Blending Acoustic and Electronic Drums

[gideon352]

Butch, Thanks for doing this! You've made some of my favorite albums of all time, especially the Garbage albums. Which leads me to my question :

How do you get your electronic drum sounds and acoustic drum sounds to blend
so well together on the Garbage albums? There are most of my favorite drums sounds of all time on your albums! Any tips? Is it mainly Eq-ing? Compression? Do you use any samples or triggering to help the acoustic drums sit better with the electronic drums?

Thanks again!!!!!

Gideon Merritt

[mobius.media]

I'd love to know this as well.

Like for example if you have one acoustic kit and one electronic kit going together do you tend to treat them like two separate entities (eg. bus compress each individually), or will you more group and compress all the kicks together, then group and compress all the snares together, then all the hats/cymbals, etc.

Or I know you mentioned before for example you often bounce your acoustic drums to mono.

Any other thoughts on making it all gel would be great!

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by mobius.media

I'd love to know this as well.

Like for example if you have one acoustic kit and one electronic kit going together do you tend to treat them like two separate entities (eg. bus compress each individually), or will you more group and compress all the kicks together, then group and compress all the snares together, then all the hats/cymbals, etc.

Or I know you mentioned before for example you often bounce your acoustic drums to mono.

Any other thoughts on making it all gel would be great!

Getting multiple drum sounds to blend is tricky! First, you have to worry about timing issues, make sure they are not flamming too much, or messing up the groove.
Then I usually would sculpt each sound with eq or filters, choose where you want to find a pocket for each sound. For instance, if you have multiple kick drums, all of them don't need to be full band frequency. Don't be afraid to really exaggerate the eq, it might sound weird if you solo it, but hopefully sounds great in the mix.
I usually keep the live drums and electronics on separate tracks, and mix them all to a master drum buss.