EQing Consolidated Drum Kit

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Looking for some help here.

My band recently wend into a "professional" studio in Brooklyn to record drum tracks of 11 songs. We are planning on recording the rest of the material at our respective homes. Rather than wait for all of the tracks to be burned down that night, we agreed that they'd ship the CD's to us.

Now that we have the CD's we come to realize that the consolidated the all of the individual drum tracks down to one stereo mix per track. And you guessed it, they've deleted all of the raw tracks.

Now I'm trying to compile a disc of 11 tracks with very limited flexibility in terms of altering drum sounds. I know this is unorthodox, but are their any EQ tips anyone can offer?

From the initial attempts at mixing all the instruments and vox together it seems that there are a few tweaks that I'd like to make. Kick drum boost is the easy one, but I'm having a more difficult time with the Hats versus Snare.

The Hats sound too loud and "clinky" and the snare needs to pop more and have more "body" to it. They seems to inhabit much of the same sonic range though. Each time I put a high end limit on the EQ to squelch the hats a little, the snare gets more hollow and vice versa.

Any suggestions, or are we just screwed?
 
Bummer. I'd wait until the other tracks are done before fuckin' around with the sounds. You may not have to do much.
 
well, that's what I was hoping for too, but it's already started:

"the snare needs to crack more" "the kick drum should hit you in the gut" and "can you bring the hats down" . . . all easily fixed if I had access to the individual tracks.

so it looks like I'm gonna have to mess with the sounds no matter what.
 
mixologist said:
well, that's what I was hoping for too, but it's already started:

"the snare needs to crack more" "the kick drum should hit you in the gut" and "can you bring the hats down" . . . all easily fixed if I had access to the individual tracks.

so it looks like I'm gonna have to mess with the sounds no matter what.
Click to expand...


You misunderstand - I say it's pointless to eq the stereo drums until the remaining tracks are done. Each sound affects how you percieve all the other sounds. What sounds good on a naked track may sound like ass with 12 other things going on.
 
no, I totally understand.

What I was saying is that while listening to initial rough mixes with the bass, guitars and vox, those comments have already started.

totally agree that trying to EQ the drum track before the other intruments are added is a complete waste of time.
 
mixologist said:
Now that we have the CD's we come to realize that the consolidated the all of the individual drum tracks down to one stereo mix per track. And you guessed it, they've deleted all of the raw tracks.
Click to expand...

Wow, that's a bummer. Yer probably screwed. Who the fuck let them just send you a stereo track? I suppose you paid, upfront as well? Did you bother to askk if they have the original tracks? They may have a backup somewhere ya know. If not, they aren't very professional.
 
Lesson learned: bring your own USB/firewire harddrive to archive your audio files when recording at someone else's studio.

But yeah; "professional" is right.

PS: try a de-esser for the high-hat issue...Spitfish, etc.
 
Find some sweet snare samples..

Create a new track for your sampled sounds.

Zoom into the stereo drum track and paste the new samples where the snare hits on the new track.

Mix to taste.


Hope this helps,

-LIMiT
 
mixologist said:
Now that we have the CD's we come to realize that the consolidated the all of the individual drum tracks down to one stereo mix per track. And you guessed it, they've deleted all of the raw tracks.
Click to expand...


Yeah, WTF? At the very least I would call over to those clowns and see if they have a back up or anything you can have. I have sessions laying around in storage for crappy sessions I did for folks 8 years ago. I will never ever use them again, but you never know when the phone will ring and the client wants the tracks. Sheesh... I would be absolutely irate.
 
That sucks, big time! :mad:

I agree with HangDawg, call the studio and confirm that they really dumped your master. That seems really strange that a "pro" studio would every delete secession masters with in weeks of tracking.

However, if you can't get all the individual tracks you need.... take a deep breath....you'll probably have to retrack them :eek: Especially if you are taking the time to put out something YOU are going to be happy with. Can you putts around with multiple copies of your 2 track drums EQed differently; yeah but, will it do the rest of your work justice; probably not.

All I can say is, I wish you luck and hope that someone at the studio backed your stuff up.
 
You could try copying the 2-track a couple of times and running each of those through a multiband. Mess around with the thresholds, release times, bandwidths etc. & see if you can get closer
 
mixologist said:
Looking for some help here.

My band recently wend into a "professional" studio in Brooklyn to record drum tracks of 11 songs. We are planning on recording the rest of the material at our respective homes. Rather than wait for all of the tracks to be burned down that night, we agreed that they'd ship the CD's to us.

Now that we have the CD's we come to realize that the consolidated the all of the individual drum tracks down to one stereo mix per track. And you guessed it, they've deleted all of the raw tracks.

Now I'm trying to compile a disc of 11 tracks with very limited flexibility in terms of altering drum sounds. I know this is unorthodox, but are their any EQ tips anyone can offer?

From the initial attempts at mixing all the instruments and vox together it seems that there are a few tweaks that I'd like to make. Kick drum boost is the easy one, but I'm having a more difficult time with the Hats versus Snare.

The Hats sound too loud and "clinky" and the snare needs to pop more and have more "body" to it. They seems to inhabit much of the same sonic range though. Each time I put a high end limit on the EQ to squelch the hats a little, the snare gets more hollow and vice versa.

Any suggestions, or are we just screwed?
Click to expand...
What studio was this? Sounds pretty inept.

Daav
 
First i would try to get your money back....bad studio....second if you want more snap or (crack) in the snare try and change your fq to around 10khz...works for me. If you want it real crisp...go 3khz to 6khz

godspeed
 
If you try the "make multiple copies and process them separatelty" route that a few people have mentioned, chances are that you end up creating a lot of mud. Especially if the track has a lot of cymbal crashes.

For example, say you make a copy of your track that you plan to use to focus on your kick drum. Even if you take the time to manually edit out everything but the kick hits, and EQ it make those kick hits sound ok, you will still most likely have a number of crash cymbals or hihats being hit at the exact same time. So now you've boosted the kick drum, but also added the sound of a cymbal hit that has been EQ'd like a kick drum. Yuck. Try it with the snare? Now you've just boosted that hihat (that you were trying to get rid of in the first place). Again .. yuck! Keep doing it, and it's just going to add up to a lot of ....yuck!

You'll probably need to mix in samples, like LIMiT said.

Though, if you have any isolated snare or kick hits from that recording, you may be able to use those for your samples, that way you would be working with sounds from YOUR drummer, playing HIS drums, through the same mic's & pre's, etc... (which may or may not be desireable). ;)

Whenever I record drummers, I always have the drummer play a few hits on each drum and cymbal at different volumes at the end of the "tape". That way, if I need to replace one hit here or there, I can do so seamlessly. But I'm just weird like that! :p
 
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