer and a small PA system with 15" monitors for the rest of us in the live room. This worked out great for us cause we could raise and lower different signals from the drums and make things much lower in volume. I have my guitar rig, a Mesa 4x12 halfstack, in an isolation box and the bassplayer and keyboardist go direct in. There are windows from each room but the lights from the rooms seem to cast shadows and you really can't see each other all that well.

 

The problems started with the drummer. First he didn't like not seeing us. I could understand that. Next he didn't feel like he had the same energy level playing the music like we would in a live situation. I understood that too, so I put a monitor in the room and let him blast away.

 

I'm working on a new studio and am thinking of putting in the drum room again but I am wondering if you drummers LIKE the drum rooms? Do you hate being isolated? How have you recorded your material before? Live band and everything at once or do you use a click track and have the drums and guitar start out and then add each item one at a time?

 

If I want to do isolated recording then I would like to have the drum room, if I go with just live performances then it doesn't really matter.

 

I'm just interested in knowing the general thoughts of other drummers to find out what y'all think. Having the plexiglass would be cool in a way since you could see each other and still talk to each other without mics and all that stuff, but I don't think that plexiglass would cut down the noise level all that much anyway.

 

Thanks in advance,

C.B. Smith

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playing in an isolation booth is just the nature of the beast. I think most drummers learned playing totally isolated from the outside world, especially the parents. It is a new ball game but he'll get used to it and adapt. As for the headphones, I only use one side, put the other behind the ear I'm deaf in! Sometimes I use click tracks, other times no. It depends on how tight me, the bass player and the rhythm guitar are when we lay down our track. Sounds like you are willing to go the extra mile to please all. Nuttin wrong with that Cuz!!!
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Agreed. Drum booths are just the way it works usually, in terms of getting good isolation.

 

I know it can be hard for club drummers to get used to not making eye contact, but you have to learn to listen and respond with your ears. Give the drummer some cans and, if possible, his own headphone mixer so he can alter his own reference mix. Also, have a talkback feed going between him and the engineer.

 

I actually prefer not being able to see anyone when I track drums, or have them see me. That way no one can see all the dorky faces I make while playing. :)

Just for the record.
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I personally do not understand the whole "drum booth" thing. It's a musical disaster. And isolation is WAY over-rated.

 

I'd put the Marshall in there for isolation- it's not a musician, it doesn't need to communicate- and have the guitar and bass players in the same room with the drummer. It's WAY more exciting to play to a live drummer, than to headphones!

A WOP BOP A LU BOP, A LOP BAM BOOM!

 

"There is nothing I regret so much as my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?" -Henry David Thoreau

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Yeah, I'm with Tedly here. If you really must have isolation, DON'T isolate the drummer - isolate the guitar amps. Guitarists can still stand out in the room and make eye contact. Drums tend to sound like doo doo in a small booth, especially with foam or other tone sucking stuff... and plexiglass... ugh. Terrible reflections. Let the drums breathe! And let the drummer see everybody. Geez. :D
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sounds like it could go either way. At this point I do isolate the guitar and bass, BUT for practices I am planning on getting two POD Pros and using them for guitar and bass. Run those through the monitors and have a nice mix of that for us guitar players. Keys are once again direct and the vocals are out there on their own planet. That will leave me with the drums. I realize that you say that most drums sound like doo-doo in rooms but I really spend A LOT of time mixing them BEFORE they ever show up. I normally have to tweak them a little down before we start cause I don't hit as hard as he does. With proper EQ and level through my 15" monitors you can get a drum set to sound awesome. I mic each tom, both kicks, snare top and bottom, and have two overheads. Thats fairly easy cause I just use my Mackie 32x8 board for practices and buss the drums to one track and then bring that back through the aux sends into headphone amps and the small PA system. Really its an amazing system and for the rest of us we don't lose our hearing for practice. If the drummer uses the headphones he isn't complaining about the volume for sure. The pair of DT770 that I got for him worked out great with isolation of what he is hearing.

 

I was actually thinking of designing some kinda swinging door that I could open up for practice and have live stuff if need be, and then close it down and seal it for recording. I looked at a lot of different options but nothing really came through.

 

Not that our stuff is all that complicated but there are always parts that rush and sound bad when we don't use a click track for recording. Playing live is just having fun and living off the energy, but we spend a ton of time trying to work through that in practices before gigs. Plus since I spend sooooo much time with the recording process I like to track about 4 different guitar takes, and pan them to different position to get that thick sound. Doing that many guitar takes with a drum track that is all over the place just isn't a good idea. So the only way to solve that was to click track each song. Mind you, that wasn't fun at all. It worked like a charm and made the recordings amazingly tight. I just spent a ton of time making sure that the tempos were up a little so we weren't stale in the recording and felt like we were pushing things just a bit. I could see how people would think that the click tracks are stale sounding and bland but with a little time and effort you can out-think yourself. Sorta.

 

It sounds like its just up to the individual drummer. I basically have to take isolation into account somewhat due to where I have my building. I'm building a TON of isolation into the structure as I go including double walls, and decoupled sheetrok and such. That will be a huge help to the cause but if I end up with an isolation booth about 10' x 10' then I could basically build a room inside a room and be able to practice, record, and just mess around at all hours of the night/day.

 

Its a tough call and I'm sure I'll be thinking about it either way up until the point of no return.

 

Thanks to all. I really appreciate the responses.

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Originally posted by Tedly Nightshade:

I just noticed your handle is "separation" and your site is "separated music"!

yeah that is just my bands name. Separation. No link to separating sound...although that is pretty freaky now that I think about it. I just put the website up so I could show different building methods throughout these boards. Our bands website is getting totally overhauled so that really isn't useable right now.

 

Never had thought of it that way. Now you have me thinking..hehe.

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