drum compression

A

ad0lescnts

New member
this is going to sound kind of vague...but

I just got finished recording a pop punk band and I'm working with the effects and compression right now. I've been trying to compress the drums but it just doesn't seem to give me the results i want at all. The snare drum itself sounds good in my opinion, but when I try to compress it, it still sounds inconsistant and isnt the same volume all the time. I've tried looping it into my RNC, using compression plugins, and both.

I've been listening to some of this band's CD collection and the drums all sound really consistant and really fat.

Also on the kick I'll get it compressed and sounding good and how i want it, but once i play it with the rest of the mix sometimes i get this high end click that i dont want, and other times it doesnt. It's all really frustrating.

what am i doing wrong? what can i do better?

thanks a lot,
T
 
In those kinds of instances, I tend to get a lot of use out of a soft limiter as opposed to compression.

Try limiting the hell out of the final drum mixdown -- try as much as 6 dbs (or more) of max. gain reduction on the peaks, and keep on going if you have to.
 
Another thing you might try is copying the snare track to a second track and squash the crap out of it and add it up under the original snare track. You will still have some snap of the origin track but the compressed track will help support it.
 
I would have to hear the track to be able to make a decent assessment. You might be fighting phase problems within the drum tracks themselves, which is going to make getting a tight overall mix very difficult.

The only off the cuff suggestion I could give you is to not solo tracks you are applying effects and eq changes to. Apply the effects and eq with the rest of the kit tracks up so you know how your changes are reacting to the rest of the kit.
 
tmix has the right idea I think. Actually, it's what I do. I put the kick and snare on seperate tracks and put a different compressor on each of them and then run the entire kit including the kick and snare through another compressor.
 
yes!!!
thanks guys that helped a lot. it doesnt sound exactly the same each snare hit, but it's wayy better. I'm sure theres nothing i can do after this. I'm running 3 snare tracks now: one heavily limited, one heavily compressed, and one sampled. Also 2 kick tracks: one heavily limited and one compressed.

thanks for the help, i'll be posting the song in the MP3 mixing clinic pretty soon

T
 
Like RVDSM says, be really careful of phase if you're using that method! ! ! That's a lot of tracks to be dealing with. Make sure you're linging them up really good so the peaks and troughs are coinciding within a fraction of half a hair. :D
 
yeah, i reversed the phase on each track to see which sounded best and they all sounded the best the way they were. I should try it again though now after all the compression etc.

i also lined up the tracks really well. i zoomed in a lot.

thanks guys
T
 
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