How do you mix your drums?

[kazuo]

I'm interested in how you guys (especially the more experienced producers) mix your drums. like, are you working on the seperate sounds with lots of eqing and compression, do you edit your kits before you use them, advice for certain kinds of sounds like hihats, snares, kicks etc.
are you using sidechain compression for the bassline with the kickdrum.

myself, i do a lot of editing in reason but rarely pre-process the sounds.
i'm using mainly eqs and compression at least for the main sounds (kick+bass, snare) and often layer drumsounds, i'm also using sidechain compression. but it's all not very professional and of course self-taught, so often there's a bit of clipping on my tracks because i don't work precisely enough - and i'm a complete mastering noob, only using shitty maximisers on everything

[Littlefoot]

for dancey stuff:

- creative effects on each track
- corrective effects on each track
- create reverb send
- send each amount for each track
- mix them to the correct balance
- create a bus and put all above into it
- overall compression and eq (bus mastering i call it)

note : sometimes the sub goes in too

make sense?

[kazuo]

um yeah, i'm already using send effects, completely forgot to mention the whole reverb&effects topic. mostly i use at least two reverbs, a shorter one or a small room and a long hall.
well i'm not gonna ask you for a whole mixing tutorial here
just interested how other's do it since i'm sure there are lots of different possible approaches here.

[thesis]

Generally I use a different mixer channel for each type of drum (eg, kick drum, dry snare, reverb snare, hihats, percussion, claps, shaker)

I use a seperate compressor on the kick and snare tracks. Most other drum tracks, I'll send to an EQ, to take out any bottom end. Usually I'll send hihats and percussion to a light compressor.

When compressing drums, I usually play with the wet/dry, so that I'm mixing a compressed signal with a non-compressed.

All depends on the samples I'm using though.

[janner]

here is my method. as a Cubase user, for me it always goes in roughly the same way:

each group of drum sounds i.e. kicks, snares, hats are sent from NI battery to sparate cubase mixer channels. i may apply some individual compression on each channel if/where necessary, but never just for the hell of it, and sometimes not at all. subtle reverb on the snare channel. slight high boost on the hats channel for sparkle. HPF on hats and maybe the snare to if needed to eliminate any low end crap.

then i create a group "drum bus" where i have (in series) a decent EQ plug, followed by PSP vintage warmer (for crunch), followed by PSP mixpressor (for punch), both initially set to zero. i send all drum sounds to it (hats +/- 4db lower than the kicks & snares) and i gently turn up the mixpressor and the vintage warmer untill i have the kind of weight i need, tweaking the mix levels of the kicks/snares/hats as i go. imo you NEED to send all drums to the same bus so that you can compress & distort them all together, making them sound more real and giving a kind of 'loop' feel. i often put a subtle reverb across all drum sounds to make them sound more natural, as though they're in the same room. i sometimes use the EQ plug to tweak the overall drum balance.

finally, i know this has been said a million times before, but there really is no substitute for high quality source sounds cos a shit share will remain a shit snare no matter how much you EQ. same goes for all the other sounds in a track too.

don't know if this is useful... hope so... it works for me anyway

[forensix (mcr)]

As above except i do my drums in Audio and route snares to one group kicks to another etc and route all these channels to a drum bus, Gliss EQ, Vintage Warmer etc

[Jubz]

Right, I do much of the above but wondering if there are any tips for good eqing or compression? Definite grey areas.

[forensix (mcr)]

Right, I do much of the above but wondering if there are any tips for good eqing or compression? Definite grey areas.

Use your ears

or use a reference guide

http://pocketcine.com/index.php?option= ... &Itemid=88

for eq - obviously the figures dont apply to everything but its good as a rough guide

dont eq your drums solo'd either you may get brilliant sounding drums that dont fit with the rest of the mix

compression i never use too high a ratio- just mess with the attack and release until its sounds right

[janner]

Right, I do much of the above but wondering if there are any tips for good eqing

find some phat source sounds! seriously!! i try to EQ as little as possible... most of the time i just rolling of muddy frequencies with an HPF. true!

or compression? Definite grey areas.

i know some will think this is a cop-out but get a recommended compressor with some good presets. slap a few different presets across your drum bus until you find one that is sounds tite, and it's just tweakage from there on in.

compression i never use too high a ratio- just mess with the attack and release until its sounds right

agreed 100% keep it subtle or you will get the opposite effect to the one you are looking for

[Jubz]

Nice one for the tips, I tend to make sure my source sounds are as nice as possible, easier that way.

[Littlefoot]

here is my method. as a Cubase user, for me it always goes in roughly the same way:

each group of drum sounds i.e. kicks, snares, hats are sent from NI battery to sparate cubase mixer channels. i may apply some individual compression on each channel if/where necessary, but never just for the hell of it, and sometimes not at all. subtle reverb on the snare channel. slight high boost on the hats channel for sparkle. HPF on hats and maybe the snare to if needed to eliminate any low end crap.

then i create a group "drum bus" where i have (in series) a decent EQ plug, followed by PSP vintage warmer (for crunch), followed by PSP mixpressor (for punch), both initially set to zero. i send all drum sounds to it (hats +/- 4db lower than the kicks & snares) and i gently turn up the mixpressor and the vintage warmer untill i have the kind of weight i need, tweaking the mix levels of the kicks/snares/hats as i go. imo you NEED to send all drums to the same bus so that you can compress & distort them all together, making them sound more real and giving a kind of 'loop' feel. i often put a subtle reverb across all drum sounds to make them sound more natural, as though they're in the same room. i sometimes use the EQ plug to tweak the overall drum balance.

finally, i know this has been said a million times before, but there really is no substitute for high quality source sounds cos a shit share will remain a shit snare no matter how much you EQ. same goes for all the other sounds in a track too.

don't know if this is useful... hope so... it works for me anyway

your drum bus is bang on mate!