Your Ultimate Guide for Mixing Drums

8/12/2019 Your Ultimate Guide for Mixing Drums

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YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR MIXING DRUMSGET A GREAT SOUND FROM YOUR ACOUSTIC DRUMS.Your drum sound is one of the most important aspects of your mix. Mixing drums is

therefore a number one priority for laying that solid foundation to your tracks, guaranteeing

you a solid rhythm section.

Drums can be one of the most problematic instruments to get right in a mix. The

complexity ofrecording drumsis equally complex when it comes time to mix them.

If you find it easier to learn about recording and mixing drums via video, check out

theReThink Drums series here.

If you did a great job recording the drum kit, then mixing your drums can only be a

pleasurable experience.

BUT WHERE TO START?

KICK DRUM SOUNDMixing drums starts with the foundation of the kick drum. The sound of the kick drum,

along with the snare will be the defining factors of your drum sound. If you leave the kickdrum sounding bad, the whole foundation of the song will lose its footing. The kick drum

needs to be tight and punchy, with enough low end to fill up the bass range and enough

mids to cut through the mix.

EQ

It's important to emphasize the low end of the kick

with EQ.If you feel there isn't enough bass to your kick drum, a low shelving boost around

80 100 Hz normally does the trick.

A boomy kick drum can also cloud up the clarity of your kick drum sound, so it's normally a

good idea to cut around 200 250 Hz if you feel there is too much muddiness in your kick
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EQ-wise, there is not an awful lot you need below 100

Hz, so you can start by high-pass filtering all the low end away.

The body of the snare can be brought forward with a little boost at around 150Hz, if you

feel like it's lacking some thickness.

I like thick snares so I often catch myself adding a little weight to the snare around that

area.

If your snare has ringing frequencies that you find annoying you can try pinpointing them by

boosting a specific frequency band with a high Q and sweeping the spectrum until they pop

out. I find that sometimes the snare needs a little cut in the mids, either resulting from

boxiness at 500 800 Hz or too much of a nasally attack from the area around 1 Khz.

Enhance the attack of the snare with a broad boost around 2 4 Khz and search for the

sizzle of the snares in the higher frequencies.

COMPRESSIONLike I do with the bass drum, I try to make the snare compress in time with the song. By

timing the attack and release I can get a nice steady snare sound that breathes with each hit.

I normally leave the attack at a medium to slow setting so that the snap of the snare is

unaffected, and time the release so that it stops compressing just in time for the next hit.

I start with a ratio of 3:1, often going way higher as it depends on the genre how hard I want

the compressor to be pumping. You can adjust the threshold so that it is only lightly

compressing the peaks for a subtle sound, or you can push the threshold down harder for a

heavily compressed sound.

Snare compression is perhaps one of the most argued about subjects in audio production.

Every engineer has a certain method to mixing drums, and I think it's up to you to

experiment and get acquainted with the knobs and sliders on your audio compressor so that

you can create the sound that you want.

The World's Most Alternative Snare Drum Sounds!

REVERB
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You can create a completely different snare sound by just applying an interesting reverb to

it. Whether that's a rock arena reverb, subdued room or even a spring reverb, different

reverbs can transform the sound of your snare drum.

Go through your reverbs and see what type of reverb sounds best with the song you're

mixing. Are you going to add a bright plate reverb to make it stand out, or will you be

mixing it into a specific room with a small room sound? If you are in a particularly

adventurous mood, you can try adding somegated reverbto your snare.

MIXING THE TOMSEQING

If the toms are playing a big part in your drum sound,

mixing them so that they sound punchy and powerful is crucial to a great drum sound.

Get them punchy with EQ. The best way to EQ toms is to find the unflattering frequencies

with your equalizer. Normally, these are the middle frequencies, from 300 800 Khz or so.

Find the boxy and unwanted frequencies, cut them out and then add low end power and

high end punch as needed.

When mixing drums like toms, sometimes you need to finely cut a few adjacent frequencies

instead of scooping out a big portion of the frequency spectrum.

COMPRESSING
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By adding a generous amount of compression to your toms you can get a larger than life

sound out of them. You can fatten them up considerably with some tight compression, and

with the addition of a little reverb you can make them sound huge and powerful. If that's

what you want to go for. The same rule of subtle compression applies as well to toms if you

only want to control the peaks and lightly color their signal.

How To Get a Powerful Tom Sound in 3 Easy Steps

OVERHEADSThe overheads might be the most important microphones on the kit. The overheads are the

microphones that are supposed to pick up every drum and give a complete sound to your

drum kit. There are two ways of mixing drums with the overheads; you can either use them

as the primary sound, sculpting every drum around the overhead sound or you can use them

to primarily accent the cymbals and air around the kit.

By adding the overheads to the mix early on, you can get a better sense of the full sound of

the kit, making your drum mixing easier. Just notice how different a snare drum microphone

sounds compared to a snare that's coming from the overhead mics.

By adjusting the overheads with the rest of the close miked drums you can get a different

sound. By focusing on the overheads you can get a roomier sound, but if you want a close

in-your-face drum sound you would rather use the overheads as complimentary to the rest

of the drums, mainly using them to accent the cymbal sounds.

THE HI-HAT
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Mixing drums is a selective process, meaning that certain elements of the drum-kit only

need specific frequency ranges. You only need a specific frequency range from the hi-hat.

Considering that the hi-hat microphone is probably picking up a lot of bleed from other

drums, some heavy high-pass filtering is in order. Filter up to 250 Hz at least, even higher if

you feel that you aren't losing anything from the hi-hat sound with higher filtering.

Now if you feel that there is something lacking from the hi-hat, or that you want to bring

out the gong sound, you can find it in the 200 Hz area. So if your hi-hat needs a little more

gong to it, you will have to sacrifice that aggressive filtering. Like everything else, just filter

until you start hearing the sound becoming compromised and then back off a little bit.

Cutting at 1Khz can reduce the cheap jangly sound from the hi-hat, but you can enhance

and give it some sparkle with a boost from 7 Khz or so. Use a high shelving EQ if you want

to enhance the high end with some air, but a parametric bell EQ if you just want to accent a

specific frequency area.

ROOM MICSRoom microphones give a different sound to the drum kit than the regular overhead mics.

Due to the distant miking technique most room mics are recorded with, we get a full sound

of the drum-kit as well as a great amount of the reverb of the room it was recorded in.

Which, depending on the sound of the room, can either sound amazing or horrible.


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Mixing Drums With a Roomy SoundBut let's assume our recording room is great. With a nice room mic picking up the complete

kit we can try a few different techniques. We can apply some heavy compression to the room

mics to get an even punchier sound. We can EQ the kit as to draw out the most important

elements, such as kick and snare and we can add it underneath an already great drum

sound for that final touch.

MIXING DRUMS INTO A ROOMIf the drums weren't recorded in a nice sounding room and sound quite dead when they

come from the recording stage, it's time to add some space to our drum tracks.

A good way to add some ambience to our drum tracks is to add a 0.5 second drum room

reverb. You can add a a nice amount to the overhead tracks, and maybe even a slightly

different reverb to the snare to make it stand out. Go through your reverbs to try to find the

best sound to your particular track.

MIXING DRUMS DRUM REPLACEMENT
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Your Ultimate Guide for Mixing Drums