dumb mixing ?

[jschlefhotmail.com]

My friend told me he mixes this way I want your opinions...

 

He says he gets all the levels about the sam when mix i.e drums -5 hit -5 snare -5 bass -5 and then starts carving out the nasty freqs so he can make room for everything...

 

One problem that I am having is with my kick.. seems like whem I hit -3 on the channel fader I leave no room for the rest of my mix on the master fader.. what should I do?

[ABECK]

Originally posted by jschlef@hotmail.com:

My friend told me he mixes this way I want your opinions...

 

He says he gets all the levels about the sam when mix i.e drums -5 hit -5 snare -5 bass -5 and then starts carving out the nasty freqs so he can make room for everything...

 

One problem that I am having is with my kick.. seems like whem I hit -3 on the channel fader I leave no room for the rest of my mix on the master fader.. what should I do?

[jschlefhotmail.com]

Was there a response?

[strat0124]

No offense but I think it's a huge mistake to try to fix everything in the mix with respect to levels and eq. When I record drums I use a spare board, some Bellari mic pre's, and a gate. I mic every drum and position two overheads facing the drums from the drummers perspective. I personally don't like to overdo compression and gating on drums (unless the drummer is very heavy handed or sloppy). I try to get a hot level in and smooth it out with outboards and then direct to tape. You can even get a fantastic sound with only two mic's believe it or not. Led Zep's "When the Levee Breaks" drums were recorded with two........TWO microphones......and it's an awesome sound. I try to keep it simple and try to convince the given drummer that dampening is a good thing, as is tuning. I have no clue why they are always against that. Not all but some. So in a nutshell, my personal opinion is to keep it simple, record everything hot as possible without getting into NASTY distortion (a little is preferable in analog!), keep your input eq at a mean level to give you some room to work if need be, and don't agonize over a drum mix forever......I have before, and the best recordings I ever made (drum-wise) have been when I didn't freak about every little thing. After all it's supposed to be fun, isn't it?

[Anderton]

>>My friend told me he mixes this way I want your opinions...<<

 

There are lots of approaches to mixing. If his final mixes sound great, then my opinion is that this is a great way to mix. If his final mixes sound bad, then my opinion is that this is a bad way to mix!

 

Generally, people do start off with nominal level settings, then work from there. It's a mistake to bring up just one track and work with that (e.g., EQ, effects sends, etc.), then bring up another, and so on, as all tracks interact with each other. You may end up getting a great bass sound in isolation, but which fights with other tracks when mixed in context.

 

As to your kick drum problem, I'm not sure exactly what kind of problem you mean. It may be that the kick is taking up too much of the low end. Try cutting some low frequencies on the kick and bring up the midrange a bit to accentuate the beater hit, that might give you more bandwidth but still keep the kick nice and prominent.

[jo-eberhardbluewin.ch]

For me the idea of your mix approach, is to listen first to the whole drum set - only brining up all your faders and balancing the set without gates, comps or eq. You listen to the whole picture. Don't bring in all your outboards and stuff from the beginning.

[Lee Flier]

jschlef: I take it you're referring to the "old school rule of thumb" for mixing, which says that if you start with the kick and the snare (NOT just the kick alone, that may be your problem) so that combined, they register at -3 on the master VU, that ought to be a good start to your mix that leaves room enough for everything else without causing overs.

 

I'm not so sure this holds true anymore. For one thing, overs on analog tape aren't the same thing as digital overs. You could push tape hard and it wouldn't sound bad. So 0 VU didn't really mean 0 VU, you generally had peaks that went to +3 or so. For another thing, digital can record more bottom end and so if you start a mix with the kick at -3, it will probably sound too loud because it takes up more of the frequency spectrum. Last but not least, people seem to be recording with a lot more tracks in these DAW days; in that case, you may indeed just not have enough room for everything else.

 

As to your friend's approach: a lot of people don't do mixes the "old" way, where you'd solo each instrument and then bring them all together later. Lots of people bring everything up first, get some kind of idea how everything sounds in combination, then start soloing each one as necessary and making space for it with subtractive EQ or compression or whatever. It's a valid approach, and so is the "build it from the kick and snare on up" approach. Just depends on what works for you.

 

--Lee

[jschlefhotmail.com]

Thanks for everybody's response....

[KenElevenShadows]

If your friend is getting good results, then certainly this is a valid way. An advantage of your friend's method is that you can hear everything interacting with each other at once, instead of tweaking each one separately only to find that they may not sound good in context. I don't have a particularly set way of mixing, but I generally like hearing everything at once initially, and then see what is conflicting and then tweak accordingly.

 

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[Chip McDonald]

Originally posted by jschlef@hotmail.com:

One problem that I am having is with my kick.. seems like whem I hit -3 on the channel fader I leave no room for the rest of my mix on the master fader.. what should I do?

 

Realize you don't make a painting by trying to use equal amounts of all colors.

 

The kick drum: there's no way of knowing the tonal character of it. It could have a narrow peak that sets it apart. Akin to having a flouescent shade of red dominating a painting of earth tones.

 

Some people might want that, and that could theoretically work: a painting of a run down street corner in a city at dusk, with a florescent red dot of

a traffic stop light for instance. What is the audio equivalent of that? Is that what you want? Is that the problem?

 

 

http://www.mp3.com/chipmcdonald

[D. Gauss]

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one of the best responses i've seen on this board!

 

-d. gauss