Looking to get this drum mix better

[the_volk]

If anyone's interested, here's the project I was working on. A friend wrote/directed this short film and asked me to do a drum score. Would really appreciate if you could give it a watch/listen!

Thanks for posting this. I thought the music sounded good and worked well with the movie. Nicely done.

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Since I know nothing of your initial set up / mic placement other than what you've stated I would like to make some suggestions on a different approach. To start make sure the kick mic and any mics that are pointed in an up direction (ie mic-ing the snare or hats from the bottom) are set out of phase on your DAW. You should notice an improvement in the lower response of the drum.

Not a bad idea, but I wold say to invert the polarity of mic one the opposite side of the drum from the overheads. Where the mic is matters, which way it's aimed doesn't.

Depending how far your overheads are from your drums, you may want to reverse the phase on these also.

Well now you've just undone all your other polarity inversions as they were relative to the overheads.

I've found that an X Y placement for overheads gives me the best results.

I find X/Y to be my preferred method for a good sounding kit played properly.

Generally I do not roll the overheads off much above 100 or so ..of course it depends upon the type a sound you are striving for. I would also suggest an experiment for you. Once you get past fixing any problems that the drums have ( rattles, over ringing etc) record them and route them into a sub group and apply your eq and compression to the kit as a whole on that sub channel. With the drum kits I've mixed I'm finding that once I get an even balance on the kit (snare generally 3 db hotter than everything else)and if I do only minimal (if any) eq'ing to the individual drums and treat the kit as one instrument I'm getting some very good results. ...and if I'm not completely satisfied with the sound I then go to the individual tracks do whatever to get what I'm looking for.

I prefer not to compress the overheads and I generally like to compress kick and snare to some degree and eq individual drum mics. I used to use subgroups as a matter of habit, now I hardly use them at all. Whatever works.

If you haven't already, experiment more with the placement of the snare and kick mics to see if you can get a fuller sound out them ie: aiming the kick mic more into the shell or more at the beater or aiming the snare mic more at the rim or even side or bottom of the snare ( don't forget the phase) or even moving the mic farther away or closer to improve the sound. If you are using mics on every drum (spot mics) you maybe picking up enough cymbal already

Not bad suggestions, but the OP's real problem is overplaying the snare. To address that with mic placement I would turn the overheads into cymbal close mics. The real solution is in the playing.

take your over heads and move them out in to the room more for a more natural ambience as opposed to just adding reverb. Try mic-ing your kit with the kick and the 2 overheads and see where that gets you. Most of the live and some studio work I've done mic-ing up jazz kits were just 3 mics and we got great results.

Again, good ideas, but not applicable to this particular drummer.

Last thought for now, unless you are only going to record your drums solo your final drum eq may be quite different once mixed with the other instruments/vocals you are recording. Part of getting a great mix is to leave or make room for other instruments to sit in such as raising the hi-pass frequency on the kick to allow the bass to occupy that space and avoid overloading of like frequencies.

True.

By the way, I highly recommend paragraphs. Monolithic block of text aren't very fun to read.

 

[Noisemakers]

Thanks for posting this. I thought the music sounded good and worked well with the movie. Nicely done.

Thanks so much, glad you liked it!

 

[4tracker]

Thanks so much, glad you liked it!

I'm watching it now and like the movie so far, and I like the drum, but when the actors are talking the drum gets in the way a bit, and it's clashing with their dialogue. I also think the kick drum is louder than the others and standing out. Now back to finishing the movie! It's good so far.

 

[4tracker]

Thanks so much for the lengthy response. In the future I'm definitely going to experiment with the xy overhead setup as I think it will work best in my room. And I'm also going to try adjusting my snare mic placement to see what kind of difference that makes.

You should consider using 3 mics and going with a Glyn Johns/jazz type setup. I think that minimal style would fit the movie well since it's noir.
I finished the movie. It was enjoyable. I thought your drums fit best at the end during the credits when there wasn't dialogue. They fit during the movie, but like I said, clash a bit with the dialogue. Not to the point I turned it off, but to the point it irritated me a bit.

 

[HugoRibeiro.Com]

You have a great groove man!

cheers