The way to make good snare and kick when mixing-tricks you used!

[mattsplace]

Whats The way to make good snare and kick when mixing-tricks that u using during the mixing!

[utters]

drumagog



or... Good drummer... compression

[Mike Brown]

Originally Posted by mat1306

Whats The way to make good snare and kick when mixing-tricks that u using during the mixing!

Its all down to how they were tracked.

If the tracking engineer has been working in the real world for more than 2 hours I expect these two things will be accomplished when tracking drums (everything else is a sweet sweet bonus... not saying its rare to get good tracks...just that if you need a lot of tricks to get a good sound when mixing then someone screwed you over...):

* Tracks & Regions are named
* Kick & Snare sound decent.

If some moron tracked it then you have little choice except to turn to *sigh* samples...

Otherwise... it all really depends on the genre... and the tracking/rough mixes should give you some indication of where the artist wants to go with the sound.... EQ, Compression, Parallel Compression, plate verbs on snare, etc etc etc

[anteupaudio]

Originally Posted by mat1306

Whats The way to make good snare and kick when mixing-tricks that u using during the mixing!

Not to overstate the obvious (or be a smart ass) but tracking them right in the first place helps an awful lot! There's nothing you can do in the mix that will top what's done in the tracking stage. Make sure it's a good sounding drum to begin with, if it isn't... use another drum if you can. Once you have the right drum, make sure the head is in good shape or replace it. Tuning is super, super important. If the drummer can't tune it, tune it yourself if you know how. Obviously micing counts for a lot too but (in my experience) if what your micing doesn't sound good to begin with, you're kind of out of luck... Just like you're kind of out of luck come mixing time if it wasn't tracked right to begin with!

That said, here are a couple of ideas. Obviously, you can always trigger if you need to. I've found that the best way to do this is to make your own samples, in your own room. So every time you have a kit set up that DOES sound good, make sure you get individual hits that you can sample later. Doing it this way makes it less obvious that it's a sample since it's actually recorded in the same space (assuming you tracked the drums on whatever it is you are mixing).

Another thing you can do if you're having problems with direct mics is to try to lean more heavily on the overheads (I will often use overheads as overall kit mics instead of just rolling off the low end and only going for cymbals) or leaning more on the room mics. Compressing the snot out of a mono, front of kit room mic can work wonders.... If you get that stuff going right, you may not need to trigger direct mics... If you still DO need to trigger, the room and overheads will do a ton to help hide the triggers.

Other things that work well on kicks and snares in the hardware world : Distressors, DBX 165, 1176

If you're ITB, the Fairchild compressor can work wonders on snare drums. The BF76 can be very cool for room mics..

Hope this may help!

[andychamp]

A) read my sig.
B) do a search for "parallel compression"
C) enjoy

[BLueROom]

For a killer drum sound:

Things that matter most (75% of total):
1. tracking them well (includes a good tuning job, decent drums and new-ish heads)
2. a great drummer (the most important thing, IMHO)
3. a great room
4. great ears
5. great monitoring

Things that will get you that next 20%:
1. great mics
2. great pres
3. great EQ/comp
4. great monitoring (yea, I know it's in both places )

The remaining 5%:
1. conversion
2. intangibles

All the technique in the world does not make up for a drummer who has poor drumming technique.

On the other hand, a great drummer can make a mediocre engineer sound better than he is.

(lists do not include mixing- in that case all bets are off... or on)

of course, my 2 pennies worth

*list is subject to change without notice ...