A Tribute to the sound of the Rolling Beats

You like the classic sound of Breakbeats or Trip Hop from Bristol? Like the famous Amen break, which was widely sampled in numerous music genres from the 1969 track "Amen, Brother" by the soul group the Winstons. Then you should take a closer look at this recording setup guide.

All sounds are available as a free sample pack, scroll down at the bottom on this page to find the link. You can use them on your productions and we would be really pleased to hear what you guys come up with.

 

 

Signal flow of recording Lo-fi drums

For the recording we use three microphones and the internal mic pres of our Polygram Console. These three mics are summed to a mono bus and patched out from our patch bay to the „Klein & Hummel UE 100 tube-based equalizer“

Designed in 1961, the UE-100 impresses with flexibility that was undreamt at the time. This device is extremely sophisticated with highest quality components, perfect for any mastering process. The modular built allows also that tubes are easily to replace or modify.

Then, we will send out the signal to the UREI 1178 compressor and afterwards to the ADR Compex limiter. The Signal goes finally back into our patch bay for converting the sound with the M-32 Pro analog to digital converter, directly into our DAW and TotalMix FX.

 

M-32 Pro Series - Reference in analog and digital conversion

 

Redundant power supplies, more compact housings, network functionality, with the new M-32 DA Pro and M-32 AD Pro, RME meets the diverse requirements of current productions and installations.

For maximum compatibility with a variety of analog hardware, the individual channels of the M-32 AD Pro and M-32 DA Pro can be operated with different line levels - each with full resolution of the converters. Besides +19 dBu and +13 dBu, the new M-Series is one of the few solutions available on the market that also allows working with the SMPTE® recommendation of +24 dBu at 0 dBFS.

With TotalMix FX we’re able to create independent headphone mixes and a low latency direct monitoring of all signals. The DSP-based TotalMix mixer allows fully independent routing and mixing of input and playback channels to all physical outputs. Independent stereo submixes plus a comprehensive Control Room section offer unrivalled monitoring capabilities and unsurpassed routing flexibility.

 

UREI 1178 Compressor & ADR Compex Limiter

 

Microphone setup for this Sample session

For this lo-fi drum sample sessions it would be very cool to compress the hell out of it. That’s why we used the RCA Type 77-DX microphone and the first ribbon mic built for the market back in 1925, the Siemens SM3. The back of the ribbon is enclosed by a heavy ring magnet, and an arrangement of acoustic chambers. A true collectors item, that due to its weight must be used with heavy duty stands. For example boom mic stands from latch lake, to assure the drummer feels safe while playing.

Glyn Johns Technique

This three mic technique uses two overhead mics and third mic on the bass drum. Glyn Johns invented it back in the 60s and can be heard on many popular albums by The Rolling Stones, The Who or Led Zeppelin.

Let’s mic the drums

Recording drums with the Glyn Johns method is like focusing on the drums from three different points of view. First we've got the overhead microphone, a side microphone (both Siemens SM3) and we've got a front microphone which features most of the bass drum sound (RCA Type 77-DX microphone).

The principle of this technique is that this snare is the center of all the focuses. The snare needs to be in face with all three mics. To assure that, we measure the distance from the center of the snare to the ribbon mic, in this case it's approximately one meter. We have to get sure that all of the mics have the same distance to the snare.

Loop Sample 01

Loop Sample 02

Loop Sample 03

 

Download now

Download the Sample pack with 85 drum loops recorded in high-quality.
Royalty free to use them on your productions, simply by clicking on the left Thumbnail Image.