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glissando · 25th November 2009

Every so often this happens to me....

I do a quickish rough drum mix (recorded, not samples) with minimal eq on each channel
just focussing on finding a balance (lots of bleed) between the eight or so tracks when suddenly I find a balance that has a certain great energy , then I move on bring in the other tracks, quick balance and bounce out a reference rough mix...sounds good enough

fat forward to prepping for the real mix...bring up the same song, start working on the drums...start carving away at each track maybe do some gating/strip silencing..even things out with automation, limiting, whatever, compress, saturate etc...work for a couple of hours....taking the honk outta things... thinking I'm making this kit pop..

then I bring up the rough mix and realize that the drums sound way more effective (but the engineer in me is saying "yeah but the kik is a little cloudy and there's too much 250")...so I go back and work for another two hours on the individual drum tracks...more compression to glue it...fatten the snare...saturate the overheads....guess what...sounds even worse.

My point...when you get it, you get it. It can happen in 5 minutes or take three days. If the drums sound good from the rough, then use them that way, bus them out and treat it as a single stereo instrument (eq, compress to taste)...nobody has to know it only took 10 minutes to get that very effective sounding drum kit.

Why can't I learn my lesson already?

25th November 2009	#1
glissando 3 + infractions, forum membership suspended. Join Date: May 2009 Location: SJCap Posts: 1,148 Thread Starter	Leaving A Good Thing Alone Every so often this happens to me.... I do a quickish rough drum mix (recorded, not samples) with minimal eq on each channel just focussing on finding a balance (lots of bleed) between the eight or so tracks when suddenly I find a balance that has a certain great energy , then I move on bring in the other tracks, quick balance and bounce out a reference rough mix...sounds good enough fat forward to prepping for the real mix...bring up the same song, start working on the drums...start carving away at each track maybe do some gating/strip silencing..even things out with automation, limiting, whatever, compress, saturate etc...work for a couple of hours....taking the honk outta things... thinking I'm making this kit pop.. then I bring up the rough mix and realize that the drums sound way more effective (but the engineer in me is saying "yeah but the kik is a little cloudy and there's too much 250")...so I go back and work for another two hours on the individual drum tracks...more compression to glue it...fatten the snare...saturate the overheads....guess what...sounds even worse. My point...when you get it, you get it. It can happen in 5 minutes or take three days. If the drums sound good from the rough, then use them that way, bus them out and treat it as a single stereo instrument (eq, compress to taste)...nobody has to know it only took 10 minutes to get that very effective sounding drum kit. Why can't I learn my lesson already?