It’s common to use this as a parallel track. Be mindful of the round-trip latency (delay) involved with this process - you may find yourself nudging the newly recorded track back a few milliseconds to compensate. Cue up the track from the beginning, and sit quietly in the room while recording your new snare track. Find a mic combination and position you like, and send this back into your DAW, onto a new track, the same way you would if you were recording any other instrument. Try putting the mic further into the room. Aim it at the side, or directly down at the center. I especially like the Oktava MK 012, with a cardioid capsule. I’ve successfully used an Electro-Voice RE20, Sennheiser 421, Blue Spark, AKG 414, Shure SM7, and various small condensers. It’s common to mic snares with a dynamic, like the ubiquitous Shure SM57, but with space, bleed and proximity no longer a consideration, your choices are limitless. Adjust the volume so it’s just loud enough to fully excite the snare with each hit, and stop there, so as little as possible of the triggering track comes though. Now comes the fun part - it’s really cool seeing and hearing the snare being “played” by the signal from the guitar amp, as if there is a phantom drummer in the room. Place a snare drum, upside down, on the amp. That’s OK, because we are only using this sound to “hit” the snare. If you do gate it, note that the snare might sound a little odd and cut off. If there is a lot of bleed in it, you may want to consider gating it, but it’s not necessary in most cases. If you don’t already own a practice amp, there is a world of cheap options out there. I’ve been using the same, late ‘70s, 10-watt, Ampeg G18 for years. For this reason, a solid state amp is ideal, since sound quality isn’t really a consideration for this application. If you are using a tube amp, do not lay it directly on the floor, prop it up so the tubes will have ventilation. Lay the amp on its back, facing the ceiling. Plug one end of a standard 1/4 inch guitar cable into its output, and the other into a small practice amp. Solo a snare drum track, and send it out of your interface to a reamp box. But what if we find ourselves missing the sizzle of the snare wires when it comes time to mix? Reamp to the rescue. In most cases, one will be dedicated to a to snare mic.
Last of all, in project studios, we often have to make decisions about how to allocate our available inputs. Mechanical noise can also be a problem, and let’s not forget phase issues. They are difficult to isolate from the kick drum and hi hats. It’s no secret that under-snare mics can be troublesome. can be given new life by sending them through an amp.īut what about drums? They aren’t an obvious choice, but there are so many ways to use your reamp box to improve your drum mixes. Flat sounding keyboard and guitar tracks that were recorded D.I. They allow us to beef up bass tracks, experiment with different guitar amps, and run tracks though interesting stompboxes without impedance matching issues. I'd also prefer to kick everyone, including the engineer, out while I mix the bass myself, but we know that doesn't happen either.Reamp boxes have become a real game changer for the home recordist and project studio owner. Now that I've messed with amp sims and IRs, I would rather have them run Amplitube than re-amp with physical devices. "Oops, we ran out of time," "Oh man, we don't have the money for that." My experience has always been "we will fix that later," and then it never does.
Re-amping is a dodge to having to get the tone right at the same time as getting the performance right. They will spend hours tinkering with drum mic'ing and guitar cab mic'ing, but rarely spend more than a few minutes on bass tone.
That, and I think we all know this, we are the most "disposable" to most engineers\producers. However, getting the cabs mic'ed is time consuming and bass is notoriously hard to mic.
Running through a head and cab makes it sound more natural.
DI signals DO NOT sound like what most of us are used to hearing on recordings or live. I think the idea is to get the recording as quick as possible and then get the amp\cab tone you want later.