lookng for the bass drrum beef

[nonethelessband]

recording a demo for my band and im in the mixing stage got a good recording and i am new at the mixing things and well it hard. What basics would one add to the bass drum to get a good overall punch. Also what would one do as far as layering a guitar ex.
1) Double guitar and pan one or run the original and layer two more and pan one of each to the right and left and lower the volume of the panned tracks to fill in the area.
2) Variations on layers with effects.
im pumped on the mix and mastering of Chevelles new album, im not sure if it was done by Andy Wallace or not. Any one got any of his secrets.
Im working on Sonar 4 p so if theres a secret on the software let me know.

3) What effects to the snare to give it a nice snap
the band is hard rock so maybe some one knows some ideas.
take me under your wings and show me the way

thanks guys

[Massive Master]

The answer you don't want -

The kick should have punch in the first place. If it doesn't, there's little you can do to add it later. Same with the snare - "Snap" comes from the drum.

With a kit that really sounds great, you almost have to work at it to make it sound bad.

You can always add a little low end to the kick and high end to the snare to enhance what's there, but you're not going to make "punch" from "plahbm" (if "plahbm" isn't an official bass drum sound, it should be).

[Cloneboy Studio]

Massive Master is 100% right.

If you try to 'make' drums have snap, punch and heft instead of recording it to already have those qualities you will end up with overly compressed, overly eq'd drums that sound thin.

Most of the pro advice about how to get drums to sound good are more about accentuating what is already there, rather than adding what is not. What I'm saying is that just adding 5khz boost won't make a snare 'attacky' on its own.

I am amazed sometimes when I see the huge boosts some people put on drums... like 8 or 10db. My idea of a big boost any more is 2.5db! I hardly have to eq my drums anymore--just enough to bring out certain things, or take away certain things.

I'm not saying you can't end up with something that is alright, but the goal should be to get the drums sounding so great that you hardly have to mess with them--it keeps them natural sounding, huge and who wants to mix drums for 10 hours?

[formerlyfzfile]

These guys are certainly correct in that you are better off getting the punch from the start.

However, if what you got is what you got .....

Instead of just boosting the kick somewhere, clear a little space outta the bass.

If you add a couple of dB at 130Hz to the kick then take 2dB out of the bass at 130hZ. You'll prolly have to mess with the Q's of each so that they are complimentary and you dont loose to much in the bass.

Dont use too much boost, I agree with Cloneboy in that 3dB is a lot, and dont make the Q to wide or else you will make the kick muddy and tubby.

Often I find that you get more bang-for-buck by making room than just boosting things up.

-mike

[ryanlikestorock]

Play around with a small boost between 40-60hz to see if you can get a bit of a sub kick. It's not always going to sound right, but sometimes that can be the difference between a weak or killer kick sound.

[nonethelessband]

thanks for the help guys. I think rerecording is the way and i will do that!

[Teacher]

No one likes to make elaborate mixes with mults routing to submixes etc?

Thats the most fun and frustration part of mixing

[masteringhouse]

Here's a trick that works well to add bottom to a kick where there is none.

1. Run a 60 Hz tone through a channel in the board.
2. Gate the channel using the original kick track as a sidechain or "trigger"
3. Mix the gated 60 Hz tone with the original kick.

It is a slightly "synthetic" sound, probably better suited for rap and hip-hop but makes the kick sound huge.

You can also of course trigger samples from the original kick and use them to either add to or replace the original tracks.