#779787 - 02/21/05 06:39 PM
Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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I'd like to know what some of you do or suggest for mixing drums.
Typically I like to bus the overheads and toms, compress and add reverb.
The snare, I like to gate,compress and then EQ to a separate channel. Sometimes a separate reverb from the overheads and toms.
The bass drum, I like to gate, limit and EQ to a separate channel.
Comments anyone?
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#779788 - 02/22/05 01:14 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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i eq, gate, comp each channel, send it to a stereo bus, then send that to anouther stereo bus and compress the hell out of it. then i mix between the 2 busses till i find a good mix.. i could talk about eq and comp setting for days.
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#779789 - 02/22/05 10:49 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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Eric,
Do you EQ before compression?
Compress the hell out of the Drum Mix, That means:
an average -6db of compression or more?
Compress the drum mix, then compress that again with the total mix?
Would you include bass in your drum submix?
What do you do for subsonic frequencies? Filter them? Before the sub mixes of per chanllel.
Like your website, btw.
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#779790 - 02/22/05 11:43 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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coyote
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Just this: BLECCCHHH. 
Originally posted by alcohol_:
Comments anyone?
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#779791 - 02/22/05 12:15 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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Coyote,
Judicious use of those processing elements won't make your snare sound like cardboard. I'm also not alone. Check out what Eric wrote.
But I'm self educated when it comes to mixing, so I'm asking to learn more. What do you do for mixing drums?
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#779792 - 02/22/05 12:59 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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" Do you EQ before compression? "
yes i like to EQ before Comp.. when you EQ it changes the peak levels. i usually comp each drum track -5 db or so. i dont comp the hat or ride or over heads.
" Compress the hell out of the Drum Mix, That means: an average -6db of compression or more?:"
around - 10 db on the 2nd drum buss
" Compress the drum mix, then compress that again with the total mix? "
i make 2 stereo busses with the same drum mix. i compress one of them - 10 and mix the 2 to whatever sounds good. then everthing gets mixed to the master buss. the only compression at that point is in mastering.
" Would you include bass in your drum submix? "
no i mix everything into it's own bus. Track, to sub buss, to master.
"What do you do for subsonic frequencies? Filter them? Before the sub mixes of per chanllel."
i dont roll anything off on the kick, toms or bass. everything else i atleast have a 80hz cutoff. hats/ride i cut it off 500+
"Like your website, btw."
thanks.. i need to post some new mixes/tracks
P.S. hows Boston? i miss home.
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#779793 - 02/22/05 02:17 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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Eric,
Boston is doing quite well. Just got a few inches of snow. Still basking in sports triumphs.
I think the music scene here is doing very well. There's lots of unique and interesting music being played in the local dives.
Thanks for answering my questions.
I just have two more questions.
For reverb or delay effects. Do you include them in the busses or do you use the usual send and return set up?
Do you mix ITB or use an outboard mixer?
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#779794 - 02/22/05 02:54 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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I mix in the box..
For reverb i use aux sends from the tracks. i almost never send verb from the bus
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#779795 - 02/23/05 10:54 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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I don't have any one mixing strategy for drums, or tracking strategy for that matter. It totally depends on the drummer, the drum kit, the room and the song.
I listen to the tracks first and see if there are any really obvious problems that need fixing. I also make it a point to listen to the tracks in context - it doesn't really matter if there's a ring in the snare drum, if it gets masked by the other instruments. Whereas taking the ring out might kill the character of the drum.
I very rarely use gates on anything but toms, and then only if the stereo imaging ain't so hot or there's a particularly nasty sympathetic ring between the toms and snare... which if the drums were tuned and tracked properly, there shouldn't be. Gating the snare just sounds bad IMO. Sometimes I will make a copy of the snare track and gate that if I'm trying to isolate it for the purpose of sidechaining it with another effect. But I'll always just blend that effect with the original track... not gate the actual snare track.
Mainly I just EQ out any accumulated mud, might possibly do a little EQ boost to bring out the crack of the snare drum if it's not punchy enough, put a little compression on the kick and snare. I will compress the overheads and/or toms only if it really seems like the song warrants it... oftentimes it doesn't.
I will sometimes add reverb if necessary but I prefer to use room mics for ambience when possible. One of my favorite snare miking techniques is to use an AKG414 on the snare in figure 8, with the nulls pointed at the toms and hat, and the back side of the mic pointing out into the room. This will give the snare quite a bit of natural ambience. Of course if the room sounds like crap it isn't always possible and therefore some reverb might be necessary... if I do use reverb I tend to use a lot of predelay, so the attack of the drums isn't washed out.
In general I try to let the drummer dictate what the mix will sound like. The drum kit is really a single instrument and the drummer is mixing himself as he plays. So I try to capture that. Any processing that I do is usually just because something that was done in tracking hasn't captured the impact of what the drummer was doing out in the room. Of course sometimes there are exceptions, there are times when the song calls for some really effected, exaggerated, wacky drum sound and then anything goes. I just don't presume that the drums "need" any processing in the mix without listening first.
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#779796 - 02/24/05 02:23 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Dennyf
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Disclaimer: I am no expert, or even very experienced at recording a drumkit. I've done a little, and I've mixed them live a lot. So, with that in mind . . .
If I wanna go the isolated, one-drum-per-track paradigm, I'll fire up a sampler and sequence the damn things and let the drummer watch the soaps. The number of mic placements and gate tweakings to deal with make this just plain stupid when there are a million great samples out there for the taking. That's not the sound I prefer anyway.
I've had great success miking the drum kit for live performances with just two mics, a medium-diaphram condenser overhead, and a kick mic. No, it's not stereo. So what? We don't run the PA in stereo, what's the point? That's yeilded some surprisingly good recordings off the board on gigs.
Because of the preceding paragraph, and the oft-cited Zeppelin recordings, I intend to go for a pretty-much "live" drum micing scenario when the studio gets built this spring. Basically, it's gonna be my live setup, except with two overheads so I can get a bit of stereo ambience in the mix. But the paradigm is gonna be, "get a good sound out of the kit in the room, and find a way to capture that." "Stereo" considerations aside, that should be doable with ONE mic. And I also anticipate doing what I do now, which is applying minimal compression to the drum tracks to "fatten" the drums in the mix, and saving the heavier compression and reverb to the mixdown stage. I prefer that the reverb sounds like everythings in the same room, and this is the easiest way to accomplish that.
Occaisionally there are songs where reverb is a special effect on, say, an isolated snare hit on a turnaround or something of that nature. Oldskool would be to just ride an aux send at that point, newskool, I either export the drumtrack, isolate that hit, and add the 'verb there, or newskool version 2, use the automation in SawStudio Basic to crank it on for that hit.
It's been said a mazillion times, so a mazillion-and-one won't hurt. A good player who knows how to tune the kit is the most important ingredient.
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#779797 - 02/24/05 06:03 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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i never said anything about not starting with a good room, tuned drums, or someone that can play. if you dont have that covered dont record. there are 2 main view points. minimal open room micing and full micing. this was recently debated in a post i started about high hat mics. everyone freaked out. i was amused to see how people react to this topic. i see the options as a quick and easy setup and one that will take more work,gear, skill and time. i take the hard road. but the work pays off and is well worth it in my eyes. never hurts to have the options you cant add what isnt recorded. My favorite album sounds and drum sounds are captured this way. i've never been a huge fan of 100% boomy Bonham slosh sound. but i know i'm a minority in this forum. dont get me wrong room micing is a must, i just want to hear it mixed with close mics for the punch and clarity. I'm obbsessed with drum sounds from artists like Matt Chamberlain (mixed my mark hawley just freakin amazing), Danny carry, Jay Bellerose, daren hahn, Brian "Brain" Mantia, to many to list. i just know what sounds good to me. I've been fortunate to learn from some great mixers/studios. i've used, seen, and heard the results of there work. i do understand the appeal of live open recording. i do it often with band rehearsals. only having a few tracks to mix together is always a fun stress free project. dealing with 14+ drum tracks is allot of work. having something you can mix and have on a CD in a night always feels good.
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#779799 - 02/24/05 09:28 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Tedly Nightshade
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I put up a mic or two and mix the kit in the performance.
I despise all that processing and manipulation. Every bit of it just makes the drums sound worse.
But, most kick drums only sound like their players wish they did with some EQ.
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#779800 - 02/24/05 01:29 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Dennyf
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In a scenario where I wanted this much control, I'd go with samples over the rigamaroll of close-miking, gating, EQing, etc. etc. Do you really think you're gonna capture the "best drum sound ever!"? In my (admittedly limited) experience, it's a lot of work just to get something you can stand. And duplicate that sound on a later session? My, my, my.
The result never really sounds like the guy's kit in the room. Which is sometimes the idea, I know, but that's just one more reason to use samples.
Put triggers on the kit, record the performance in midi. Find samples you like, or if you don't like 'em, stick em in an editor and turn 'em into something you DO like. That's less grunt work, and ultimately more controllable than miking the "hard" way. Hardware's cheaper, too, than half-a-dozen good mikes, let alone the outboard gear to to with 'em.
If the drummer complains, "that's not the sound of MY kit, man," well, then you're back to the room scenario anyway, aren't you?
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band link: bluepearlband.com music, lessons, gig schedules at dennyf.com STURGEON'S LAW --98% of everything is bullshit. My Unitarian Jihad Name is: The Jackhammer of Love and Mercy. Get yours.
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#779801 - 02/24/05 02:43 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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samples dont sound same.. live drums always have a live sound.. A close miced snare playing 1/4 notes and a sampled snare track playing the same will have a big difference in sound.. this isnt about one person solo composing, i'm talking about recording a live band. i use gates.comp. and eq's that doesn't mean i use them to over process.. i set my gates just high enough to kill the over tones from the other drums. when you have 14+ tracks your noise floor would be huge without it. i want the tom mic pick up the tom resonance not the snare mic. I hate over processed drums for the most part. i want them clean and sharp. thats why close micing appeals to me. I'm a drummer and like my kit to have allot of presence.
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#779802 - 02/24/05 04:30 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Well I said this before on another forum but I don't know if it got through... ... just because you don't close mic doesn't mean you're going to end up with a John Bonham sound... or a jazz sound... nor does close miking guarantee that you'll get the presence and impact you want. Not that I have anything against close miking, but the room is a much bigger factor, and also whether you have mics and preamps that can handle the transients. If you have an acoustically good room (which might be a relatively dead room so you don't get much room sound, if you want a lot of punch), good mics and pres it will have a lot more presence and "in your face-ness" than close miked drums with a bunch of preamp distortion, gates, reverb, etc.
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#779803 - 02/24/05 05:22 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Originally posted by Funnelhead:
Usually the space concerns of small studios and band spaces lead to fuzzy, imbalanced stereo images.
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#779804 - 02/24/05 09:09 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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Are there not recordings that successfully utilize close miking, gates, compressors, EQ and reverb? It seems like there's some kind of sentiment against this.
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#779805 - 02/24/05 09:54 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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i know... there are more recordings that do this then dont.
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#779806 - 02/24/05 10:24 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Dennyf
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Originally posted by alcohol_:
Are there not recordings that successfully utilize close miking, gates, compressors, EQ and reverb? It seems like there's some kind of sentiment against this.
I can't speak for anyone else, but MY only sentiment against it is that it's the hard way to go about getting "isolated" drum sounds in light of current technology. You want control, go whole-hog, get REAL control.
Part of what has shaped my opinion is that a few years back I was playing with a drummer who had a really nice kit. It was a pricier Pearl, beatiful finish and great tone. However, he installed triggers in every drum, and hooked his kit up to a midi brain and played samples direct to the FOH mixer. He had the cleanest, tightest, crispest drum sound I ever heard live, and soundcheck consisted of making sure signal was getting to the mixer. Plus he had about a dozen kits available at the touch of a button.
Now, in a recording sitch, you plug that midi brain into a sequencer, record the performance as midi data, and you can use that to trigger any drum sound you can find, with total post-recording control of any parameter of the performance you want. If the drummer blew a hit, you can fix it. If the snare doesn't suit you, replace it. Samples are just short recordings, and chances are pretty good that they were recorded in a way that you can't begin to approach in any kind of full-kit live miking scenario.
Maybe the seeming trend toward "room"-based technique is backlash to the processed (and often sequenced) drum sounds in lots of recordings from the last couple decades. Kind of a statement, deliberate or otherwise, that "see, we played REAL drums".
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#779807 - 02/24/05 10:46 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Originally posted by alcohol_:
Are there not recordings that successfully utilize close miking, gates, compressors, EQ and reverb? It seems like there's some kind of sentiment against this.
Most of my drum recordings do end up using close mics in addition to room mics. Most use at least some EQ and a little compression on kick and snare. Gates are much rarer and reverb, maybe, maybe not. On the other hand, I just tracked some drums with some really good preamps and they sound so good I'm tempted not to touch them. I'll probably mess with a bit of EQ and compression just to see if it actually benefits the tracks, but it may well not, and I'm OK with that. 
I've heard a good many nice recordings degraded by processing, and also with a lot of really good drum mixes that use a lot of processing, the processing gear itself was/is excellent quality. A lot of plugins and such that people use now, are not necessarily going to sound very good unless you're deliberately going for a very effected sound. If what you actually want is to sound like a drum kit, I find it better to sort that out in tracking than mixing, and not assume you will have to add a lot of processing.
I think a lot of the sentiment you hear against this stuff is probably just people fed up with overly processed drum sounds. I know I am.
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#779808 - 02/24/05 10:56 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Originally posted by Dennyf:
Samples are just short recordings, and chances are pretty good that they were recorded in a way that you can't begin to approach in any kind of full-kit live miking scenario.
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#779809 - 02/25/05 08:03 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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I was hoping to get some specifics from this thread. Things I've never thought of. I think I named it wrong. I think it should say 'tactics' or 'techniques' instead of 'strategies.'
I'm grateful for all the suggestions, but especially grateful to Eric for his full description of treating each individual drum and then mixing a buss of that mix with another bus of the same mix additionally compressed. I was also grateful to hear that he didn't compress the reverbs as part of the separate drum mix but used his verbs in a traditional send and return manner. It's the specific examples that you learn from.
Sometimes a minimal drum mix sounds good. But for us newbies, I've never found a description of how Eddie Kramer mixed Mitch Mitchell's drums. That's something I'd like to know. Also, it's good to hear some other examples of admired drum recording that I might not have known.
So much of the criticism of processed drums, in this thread, has the feeling of - 'all that processing can be used, but that's not for you to try, leave that for the pros.'
One of the reasons I got into engineering my own stuff was the helpless and wasted feeling of watching a hired engineer at a by the hour studio, process tracks, recorded on Studer recorders, mixed on Neotek boards, with Pultec modules, render a mix that sounded worse than the practice recording done on a multitrack cassette player. I can't afford the experimentation of finding out what studio can do it correctly. I can afford to read, experiment and find proper techniques on my own. So many of the recommended books I've bought leave a lot to be desired in the specifics.
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#779810 - 02/25/05 10:07 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Originally posted by alcohol_:
I was hoping to get some specifics from this thread. Things I've never thought of.
Sometimes a minimal drum mix sounds good. But for us newbies, I've never found a description of how Eddie Kramer mixed Mitch Mitchell's drums. That's something I'd like to know.
So much of the criticism of processed drums, in this thread, has the feeling of - 'all that processing can be used, but that's not for you to try, leave that for the pros.'
So I'm really not sure where you're coming from with that remark, I certainly didn't mean it that way and I don't see where anybody else did.  . It kind of sounds like you've made up your mind ahead of time that you want to use a lot of processing and that was exactly what I was trying to say isn't a good idea. My specific technique (and one which I learned from some pretty heavy hitters) is to listen to the tracks first and figure out what it really does or doesn't need, rather than fall into a formula that I use each time. And also to try and improve my tracking environment as much as possible so that I can rely less and less on processing unless I'm going for a specific, effected sound.
One of the reasons I got into engineering my own stuff was the helpless and wasted feeling of watching a hired engineer at a by the hour studio, process tracks, recorded on Studer recorders, mixed on Neotek boards, with Pultec modules, render a mix that sounded worse than the practice recording done on a multitrack cassette player.
I can afford to read, experiment and find proper techniques on my own. So many of the recommended books I've bought leave a lot to be desired in the specifics.
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#779811 - 02/25/05 10:25 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
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Lee,
thanks for the thouughtful reply. Maybe I need to read more carefully. I didn't wish to offend.
I'm off for a snowboarding weekend, so until I get back, thanks again, to all, for this thread.
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#779813 - 02/27/05 03:34 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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(RhythmInMind)
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oh yes.. audio rats. they pop up all over.
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#779814 - 02/27/05 09:25 PM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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Lee Flier
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Originally posted by sidereal:
I never used to use gates until I sat behind a 24-track console with drums flying off 2-inch tape next to an engineer who showed me the fine art of gating. Oh my... it really adds punch to the individual drums without affecting the dynamic range inherent in a performance (i.e. compression). I'm not sure how/why this works but there's some kind of psychoacoustic effect wherein eliminating bleed really pushes the sound through.
Also, the bleed from multiple sources often causes comb filtering - phasing problems - and removing the bleed gets rid of those, so the drums stand out more.
If I do close mic all the drums, I usually use gates on the toms or, better yet, just remove all the space between tom hits in a DAW. That allows you to be more precise than a gate and doesn't take up DSP resources. Sometimes I will gate the kick... a lot of times though, the kick mic picks up some cool thump from the snare and toms which sounds good, in fact sometimes the other drums will sound wimpy without the bleed from the kick mic being in there. You may need to reverse the polarity on the kick mic, though, if you leave the bleed.
Snare, I almost never gate, unless the drummer does not hit the hats very hard and doesn't use many ghost notes. Otherwise, hi hat bleed will make the gated snare sound horribly unnatural, unless you use a REALLY directional mic on the snare, and point it away from the hats, which I don't like to. But if you have a hat basher, you're going to hear the hats get louder on the snare hits when the gate kicks in.
Sometimes if I really want to isolate the snare and compress the hell out of it or do something else to it, I'll make a COPY of the snare track, gate that, do whatever else I'm going to do, and then blend it with the original snare track.
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#779815 - 02/28/05 06:04 AM
Re: Drum mixing strategies
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alcohol_
MP Hall of Fame Member
Registered: 06/18/00
Posts: 3457
Loc: Boston, MA USA
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I only have my experience.
I find that gating the bass drum with the DIGI plugin can shape the sound in a very pleasing manner. If for some reason the bass drum doesn't sound deep enough, adding a low frequency signal, triggered by the bass drum and further gated works.
I like to keep Bass Drum and Snare channels individually compressed from the overheads. I've found that it gives me freedom to mix the overheads, snare or bass drum to the song as needed. Usually I've been recording with 5 mics. Overheads, Bass Drum, and one above and one below the snare.
I only record one band, so my experience with recording drummers is limited. We just got a new drummer for the band and it will be interesting for me to find out what a change in my tracking and mixing practice will be.
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when you play back the recording. 
