A question Re: Drums Mixing

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derdup

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I have a project ready for the final mix, and I’m in the process of separating out the individual sounds from my MIDI drum track – Kick, Snare, Toms, ...etc.

I'll soon be finished and everything is going well (each sound recorded to its own individual wav clip) but I have a question regarding drum-mixing convention – if there is such a thing.

I’m wondering if I should record all the cymbals together as one clip. I’m referring to all the ‘crashes and splashes’ etc. – the Hi-Hats have a dedicated clip.

Is this how you guys do it? Or is it advisable to separate them out?

I’m also thinking I’ll merge things like Rim shots and Snare rolls, in one clip with the Snare sound.

I’d love to hear from any MIDI people who have been down this road.

Cheers :)

My software = Sonar Home Studio 4 (WinXP)
 
While I haven't been down that particular road, I would think it would depend on what you have in mind for the final mix?

Are you planning on applying any sort of special effect (phasing, flanging, etc...) to just one cymbal?

Are you planning on adjusting their stereo locations from song to song?
If you export all the cymbals as one stereo track that is a certain width, but then decide later on you want a realistically small drum kit for one song but one that covers the entire stereo field for another, you might end up with a problem.

Basically, consider this stage tracking.

Make as many decisions as you would be comfortable with making if you had microphones in the room.

If you really want flexibility for the final mixdown, leave everything as separate as possible, but just bear in mind that every choice you don't make now turns into ten choices you'll have to make further down the road.

All that being said, the biggest problem with the decision between mixdown flexibility and simplicity of choice in the realm of acoustic drum recording is the phase issues that are introduced when you put a mic on every single drum and cymbal in your kit.
Since you don't have phase issues to worry about, I'd probably recommend keeping everything separate until mixdown, since it shouldn't be too hard, once you're mixing down, to get your separately exported cymbal tracks sounding exactly the same as if you had exported them together.
Unless the time you'll save exporting them together is valuable enough (or there's some other advantage I'm not seeing to exporting them together), I'd go ahead and keep them separate.
 
Not quite sure what you are asking. You said you have bounced the midi down to individual wav files.

So I take it that on each track, you have wav clips spaced according to where the parts come in.

Sonar doesn't care if you bounce each track to 1 wav clip, or have several wav clips on each track. When you do the final bounce in Sonar, there is no difference.

Now one thing, if you are done editing, it is sometimes nice to bounce to 1 wav clip so that if you accidentally moved a clip, you don't get out of sync. There is also a functionin Sonar to lock a clip which would serve the same function. It will stop you from accidentally moving it.
 
Hi.

I thing you've almost answered my question, but I’ll try and clarify my situation anyway :)

I’ve been using Sonar Home Studio as a tool to compose and demo my songs. All my instruments are MIDI, and the only ‘acoustic’ tracks have been the vocals.

Up till now, my method has been to get the song sounding as good as I can (still in the MIDI universe) by using MIDI editing tools - working with velocities and expression controls, etc. Then finally, I arm an audio track - record the whole project (MIDI + vocals) onto one track ready for export, and VOILA!...I have my demo.

I’m not in the business of making ‘broadcast quality’ recordings, and I’ve found Mono demos to be acceptable for my purposes. However, I’m now ready to take a step forward, and my plan for my latest project is to convert all my MIDI tracks to audio, and do the final mix using the software Mixing Console (a new method for me), and I’ll be experimenting with pan controls – also new.

My question pertains to the conversion of my MIDI drums to audio. In MIDI, all my drums are in one track, so in order to mix them in my console view, I need to isolate each percussion instrument and then record them to individual audio tracks, right?

I’ve successfully done this, but I think I need to understand more about the way drums (and especially cymbals) are mic-ed and mixed in a conventional studio setting. I read somewhere about cymbals being recorded using overhead mics. Is that one mic per cymbal, and is it usual practice for each cymbal to have its own fader on a mixing desk?



Washburn100 – I think I confused the issue by referring to ‘clips’ when I probably should have said ‘tracks’.

The Cancers – I’ve no plans for special effects, and these tracks will most likely be used just for this one song.

The Cancers said:
If you export all the cymbals as one stereo track that is a certain width...
Click to expand...
Cancers - can you expound on this please?


I appreciate your help.
 
OK, but you have been taking more steps then necessary. In Sonar, there is no need to bounce everything to one track and then export that. If you just export the entire project, it will mix everything down to one stereo WAV file (or whatever you choose to mix it down as)

Setting up each drum piece to a seperate audio track is straight forward, but really should be done initially when you insert your drum VSTi. Speaking of, what drum program are you using? That makes a difference.

For example, I use EZ Drummer and I have set up a template so that when I insert EZ Drummer, it automatically creates 7 audio tracks. (Kick, overhead snare, bottom snare, toms, overhead mic for cybals and a room mic for ambience). All of these audio tracks are fed from one midi track that contains the drum pattern.

This making any sense?
 
A real drumkit has a crash on one side, maybe another crash on the other, a ride somewhere in the middle, etc...

If your midi drumkit is mono, this stereo positioning of the cymbals won't come across.
If you export them all together as a mono track, they will be stuck sounding like they are all right in the center (or wherever you choose to pan them).

If, on the other hand, your midi drum tracks have some sort of stereo spread already built in so that it sounds like one crash is off to one side, another is off to the other side, whatever, then if you export them together they will be stuck in exactly that position.

If you export them separately you can adjust their distance in the stereo field from each other and you can also process them separately.
That is, you can eq out an annoying frequency one cymbal might have that is an important part of another cymbal and not have to worry about cutting out too much of that cymbal.

One final thing is the concept of overheads.

"Overheads" is pretty much a blanket term for any single or combination of microphones that are placed far enough away from individual drums to give some sense of the entire kit.
There are productions where the engineer puts up individual cymbal mics for each cymbal but then also has a pair of stereo overheads capturing the sound of the kit as a whole.

I would treat individual cymbal tracks as cymbal mics, but then probably do some sort of processing to the entire drumkit (after all the individual drumtracks are sounding about right) using an additional track as a drum buss to get it to gel together.
You might think about parallel compression (google it if you don't know what it is) for this task as you can end up layering a track of the whole drumkit doing a bit of pumping and breathing together underneath the uncompressed drumkit and probably get a pretty cool gelled together sort of sound.
 
Wow!
Thanks guys,

I think I’m armed with enough knowledge to press-on and keep experimenting. I’m going to go with separate tracks for each cymbal and see what results I can achieve.


Washburn100 - thanks for the info about the export option I didn’t know I had.

I don’t use a drum program – I have an external Yamaha sound module that has drum sounds that I’ve found to be suitable for my music. I build my drum track in the Piano Roll view, and also by playing along using my keyboard controller.

I’ve never tried drum patterns, one day perhaps, but for now I think my own method is okay for what I’m trying to achieve. Many moons ago I was a drummer, and the rhythm is still strong within me:)
 
Think about mics on a real kit.

Frequently, cymbals are covered by stereo overhead mics L&R. In some modern rock productions, the cymbals are spot-mic'd (separate tracks).

Ultimately, it comes down to how comfortable you are mixing, and how granular you want to get. You could probably get away with K + Snr + Stereo Toms + Stereo Cym/Hats (=OHs) for 80% of the music in the world. Especially since you have some "mixing" power coming out of your sound module and could balance things at that stage.

What works for you?
 
I was going to say something similar to Cancer. If you put all the cymbals on one track, then if I'm understanding you correctly, you're going to have one mono cymbal track. That might be what you want, but if it were me I'd likely want the cymbals panned to different spots across the stereo spread.
 
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