Re: Bigger than life drums?
Rob,
There are two basic "big" drum sounds. The first is the Led Zepplin "when the levee breaks" style, the other is the modern rock "Breaking Benjamin" style. I'll cover the one I'm guessing your drummer wants (Zeppelin).
This only works for medium tempo, or slower, songs. Realistically you can't create it the way they did on the records. The trick for this style is to have pumping from the kick drum modulate the overall drum tone. Pumping works on medium tempo songs because the release can recover before the next beat. This will be a mess on fast tempo songs.
There are several approaches you could take, but this is a straightforward one on your Yamaha consoles:
1. close mic all drums, use a mono overhead
2. Bus all the drum mics, to the same reverb, and pick something like a "medium dark plate." This will give the drums an "all in the same room" feel.
3. Bus the kick, snare, overhead, and reverb return to a single stereo compressor.
4. The goal is to get the compressor to sound as much like an 1176/8 as possible. Your attack is going to be short, start with 0ms on the Yamahas with no knee. The longest nominal attack time on an 1176 was <3ms. Release is going to be longer, probably between 200ms and 400ms, depending on the song. The compressor release should pump rhythmically with the song tempo. If you have the 01V96VCM, it has a decent 1176/8 emulator.
5. CRUSH the drums with the compressor, 10dB of gain reduction at least! I'd recommend 8:1 or 10:1 ratio.
6. Lowpass the tom mics as low as you can get away with. I'd start at 5kHz. Gate the toms a little if needed.
7. Send the compressed drum bus to the mix bus. Add some of the uncompressed drum channels to the mix bus if you need a little more snap.
8. Hard pan the drum compressor bus L/R, center pan kick, snare, overhead. Hard pan toms for maximum drama.
9. To really complete the effect, bus the all drum mics to a second reverb, a medium hall with a 50ms or so pre-delay. Return this reverb to another compressor bus. Roll off the high end, and stomp on it with the compressor (<5ms attack, 150ms release). Hard pan these returns, and mix underneath the overall sound. Instant simulated room microphones.
This will get you close to the Zeppelin sound for live work, assuming the kit/drummer is reasonable. Build it as a scene, tweak it at sound check, and use it during the show as an effect.
