Advice on mixing powerful ethnic drums

ISedlacek · 18th December 2004

I am in the midst of recording a CD full of ethnic drums ("Chakra Breathing"). In certain passages I would like to reach, poweful, punchy, breath taking sound, with many drums and percussions participate (mostly recorded one by one in playback layers). I wonder whether during mixing it would be better to treat each drum separately (with compression, "powering", EQ, etc.) or to treat just the whole plain drum submix.
The drums are djembe, darbooka, conga, various ethnic drums and percussions.
Which compressor etc. would be the best to use for such a purpose ? (I have many plugins plus Millennia Origins).
So far I like Voxengo Analogue Flux quite a lot.

http://www.savita.cz/show/drums1.jpg
http://www.savita.cz/show/drums2.jpg

tINY · 18th December 2004

If the player are good and the recording was done more than 3 inches from the head, try and use no compression. Let the drums stand out on their own. The quiet is quiet and the loud is loud...

-tINY

rockstar · 20th December 2004

if you wish to compress probably its better to do this track by track first and then compress the submix with more subtle compress rates to melt the instruments together.

but if you wan´t to get some powerful drums in some cases you will reach rather if the drums are reduced to some few elements.

unfortunately i don´t know a lot about digital compressors. for the analogue world i´d prefer urei 1178, distressor, api 2500 or neve 33609 for bus compression.

hope this helps a bit.

18th December 2004	#1
ISedlacek Lives for gear Joined: Jun 2003 Location: Czech mountains and forests Posts: 3,858 Thread Starter	Advice on mixing powerful ethnic drums I am in the midst of recording a CD full of ethnic drums ("Chakra Breathing"). In certain passages I would like to reach, poweful, punchy, breath taking sound, with many drums and percussions participate (mostly recorded one by one in playback layers). I wonder whether during mixing it would be better to treat each drum separately (with compression, "powering", EQ, etc.) or to treat just the whole plain drum submix. The drums are djembe, darbooka, conga, various ethnic drums and percussions. Which compressor etc. would be the best to use for such a purpose ? (I have many plugins plus Millennia Origins). So far I like Voxengo Analogue Flux quite a lot. http://www.savita.cz/show/drums1.jpg http://www.savita.cz/show/drums2.jpg __________________ Ivo Sedlacek Savita Music Velvet Mastering Velvet Sound

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18th December 2004	#2
tINY Gear Guru Joined: Jul 2004 Location: Orygun Posts: 10,233	If the player are good and the recording was done more than 3 inches from the head, try and use no compression. Let the drums stand out on their own. The quiet is quiet and the loud is loud... -tINY

20th December 2004	#3
rockstar Gear maniac Joined: Aug 2004 Location: berlin/germany Posts: 172	if you wish to compress probably its better to do this track by track first and then compress the submix with more subtle compress rates to melt the instruments together. but if you wan´t to get some powerful drums in some cases you will reach rather if the drums are reduced to some few elements. unfortunately i don´t know a lot about digital compressors. for the analogue world i´d prefer urei 1178, distressor, api 2500 or neve 33609 for bus compression. hope this helps a bit.