Tips for making the timpani big?

[John DeBorde]

while i love the sound of the timpani at the quieter dynamics, it falls flat for me at the louder dynamics.

does anyone have any tips for getting a bigger sound out of it? it doesn't ring out the way that i would like it to.

thanks,
jd

[Audun Jemtland]

If you don't mind....use a bass drum on top of the timpani or something else on top...Have you tried that?
I ask myself what can I do to make a song "BIG"?....And the answer is..add timpani...I can see why it's not enough, If I bump into troubles getting the timpani not loud enough I can add bass and additional drums or just add additional drums...

What kind of music do you make?

[Nick Batzdorf]

It gets a lot bigger with reverb, of course, but if it's still not doing it then you can always use a compressor. Try fast attack and release.

[John DeBorde]

thanks Nick- do you usually give it it;s own reverb, or put it in the same room as the rest of your group?

i'm thinking a really bright hall, as it just sounds kinda dull to me. so far i've been using it w/ altiverb in the same room as the other instruments, but it's just not cutting it for me.

i'll have to try some experimenting, but any other thoughts are welcome.

[Nick Batzdorf]

I often use a separate reverb for percussion to stop it from making everything too muddy, and/or I highpass fiter its send to the same reverb i'm using for the brass. But neither always.

In general I don't think it's a good idea to try and use reverb to make something clear, i.e. if it's sounding dull to you, then eq it first. If it were a low drum in a pop mix, then sure, you tailor the reverb to the sound more. But in this case you're trying to create a realistic space.

Having said that, some of the Altiverb impulses are wider and clearer than others. I forget the name of the small church I really like, but if you shorten it, it works really well for orchestra.

The other thing is to make sure the timing is right. When they're doubling hits, timps (like bd) usually play at the front of the beat, even though they're at the back of the stage. If you quantize the timps, they may be too late.

And of course you want to boost the velocity all the way.

Dietz? Help!

(This should probably be in the mixing area, actually.)

[Dietz]

As always: Compress, distort, hoorray! [6]

Seriously: If nothing else helps (and there were a lot of helpfull hints in this thread already), try to distort the timpany a little bit - in the sense of round, creamy tube-distortion and tape saturation. Our samples are extremely clean; a tad of nice unlinearities are something our ears really like to hear, bringing a signal up-front more easily. For our perception it has more "power" then.

HTH,

/Dietz - Vienna Symphonic Library

[Nick Batzdorf]

Great tip! See, that's why you're rich and I'm not. [:D]

The other thing that occurs to me is the old drumset trick of mixing in a compressed version with the original. You set up the compressed version to have really sharp attacks. It doesn't work on its own, but the combination is great.

I'm not sure whether that would work on timps, although I've done it with old school samples on regular instruments, and it works well as long as you're careful with delay compensation.

There's also Waves Transient Designer, but I haven't tried it.

[John DeBorde]

thanks guys. i messed with this some yesterday and came up with something that's in the right direction, but not quite there i don't think.

i snipped and posted some before and after examples:

http://www.johndeborde.com/timp/

Timp1 is before and Timp2 is after
-applying some eq (rolloff below 500. boost above 2000)
-running it thru a hall w/ low cut and highs boosted
-compression at the end of the chain (wish i had my bomb factory plugs in osx!)

this is all on the track and not done w/ aux's. btw.

the full track is there too with the current version of this mix in progress.

and of course, any suggestions are welcome!

i'm going to mess with it some more today, i think it's got a bit too much depth now. i'd like to bring the timp closer, but have the direct sound brighter.

and yes this probably does belong in the mixing forum. sorry about that!

john

[John DeBorde]

OK- i worked on it some more today, and uploaded another example: Timp3.

i split the reverb out as an aux, added some distortion on the way in and compressed it coming back. it really pops now (maybe too much).

i also uploaded the new mix of the whole piece.

i have mix fatigue now, so i'm not sure what i think. comments are welcome (somebody else has to post in this thread, right?)

[Audun Jemtland]

You made it better john! much better...It helped alot with reverb and you made it sharper/harder and not so soft.
Nice job [[;)]]

I can hear the improvements but it doesn't pop too hard either...

But that's just me, anyone else who has an opinion?

What is the song used for/to?

[Nick Batzdorf]

Well, you're getting there by the third one. To me the whole thing is still too dry, although I admit to be a reverb gourmand when it comes to orchestral cues.

I'd slap a big, expansive reverb on that drum (and probably more on everything else as well). Don't be afraid to use a gross amount! Your cue is dramatically OTT (and I mean that as a compliment), so why not make it huge. Give it some predelay...but I always say that.

Nice cue, by the way.

All my opinions - please take them or leave them; I don't profess to be an Expert on Everything.

[newbiebigtime]

@Nick Batzdorf said:

All my opinions - please take them or leave them; I don't profess to be an Expert on Everything.

Isn't this a famous quote from someone I know?

[Nick Batzdorf]

Professor Edwin Corey, or something like that? There was a TV personality in the '70s.

Or am I clueless about what you're getting at? [*-)]:

[John DeBorde]

thanks guys.

Audun-this was written as a demo for a WWII video game. they requested one piece with a sneaking around section and a medium combat section. i threw in the intro and outro because i wanted to give them my idea of an overall theme for the game, even tho they gave me limited info to work with.

Nick-i go back and forth with how much reverb i like. i think i'm pretty happy with what i have on this piece, it helps keep the sneaky section more in your face. i'm running altiverb into a lex300, i might try cranking up the lex a bit. i've definitely gone with more slather on other pieces.

i'm still not completely happy with the timp hit, tho i may be approaching the point of diminishing return as far as more tweaking is concerned.

and nick, why aren't you an expert on everything? geez, get it together man. . .

[icecubeman]

This thread is pretty old and I must admit that sitting timpani in orchestral sound is pretty hard. I dont manage it yet and I did not find any helpful sources on net instead of this thread. But even with MIR Pro, MIRx settings, comp, EQ, distortion, etc. it is not right there {too bright or too muddy or very defined......}. I wonder how you guys make it these days. I am completely helpless for now 😔

[Pyre]

MIR Pro character presets and Vienna Suite presets, they work wonders for me. I set the character preset to 'big', and use the compressor and EQ from Vienna Suite. I forget the names of the presets (*not* 'distant and deep', I remember that), it took only a little while to figure out the best combination, but thanks to the presets it's almost a one-stop shop solution.

Hope that is perhaps of some use to you.

Pyre

[Talino]

I've always had problems with the tinny sound of the VSL timpani, and used other libraries for that. However, I'm currently demoing MIRx and I must say I was amazed by what a MIRx venue + Pre-EQ did to the sound. It is huge now. I'm just discovering the product so I can't say much more but proper reverb + EQ certainly seems to be the way to go...

[Dietz]

+1! :-)

Now add a bit of tasty saturation and maybe a touch of compression, and you can have your Timpani as huge and fat as you like. ... but don't forget that size isn't everything. 8-)

[Talino]

I'll venture out and say that in the case of timpanis, even played pianissimo, size is pretty much everything...

I forgot to mention that the transformation to the timpanis using MIRx wasn't just about making it huge, it was making it right. Since you're apparently the person responsible for the MIRx presets, I would like out of curiosity to know how this was done : is it basically a combination of a predefined impulse with a big boost of the low end, or is there some other magic involved? The timpani I knew so well was unrecognizable when going through MIRx...

[Dietz]

@Talino said:

I'll venture out and say that in the case of timpanis, even played pianissimo, size is pretty much everything...

I forgot to mention that the transformation to the timpanis using MIRx wasn't just about making it huge, it was making it right. Since you're apparently the person responsible for the MIRx presets, I would like out of curiosity to know how this was done : is it basically a combination of a predefined impulse with a big boost of the low end, or is there some other magic involved? The timpani I knew so well was unrecognizable when going through MIRx...

Let me share my trade secrets with you .... 😉 (see attachments).

In the end, it's just placement, pre-EQ (a.k.a. "Character" in MIR Pro) and a bit of Room EQ.

HTH,