Most of the time, the rock drums you hear are recorded in the studio. This will sound different from live drums.
My experience mixing drums is limited… the way I’ve done it is by starting with overhead microphones to capture the sound of the full kit. This sounds kinda like what you hear live. I then mix in kick mics and snare mics, and run those through compressors and EQ. The compression you put on the kick and snare is a big chunk of the formula for getting drums to sound like rock drums. I was shocked the first time I heard it, because it goes from sounding like drums to sounding like rock drums.
Rock and roll has a very compressed sound to it. In the 1960s and 1970s it was a matter of necessity—you compressed so you could record a clean signal on tape, and then compressed some more because you liked it. Nowadays we use software to get similar results, either through emulations or new designs.
My experience mixing drums is limited… the way I’ve done it is by starting with overhead microphones to capture the sound of the full kit. This sounds kinda like what you hear live. I then mix in kick mics and snare mics, and run those through compressors and EQ. The compression you put on the kick and snare is a big chunk of the formula for getting drums to sound like rock drums. I was shocked the first time I heard it, because it goes from sounding like drums to sounding like rock drums.
Rock and roll has a very compressed sound to it. In the 1960s and 1970s it was a matter of necessity—you compressed so you could record a clean signal on tape, and then compressed some more because you liked it. Nowadays we use software to get similar results, either through emulations or new designs.