Drum Mixing Techniques From the Pros

[feckinedgit]

Took all of the advice on board and the results are here -


MySpace.com - Circadianmusic - Downpatrick, UK - Metal / Progressive / Rock - www.myspace.com/circadianni


I have sent the wav`s to a poper engineer to mix as what you hear is a rough mix by me, so will post the remixed and mastered files once he works his magic.

[cajonezzz]

Lately, for most "natural" sounding tracks, I've been making sure to get 80% of tones from OHEads, then sneak in some kik and snare direct,and a compressed ribbon room...

good kit/player/tuning , and i'm pretty much there with that ( and work really hard to make sure i got the goods with just those mics)

at that point, i go ahead and mic everything and the kitchen sink. multiple rooms, direct toms, under snare etc. Just to have it, as many times ya don'tknow what you'll need on the mix.

but it still stands,that if I just pull up those four mics... and blend accordingly, I've got "a good drum sound".

i guess i addressed tracking more than mixing... but anyhow, that's my story.

[Empire Prod]

Originally Posted by cajonezzz

Lately, for most "natural" sounding tracks, I've been making sure to get 80% of tones from OHEads, then sneak in some kik and snare direct,and a compressed ribbon room...

I've been doing that same thing lately. Must be in the air!

I've been throwing a C24 up top for OH
A 57 on the snare
A D12 on the kick
and a 4038 out front

This is my minimalistic setup I have been toying with

[six_wax]

After not doing a modern rock project for, oh, about 2 or 3 years, I had to hammer out some label demos for a talented group of rockin' lads I've been working with... Something that served me well while trying to get the drum sound together:

Drum kits have a ton of "girth" in the low mids. They are big & "heavy" in that they occupy alot of space in these low-mid frequencies. Even cymbals! One aspect of the modern sound is to take that girth and fullness and translate it into a brighter spectrum, with lots of "impact" in the upper midrange, and "apparent (or relative) brightness"... to make other instruments seem heavier!

That said, contemplate your untreated snare drum. Thunk around 200, tons of honk around 600, thwap around 1500, bite around 3-5k, air higher up if you've got a good room, a mic other than a 57, and aren't swimming in hihat bleed. Pretty full range, with lots of low mids naturally.

Now assume: The spectral perspective of your mixed kit will come largely from where you place this snare sound in the frequency spectrum. So --again, work with me-- you want to get your snare sound up into the range where it feels good & impactful, but leaves room for other things (like your guitars) to feel "girthy", "big", and full.

So take a leap of faith & CRANK somewhere around 2-3KHz, med-Q. Alot. If you solo it, it will probably sound JUST PLAIN WRONG relative to your untreated snare or overheads, but that's the range you want to push it into. Cut some additional honk, probably add some additional brightness (maybe use an under mic or an added sample to acheive this). Then futz with your compressor to get the envelope focused, consistent and impactful. [edit: I've been reminded that you can get this same 3k effect by blending a nice under-snare mic capture...]

NOW, treat your overheads to fit that "elevated" snare. You'll probably find you can cut alot of low mids and still have it sound full. Or you can even boost some lows (depending on your room & micing) and upper mids, thus translating low-mid "girth" to "impact" frequencies. You might not have to add as much brightness as you thought, since your perspective on the whole kit sound has shifted (starting with the snare). The proportion of lows & midrange in the kick will be easier to sort out. Toms will now fit into the picture alot easier as well.

I've found that I kind of have to FIGHT to get my ears and expectations reoriented towards that modern rock target sound. It ain't natural, and it's not how I intuitively want my drum kits to sound... But it serves a very noble end, in that it gives you a lot of space to make guitars sound huge down below. For me, getting that snare "up there" makes the whole kit fall into place ALOT FASTER. Hope it helps somebody else!

[raal]

Originally Posted by Empire Prod

I've been doing that same thing lately. Must be in the air!

I've been throwing a C24 up top for OH
A 57 on the snare
A D12 on the kick
and a 4038 out front.

This is my minimalistic setup I have been toying with

so i'll ask this question again:

who prefers mono room mic and why? i've recorded rooms with C24 that sound great, stereo ribbons, or mono. depends on the mood and things can sound great either way, but i recently sent a tracking date to be mixed somewhere else with a mono LDC for room and the AE complained.

of course there are no rules but i'd like to get a sense of what people are doing these days... in the 80s i always used to go for stereo room, but these days i've found myself digging mono. thanks.

[EliasGwinn]

Tracking properly is always the best...

...

...but...

...sometimes you've got what you've got, and sometimes that isn't so hot, and all you can do at that point is salvage. (Most engineers have been there...roll up your sleeves, put on your wading boots and jump in!!)


Example: MySpace.com - H u e l a (new live track posted!) - SYRACUSE - Folk Rock / Indie / Soul - www.myspace.com/huelamusic

...recorded live, on a small stage with who-knows-what mics and some mixer/firewire interface.

...mixed with PT's stock eq's, dynamics, delays, verbs.

...Not awesome...tons of distortion...a thick layer of Myspace glaze....but I didn't have to replace the drums, so I'd consider it a success

edit: this is not representative of the work of Subcat Studios (thank goodness). I did this quickly on a home studio rig as a favor to a friend (the singer/songwriter/guitarist of the band). I'm just using it as an example of dirty deeds done dirt cheap to a drum mix.

[Empire Prod]

Originally Posted by raal

so i'll ask this question again:

who prefers mono room mic and why?

I have come to like mono rooms because there are less phase or comb filtering issues, I think you get a sound that is more true to the actual sound of the kit when you have less mics, I am also giving drums much less width in the stereo image than I did in the past and the mono room mic actually helps achieve that as well.

[china jam]

Originally Posted by raal

so i'll ask this question again:

who prefers mono room mic and why? i've recorded rooms with C24 that sound great, stereo ribbons, or mono. depends on the mood and things can sound great either way, but i recently sent a tracking date to be mixed somewhere else with a mono LDC for room and the AE complained.

of course there are no rules but i'd like to get a sense of what people are doing these days... in the 80s i always used to go for stereo room, but these days i've found myself digging mono. thanks.

I've been simplifying things more and more lately, especially with drums but I still use a couple room mics by default, out of habit.

[James Meeker]

Originally Posted by Washington

On a more specific topic, anybody here would care to spill his own guess on how to process a good but neutral drum TAKE (post-rec) into the kind of sound we hear in Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good"?

I can't speak for anyone else, but this is the approach I've taken in the past:

First off, you are going to live and die by your ROOM mics. These are going to be the tone and ambiance of the drums. Myself, I'd send the rooms to 2 stereo sends on the SSL (or you can buss to 2 aux's in PT, whatever... just get two stereo pairs) and treat each one differently. The first one would be my 'neutral' room mics--I'd aim to get as honest and realistic sounding a drum sound off of them without resorting to heavy compression or EQ. On the second pair I'd *CRUSH* them with compression and set it about 12db underneath the main set for girth and power (mix/crush as needed).

This would be the basis of my drum sound. Next I'd bring up the overheads and focus on mild compression and EQ boosts aimed at complimenting the room mics. More than likely I would emphasize clarity more than anything else, and try to get some 'snap' off the kick and snare, as well as some crispness off the cymbals. Chances are I'd also automate the OH's pretty heavily--bump them up 2-4db on each cymbal hit for a beat or two so I can get the crashes to really jump out at you.

I'd work the room pairs and the OH's until I had a nice representation of what I"m looking for IN THE MIX. Once you have the drums sitting about where they need to be against the other instruments I'd start to bring in the close mics, starting with kick. Subtlety is the name of the game here--you are looking to accent the rooms/OH's with the close mics. Chances are I'd be doing some gating and compression to get the impact and snap required and nothing more. I'd probably do a fair amount of top/bottom filtering, and subtractive EQ, with minimal boosting where it's needed to really make things feel special.

Don't kill things with the close mics. Your drums should sound right before you bring 'em in. You are just accenting lightly! A little more impact on the snare, a bit more beef to the kick and so forth.

It's a very different approach than most records are made these days. The important thing is to get the rooms and OH's work for you. You'd be amazed how great a kick drum sounds from just rooms and OH's.

Try to keep the arrangement around this tight but not congested. If you've compressed and limited the daylights out of the other instruments you're going to have to do the same with the drums and you'll find yourself relying more and more on the direct mics. This kind of defeats the whole purpose of what you were trying to do, so be careful when assembling the mix.

Hope this helps someone. I've done a few tracks for folksier bands and took this kind of approach on the drums. It takes some getting used to if you're doing heavy rock drums day in and day out. At first it doesn't sound right!

Also, be careful with too much top end on the rooms. If you freak out on the 10K+ frequencies the drums will seem more distant than you may prefer. If you need brightness overall I'd look at the overheads for that. Sometimes I'll even roll off some of the top end on the room mics to get a beefier sound.

[void]

I have been enjoying pushing 5k by 6db or so BEFORE the compressor on the room mic. Probably just me though.

[damionhill]

Something i do for example snare:
I copy the track and pan each one like 11 or 7% left and Right. So this widens the snare. I'll then compress but use a different compressor for each one. I normally like one snare compressor to be a fat sound and the other kind of transparent. EQ to taste and there ya go. Snare just pops out and great!

I also Parallel compress the whole kit. Actually NY compression works great. Which is pretty much the same thing as parallel but with a scoop around 500Hz with a wide Q. So that you get compressed highs and Compressed Lows. But your uncompressed midrange will be a more dynamic. I love this! Mix those to taste and automate where needed.

[TheBSper]

For those of you out there who, like me, don't have the luxury of recording in a good room, you can try this if you have a convolution reverb:

Find an impulse response (I know the Waves library has at least one) for the live room of a recording studio, load it on an aux track, then bus all your drums to it. Use the level of the send to blend the amount of each track that's going to the live-room reverb to make your kit sound like it's in the live room. Once you've done that print the output of the reverb to a stereo pair of tracks and you've got yourself some faux-room mics! No substitute for the real thing, but it can add some nice depth when you've got no other options.

[ColourSurround]

More brilliant replies, thanks again to everyone who has responded to this thread. I'd say about 99% of people who hear my tracks now wouldn't know that a real kit isn't used. As to the talent of the drummer however, that may be another story!

Cheers,

PiN

[jdtrbn]

Originally Posted by Space Station

9. Between 5khz and 6khz is always a good frequency to EQ/boost on snares
...
16. When bouncing the toms, ride them up in the fills. Louder is always better and if later on you find its too much use a compressor (often a nice effect in breakdowns)
...
20. Be adventurous with the low frequency, especially with room/ambient mics and kicks
...
24. Assuming you're working on analog tape, record drums loudly and don't be scared to rock the meters so as to guarantee maximum tape compression

Wow, can't wait to apply these blindfolded without ever listening to it myself and making my own decisions.

[Capstan Cappy]

...lots of boost here ,do this cut here, do that , place mic;s like such, colour you hair, do a funny dance.......

first u need is a reference, what do u think is a good drum sound in the first place, no reference and u'll be searching and wondering forever....

it is so dependend on what skins and material the dummer uses, there is no way u can determine the cut and boost frequencies by standard,

set up your mic's , make sure the drummer tunes his kit in such a matter that there is no over excessive frequencies dominating the sound, then simply mix the kit until you got a nice ballance and then dtermine what is in the way or what is lacking , FIRST u try to correct it with mic placement, if that dont work u grab the EQ and try to make it work,

there is no fixed freq for drums, depends on the song and kit and drummer, reverb and such is also totally dependend on the song, first make sure u get a good CLEAN sounding kit

[Sk106]

Having lived off of being a serious drummer for many years, I’ve worked quite alot in the studio with drums. I’m no engineer, I only got as much knowledge and ear as most people who is around music, but not the perspectives of serious engineers. I loved this thread and thought I would contribute a view from the other side of the control room window. If there are any other drummers reading this, I’m sure you’ll agree and please add to it if you feel it needs to.

The social aspect is very important when recording such a cumbersome instrument as the drumkit is. Bottom line: Do not tell any instrumentalist that what he sounds like isn’t useful for recording. That’s completely backwards, and it puts people in defence-mode right away. You feel like your bare presence is a pain in the neck and causes the engineer to have to do extra work to cover up for your dumbass insufficiency as a resource. What makes those matters even worse, is if the engineer was the guy who hired you in the first place.
An engineer should be able to capture and reproduce any sound, so telling a customer that his stuff isn't useful for recording is not derived from a technical problem. It's derived from the engineer thinking that his own preference for drums sounds is superior to that of his customer, and the customer should therefore do what the engineer commands. That is ok if the engineer is the guy who called the drummer in to do stuff for the engineer's music. It’s easier said than done, but the hardliner bottom is: the drummer is responsible for what he sounds like and the engineer is responsible for capturing and reproducing precisely that sound. The most productive however, is if the instrumentalist and engineer works together - naturally.

Workwise, I see it as 2 different scenarios:

1. If the drummer is hired for this tune or this project, meaning he’s a hired gun, then you direct and tell him what you want. Don’t hire a drummer and then be suspicious of him and “expecting the worst” and pushing him around when he shows up, or doubt how he will perform given the needs of the particular recording in question. Hire people you trust instead.
2. If the drummer is part of a band who are producing themselves, or if the drummer is his own producer, then you are on His payroll and you work for him. In that case, he will direct you and tell you what he wants. Observations and suggestions made in a swift and respectful manner should never be a problem, but in this scenario don’t try to save him from (what you think is) his own mistakes and stuff like that. If he’s good with things, then it’s fine. However, if there’s a serious problem, then be up front with it and be up front Before the session starts or before the recording starts.

It’s true that a surprising number of drummer only has brief or almost no knowledge of how to tune their instruments. This needs attention before(!) the session starts. Refusing to work with those drummers who can’t tune or doesn’t take good care of their instruments might sound unsympathetic but also logical. Solve this problem before the session starts and you’ll have tons of more fun and productiveness. However, many serious drummers have excellent knowledge of how to get their kit to emulate anything from a Metallica Sound to a Ringo Starr sound kit, given 15 mins to change heads and tune up.

If the drummer is a first timer a studio environment, don’t tell him what and how to do things. A musician needs to feel he’s doing his thing to sound confident and deliver a musical message. Rather encourage him to just do his thing. If you find difficulties making that useful, then direct the individual issues with suggestions from there instead.

Do not ever replace a drum sounds by another sound without the drummer’s full approval. If you’re in the need of doing that, then you either did a really poor job as an engineer, or you didn’t take care of the problem that needed attention before the recording started. To the drummer this is embarrasing, and terribly disrespectful and patronizing.

The technical aspects, this is a list of common problems that I see too often:

1. The sound that often comes out sounding the worst, is the snare. In most pop or rock oriented music, the incredibly sensitive brittle personality of the snare often suffers from the engineer wanting to bring out as much “crack” or “thud” as is humanly possible. Before recording, sit in behind his kit, take a stick and tap and play the snare drum softly all over, and listen to the bright nuances. If you want more snap, then have the drummer play harder and with rimshots.
   Record both top- and bottomhead of the snare. Recording only the top risks being a slightly dull, boxy sound.
2. The drum that most drummers will need monitoring for, is the kick. Reason being is that there are plenty of equipment and limbs (and headphones) in between the drummer’s ears and the kick batter head. And - unlike the toms and snare - the sound of the kick spreads horizontally. A tall drummer using a small kick, and this problem is at its peak.
3. Aim the mic's directional center towards the center of the drum. However inaccurate a drummer plays, he always aims for the center area as a general rule. The closer to the rim the mic is directed, the more ring and overtones you get. This is true for all drums.
4. Like any well tuned instrument, well tuned drums produces more rich overtones and ringing. As a general rule don’t tape the drums down. Instead tune them well and dampen them slightly. Use a lot of soft dampening rather than a little heavy dampening. Dampening is the most effective where the most of the ringing lives: from the rim and about 1 inch in towards the center. Damprings usually overdoes things, use damp gel, textile tape or damping pads.
5. Keep a small tube of thin oil around, to lube up any squeeking pedal or throne. Even with pristine equipment that can come like a bolt out of the sky.
6. Don’t put the room or overhead mics too close to the cymbals. A heavyhitting drummer causes the cymbals to wobble quite a bit, and mics will pick that up, like strange volume pulsating.
7. Do not tweak or do anything during recording. This may sound self explanatory, but engineers love to mix and you’ll be amazed how many engineers sits there listening and thinks it sounds just a tad too *whatever*. They just wanna try a quick eq to see how that *whatever* can be controlled and they will only use the monitoring in the control room, so it won't affect the monitoring for the drummer or the recording itself. That's the common line of thought just before the shit hits the fan.
8. As a general rule, if the drummer plays unevenly, and you try to even it out by using compression, you'll get a dead sound.
9. The problem area of almost any kit, the Bermuda triangle of drumkits, is the triangle that the hi-hat, snare and high tom constitutes. The hi-hat kicks the snare gate open all the time, the snare kicks the small tom gate open alot, the snare bleeds into the hi-hat and gets too bright and the small tom causes massive resonance of the snare. This can be a nightmare. Use mics with narrow directional characteristics and direct them away from the other 2 parts of this triangle. What will make this eaiser to handle leakage-wise is having the hi-hat higher up, and using the smallest and softest available hi-hat cymbals. The proportions and timbre of the hi-hats matters alot less than one might think in a complete mix.
10. If the snares buzzes too much, tune the tom who makes it buzz too much to a different fundamental pitch, or tighten the snare tension with the adjustment screw on the side of the snare drum. If it still buzzes too much, try a gentle taping of the snare bed onto the bottom head; use light paper tape for this, nothing heavy.
11. Many times, I've noticed that expanders yields a gentler and better result for filtering out problematic leakage, than pure noisegates.
12. Micing a drum from too away will generally yield better sonic results than too close, but the further off the drum the more leakage problems.
13. Keep the 3:1 principle in mind when micing drums.
14. Aviod having the sides of any 2 drums resting against each other. Same thing with cymbal stands: Don't allow the feet of any stand or foot touch up on the foot of another stand. It's major risk of resonance and rattling.
15. Keep a carpet under the drums. It saves your floor from oil spill and the knifing of the spike-fitted feet of drums. It keeps the drums from sliding away from the drummer while playing which forces a re-take, and it dampes alot of things that might rattle down there as well as floor reflections back up to the overheads (drums are loud).
16. Each cymbal is held in place by a wingnut-like mechanism on the top. Play a roll with wool sticks on the cymbal and make sure the mechanism doesn't rattle from sympathetic vibrations. If it does, you might pick it up in the overheads.
17. If the toms sounds dead no matter what, try sliding it through different positions on its mount. Some mounts go straight into the body of the drum, other mounts enables you to slide the drum up and down along the side. The first kind of mount yields dramatic differences depending on how far in or out the mount is slided, while the second type of mount has a moderate effect. Drums that are fitted with freefloating- or rubberdamped mounts yeilds alot less difference in this regard.
18. Being offered really tight and isolating headphones is usually a bliss. K240 doesn't cut it here. Ideally, we want to hear no drumsound from the kit, but all from within the large and comfy headphones.
19. Always make sure you have a drum tuning key available. You’d be surprised how many drummers don’t have those with them. :)

As far as early reflections are concerned, a really large room does just as well as a small dambened booth-type room. In a large room, you'll get less early reflections and less coloration than in a small boothtype room and the room tail can more easily be handled with gate/expanders.

If you record overheads and room, then your panning of each close mic stem - as well as the width of the entire drumkit - will be locked by the panorama captured in the overheads (and possibly room too). If you record using M/S setup you'll release yourself from this lock.

Thanks for reading this all :)

[Capstan Cappy]

refernce, key is reference, without reference u'll die, there is NO sience, there is no RULE, u can think of anything and it wont work, work towards your reference with the stuff u got, nothing else

[EliasGwinn]

Sk106, that was a very well-thought-out and informative post. That is exactly the type of post that make forums like this valuable. It gives great prospective to the engineer who, ultimately, needs to work compatibly with the musicians he/she is recording. bravo...

[Sk106]

Originally Posted by EliasGwinn

Sk106, that was a very well-thought-out and informative post. That is exactly the type of post that make forums like this valuable. It gives great prospective to the engineer who, ultimately, needs to work compatibly with the musicians he/she is recording. bravo...

Thanks :)
I was afraid my writing mania in that huge post killed the thread. I was in a real writing mood, but .. hopefully it offers some good that some can use.

[FutureLegends]

Great posts Sk106 and James!

Recording and mixing drums is the trickiest part of the whole methinks. Also the thing where the musician makes the most difference. Put two drummers at the same kit with same micing and you can get almost two totally different sounds...

One of my biggest beefs about recording drums is that, having a small project studio, you end up recording bands on a budget. So they wanna do 5 songs in 3 days, they show up, you start setting up the drums, everyone else runs around making noise, playing instruments and are eager to start recording. So you end up going for the first thing that sound decent... gah...

Also, how do you mic drums if you record a whole band live in the same (small) room? things like room mics are gonna have too much spill to be usable etc...

cheers

/DZ

[u b k]

gobos are good.

so is bleed.

when recording everyone together, you may find that those room mics are among the most useful tracks you have.


gregoire
del
ubk
.

[damionhill]

Thanks SK106! I really enjoyed reading your posts. I do what I can to help build confidence with the players. But there is only so much you can do.

I get a lot of untalented and uneducated drummers in my studio. It comes down to "how are your editing skills." I hate quantizing drums because it destroys the feel and groove in any style. I always have to tune their kits and I tell them to changes their heads before they come.... and they never do. And they still expect the best.

I guess people say that i can take a terrible band and make them work. Not something i am proud of by any means. I wish I had more talent come in and I could spend more time doing mixing than editing.

[phillysoulman]

Originally Posted by James Meeker

Random tips... not always useful but nice to know.

1.) Snares love plate 'verb

2.) Multiple 'verbs on snare often works

3.) Cutting top end off room mics is often good

4.) "Modern" kick drums have a lot less low end than you may think, and a lot more 4-6K... you may end up boosting +12 db in that range... don't fret, it happens.

5.) Nail you kick/snare compression attack/release curves right away. Once you nail that (and you'll hear it when you do) you've got the drum sounds nailed.

6.) Don't pan the toms too far... 75-45% wide does the trick.

7.) Don't go insane with the top end of the OH's.... too much 10K+ ends up with a very amateur sound.

8.) Snare EQ: HP around 70hz, boost around 120-240, cut around 500-700, boost at 1.2K, and look for something between 3 and 10 K for more boost depending. Depends on what you got and want. Piccolo snares tend to like 6-7k boosts.

9.) Try parallel compression on only the rooms--run one fairly mild, and the other set to annihilate. Balance them out until it sounds cool.

10.) Knock out some 200 and 800 hz in room mics... leave the rest of it alone except for maybe some mild 8 Khz lowpassin'. If the kick has to be tight, HP the signal as well.

11.) Ruthlessly cut the lower mids on kick.... 6-15 db cuts should do around the 300-500 area. Set bandwidth to taste... the tighter the kick you want the more around 150-250 you should be rollin' off on.

12.) Pick either your OH's or rooms as being dominant. Don't put 'em in at the same levels--have one louder than the other. The "modern" way is to choose the rooms a bit more--to balance out the ultra compressed and loud direct mics. Most OH's these days are cymbal info and a little clarity only and are often low in the mix (like -12 db on the meters it seems).

13.) Limit *AND* compress kicks and snares. Love compression with a vengeance for that Lord Alge sound.

14.) Put a stereo widener on your OH's... makes the drumkit image bigger, can make the snare sound a bit fatter too.

15.) Put 20 ms delay on your room mics to get that Albini sound.

16.) Apply vigorous amounts of tape saturation as the first plugin in your chain.... you'll need less compression later on. Gets a good vintage/indie type sound if you lay it on there.

17.) 20-80 ms of predelay on snare 'verbs can be cool.

18.) Non-lin verb sounds on drums is probably going to come back in style--I've already gotten requests for "big 80's drum sounds, tons of reverb" from young bands.

19.) Don't compress yo