Broke Bands.com

So we looked at a few ways to track drums on a budget and in less then ideal situations, now that we have the tracks we need to mix them. This consists of applying the processing such as EQ, Compression, Reverb etc. to make the drums sound killer in the mix. There’s quite a lot to it and I certainly am far from being an expert but hopefully you can glean some tidbits from this primer. I’m using these techniques on sampled drums but they are raw recordings of a real acoustic kit so much of the process mirrors that of working with acoustic drums.

What you will need:

If you mix all ‘in the box’ like I do this means you will use software plugins to process your sounds as opposed to hardware units. The concepts however remain relatively the same between both methods just the workflow will be different. I would need at a minimum the following processors to work with drums on my mixes:

• EQ – boost and cut the frequencies to tailor the sound. essentially you want to remove what you don’t need and possibly accentuate what you like
• Compressor – enhance the transient to give the sounds more ‘attack’ and ‘punch’ and even out the volume between hits
• Reverb – give the impression of space and ‘bigness’ to the sounds

Most recording software will come with basic but usable versions of these. You can of course buy additional plugins and even download free ones on the net. By free I don’t mean warez or cracked software, I believe in supporting the developers of this software so they can continue making good shit so if you plan on using something BUY IT.

I’ll give you some basic pointers on how to apply the processing, some examples and then some links to further reading and resources.

Panning: For the n00bz out there panning is where you place the elements of the tracks in the stereo field, left to right. For drums you will most likely match a real drumset, so kick and snare in the middle, toms panned around and cymbals panned farthest. Some people mix from the audience perspective, I prefer the player perspective mostly.

Kick Drum chain:

Compressor – enhance the attack and punch
EQ – shape the ‘click’ of the attach, scoop out some mids that aren’t needed and shape the low end to punch and fit with the bass guitar

Snare chain:

Compressor – this will give the snare that SMACK that you want for aggressive music.
EQ – depends on the source but usually I will cut out some mids to remove mud and decrease the ringing, find the frequency where the crack (the snare) lives and boost that a bit and sometimes boost some upper lows / lower mids for beef and ‘thud’.
Reverb – once you’ve enhanced the attack and the transient the sustain can suffer. Reverb helps bring back the sustain and the ‘larger then life’ sound. I like using a nice thick Plate reverb like the UAD Plate 140 and I put it on an FX send.

Toms chain:

Compressor – similar settings for snare but usually a little less aggressive
EQ – scoop some mids to remove mud, boost some upper mids and treble to enhance the attack
Reverb – add back some sustain and huge roomsound

Cymbals / Overhead Mics chain:

EQ – high pass filter to remove uneeded frequencies and kick drum, then a high shelf around 1-2k to help give some more shimmer and cut

Hi-hat mic chain:

EQ – level wise I usually keep this one fairly low since the hats are coming through the other mics already and you don’t want them to become overpowering

Room mic / ambient mics chain:

Compressor - I like to crush the ambient mic pretty hard with compression and then keep it blended in relatively low in level
EQ

Another popular technique to beef up drums is to group the drums together or ‘buss’ them and then apply ‘parallel compression’ to them. Essentially you are mixing a heavily compressed and EQd drum signal with the original drum signal to further emphasize the attack and increase the apparent size of the drumsound. You can read more about how to apply that technique in Cubase here: http://www.faderwear.com/guides/parallel_compression.shtml - it should be a similar process in most DAW programs.

Sample Replacement

If you end up with shitty recorded live drums you can still save the mix with the use of sample replacement. Many Metal mixes these days are using at least partial sample replacement on augmentation to give that consistently huge and polished sound. Essentially you are using the original performance to trigger a different drumsound that plays instead of / in combination with the original sound. Some of the tools available that can help achieve this in your DAW are:

Drumagog
Drumtracker
ApTrigga

This is just a primer and there are a lot of other things you can try including layering samples / sounds, other effects such as distortion, things like transient designers which are like a cousin of compression and more. When recording acoustic drums there is obviously a whole lot more to it such as mic techniques, tuning, editing, sidechain gating etc. etc. I’ll post some links at the end for further reading if you are interested in that. Make some good Metal!

Faderwear Guides
Guide to Acoustic Drums
Drum Samples FAQ
EQ Guide
Compressor Basics

Free or Cheap Plugins:

Variety of Sound – http://varietyofsound.wordpress.com/downloads/
Audio Damage – http://www.audiodamage.com/
Smart Electronix – http://www.smartelectronix.com/
DDMF – http://www.ddmf.eu/
KVR Audio – http://www.kvraudio.com