El Borrachito
Premier Staff
Recording drums is only half the battle. If you can’t do justice to those good sounding tracks in the mix, then what do you have? Drums are by far the most complex aspect of the mix. They occupy many tracks, which often interact with each other in all sorts of complex ways and demand a large amount of the time spent on a mix –even if they are well recorded to begin with. If the drum tracks are bad, then it can be a real nightmare. Here are some tricks:
To me, the stereo image of the drum kit should be as realistic as possible. The drums should be mixed to the audience’s perspective (some drummers hate this, sucks for them) and the stereo image should not be unrealistically wide. Also, be careful with ambience and reverb. The bone-dry kick drum with the four-second snare reverb is kind of silly. What? The kick is right here and the snare is thirty feet away? Are we making a Scorpions record? It’s 2010!
There are several ways to employ compression on drums in the mix. I use all of these tricks regularly in various combinations depending on the quality of the tracks and the style of music in question.
Mono Squash
Instead of compressing the kick and snare separately, set a single compressor on a buss and feed desired amounts of each into it. This can sometimes glue the kit together better than individual compressors can, assuming the tracks are pretty good to start with. Often if there was a mono “whole kit” mic recorded, I’ll put that in there too.
Super Squash
This works best with an 1176-type limiter. Put it on a buss and set it to “all-buttons-in” squash mode. Set plenty of input gain and play with the attack and release to get maximum pumpy-ness. Feed Kick, snare, and maybe even toms in there. The bleed from the hat and cymbals is usually all you need from them. A little bit of this can beef up the kit. As you turn it up it starts sounding like Zeppelin II.
Stereo Squash
Set up a stereo buss and put a buss-style compressor. (ie: The good old SSL or some sort of fast VCA compressor. Impact is my favorite plug-in for this.) Feed the entire drum mix through it. This can be redundant if you are running a buss compressor on the whole mix. You could also run it in parallel to the dry drums like the mono squash. For this, use a more extreme setting. It will add punch and “fatness.” You also want to send it less overhead, since the cymbals can quickly get to be too much.
Stereo Buss
I will usually use some sort of stereo buss compressor on the whole mix. My standard rock & roll setup for mixing in the box is: BX Digital EQ – Impact – Waves L1. After I get the drums in the ballpark mix-wise, I turn on Impact and get the overall squash how I like it. This will usually require several db of makeup gain on Impact. Instead, I leave the makeup gain at unity and turn on the L1. I use the L1 input to make up the gain difference and set the output to -.3 db. The L1 rarely does more than a couple db of limiting. It gives me a little extra level and insures my peaks are out of the red. Adding buss compression will usually cause a little buildup in the low mids. This is where the EQ comes in. I will use it to scoop a little bit of the mud frequencies and add a little 10K sparkle. Once this is all set I’ll mix the rest of the elements with the buss chain in place.
Toms are a pain in the ass. Hopefully there are three or fewer and they are used infrequently. Thanks to super accurate eq plug-ins, I can now battle the “cardboard” frequencies with surgical precision. The Waves Q10 is perfect for this. I can target the specific frequencies at which each tom sympathetically resonate with the rest of the kit and reduce the ringy-ness of the toms when they are idle. Usually, a little 4K snap is nice too. The super accurate automation is also very useful for ducking the toms between fills. Often, I will draw in moves by hand for each fill and the put the faders in trim to adjust levels in the mix. Thanks to this, I rarely use gates any more.
Ambience is perhaps the most subjective and style-dependent aspect of drum mixing. I will do whatever is necessary for the song, but my standard setup is a good starting point. I try to use the room mics as much as possible and augment them with effects. If the room feels too small, compression can add length. Using a fast attack can de-emphasize the direct drum sound and enhance roominess. Usually it helps to eq out some of the midrange mud as well. My standard thing is to set up two reverbs. I set up a short one to add space around the kit, and a longer one that is the main reverb for the whole mix. Ideally, the short one should match the room mics as close as possible or be used in lieu of them if they suck. A convolution reverb like TL Space or Altiverb is great for this. I have a bunch of tracking room-sized programs just for this. If the room mics are ok, I may just feed the snare in order to emphasize it in the room sound. If the room mics aren’t doing what I want, then I’ll add more of the rest of the kit. The second reverb is the longer one that serves as the master reverb for the whole mix. I have a complete set of presets from most of the popular hardware reverbs in my convolution library. These are very handy. Revibe also works pretty well for “digital“reverb as well. There is a great advantage to mixing in the same place you tracked, since then you can send the drums back through the studio speakers and recapture the room sound after the fact. It’s very handy to run the snare by itself back out to the room to get that extra snare in the room sound. If you do anything like that, take the time to record it, so you have it if you need it later. Also, keep in mind that if you are using convolution reverbs, even if another system has the plug-in it may not have the same library of impulse responses. It may not be a bad idea to print the reverbs for archival purposes.
Most importantly, if the drummer wants to be present while you are mixing, make sure to tell him you are working at a studio on the other side of town!
To me, the stereo image of the drum kit should be as realistic as possible. The drums should be mixed to the audience’s perspective (some drummers hate this, sucks for them) and the stereo image should not be unrealistically wide. Also, be careful with ambience and reverb. The bone-dry kick drum with the four-second snare reverb is kind of silly. What? The kick is right here and the snare is thirty feet away? Are we making a Scorpions record? It’s 2010!
There are several ways to employ compression on drums in the mix. I use all of these tricks regularly in various combinations depending on the quality of the tracks and the style of music in question.
Mono Squash
Instead of compressing the kick and snare separately, set a single compressor on a buss and feed desired amounts of each into it. This can sometimes glue the kit together better than individual compressors can, assuming the tracks are pretty good to start with. Often if there was a mono “whole kit” mic recorded, I’ll put that in there too.
Super Squash
This works best with an 1176-type limiter. Put it on a buss and set it to “all-buttons-in” squash mode. Set plenty of input gain and play with the attack and release to get maximum pumpy-ness. Feed Kick, snare, and maybe even toms in there. The bleed from the hat and cymbals is usually all you need from them. A little bit of this can beef up the kit. As you turn it up it starts sounding like Zeppelin II.
Stereo Squash
Set up a stereo buss and put a buss-style compressor. (ie: The good old SSL or some sort of fast VCA compressor. Impact is my favorite plug-in for this.) Feed the entire drum mix through it. This can be redundant if you are running a buss compressor on the whole mix. You could also run it in parallel to the dry drums like the mono squash. For this, use a more extreme setting. It will add punch and “fatness.” You also want to send it less overhead, since the cymbals can quickly get to be too much.
Stereo Buss
I will usually use some sort of stereo buss compressor on the whole mix. My standard rock & roll setup for mixing in the box is: BX Digital EQ – Impact – Waves L1. After I get the drums in the ballpark mix-wise, I turn on Impact and get the overall squash how I like it. This will usually require several db of makeup gain on Impact. Instead, I leave the makeup gain at unity and turn on the L1. I use the L1 input to make up the gain difference and set the output to -.3 db. The L1 rarely does more than a couple db of limiting. It gives me a little extra level and insures my peaks are out of the red. Adding buss compression will usually cause a little buildup in the low mids. This is where the EQ comes in. I will use it to scoop a little bit of the mud frequencies and add a little 10K sparkle. Once this is all set I’ll mix the rest of the elements with the buss chain in place.
Toms are a pain in the ass. Hopefully there are three or fewer and they are used infrequently. Thanks to super accurate eq plug-ins, I can now battle the “cardboard” frequencies with surgical precision. The Waves Q10 is perfect for this. I can target the specific frequencies at which each tom sympathetically resonate with the rest of the kit and reduce the ringy-ness of the toms when they are idle. Usually, a little 4K snap is nice too. The super accurate automation is also very useful for ducking the toms between fills. Often, I will draw in moves by hand for each fill and the put the faders in trim to adjust levels in the mix. Thanks to this, I rarely use gates any more.
Ambience is perhaps the most subjective and style-dependent aspect of drum mixing. I will do whatever is necessary for the song, but my standard setup is a good starting point. I try to use the room mics as much as possible and augment them with effects. If the room feels too small, compression can add length. Using a fast attack can de-emphasize the direct drum sound and enhance roominess. Usually it helps to eq out some of the midrange mud as well. My standard thing is to set up two reverbs. I set up a short one to add space around the kit, and a longer one that is the main reverb for the whole mix. Ideally, the short one should match the room mics as close as possible or be used in lieu of them if they suck. A convolution reverb like TL Space or Altiverb is great for this. I have a bunch of tracking room-sized programs just for this. If the room mics are ok, I may just feed the snare in order to emphasize it in the room sound. If the room mics aren’t doing what I want, then I’ll add more of the rest of the kit. The second reverb is the longer one that serves as the master reverb for the whole mix. I have a complete set of presets from most of the popular hardware reverbs in my convolution library. These are very handy. Revibe also works pretty well for “digital“reverb as well. There is a great advantage to mixing in the same place you tracked, since then you can send the drums back through the studio speakers and recapture the room sound after the fact. It’s very handy to run the snare by itself back out to the room to get that extra snare in the room sound. If you do anything like that, take the time to record it, so you have it if you need it later. Also, keep in mind that if you are using convolution reverbs, even if another system has the plug-in it may not have the same library of impulse responses. It may not be a bad idea to print the reverbs for archival purposes.
Most importantly, if the drummer wants to be present while you are mixing, make sure to tell him you are working at a studio on the other side of town!
