Making drum hits equal volume in typical rock music

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pappy999

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I find myself spending hours fixing drum hits so they all at the same level. This makes the drums appear louder by always cutting through the mix. I have had great success with this and all the bands that come through my studio love the drum sounds. My method is probably a stupid one. I go into my edit window and simple apply gain to any hits lower or higher than a certain db level. I try to get the kick, snare and toms all at or around the same level (within .3 db). I usually do this only for rock bands that have little or no dynamics to their music. My questions are these:

Is this a method used by many engineers?

Is there a way to avoid spending hours on a drum kit (ie: a magic plug in)?
 
Edit the really outlying hits, and use a good compressor to bring the rest into line. You should get roughly the same result with a lot less effort.
 
If you do choose to not do it with compression, another way to get consistant hits is to copy one snare shot (find one that sounds best to you) and paste it all over the other snare shots. I prefer to use compression so that it doesn't end up sounding like a drum machine, but it is one way if you want that type of consistency.
 
Or you could just be blessed with a drummer who can actually play consistently. :)
 
isnt this what that transient designer thingie is for? I have no idea...I just suspected.
 
Personally, I would like to know why you would really want every hit to be the same volume? Seems like you may as well use a drum replacer or even a drum machine at that point. Or maybe even use a drum replacer to blend with. Me personally? I could not think of a single reason why I would want them all at the same level. Any reason I can think of may have been better done with drum samples.
 
For most undynamic rock music (ie: punk) the songs are the same drum beat and loudness all the way through. Most punk bands also have drummers that cannot play consistently. I end up having snare and kick hits that with 15db differences. I leave them alone for most other styles. I find most bands coming though my studio are straight up rock or punk.

Drumagog is OK for some styles (ie: metal). I find that drumagog sounds too drum machine like sometimes.

I do replace drum hits sometimes for off center snare hits and rim catches. Replacing every ill-volumed hit sometimes disrupts bleed in between drums.
 
i use subtle gating and then compression on the kick and the snare channels, multi-bus compression on the whole kit (one clean signal, one compressed signal) and sometimes subtle underlying triggers.

sometimes I completely replace the kick and add a subtle midrange roomy "goosh" sample on the snare hits or a high end snare sample over the real snare. for a more attacking sound.

other times, I just use eq and compression for a more real/vintage sound.
 
Easy answer would be to normalize and compress.

I know some people don't like it, but I'm a big fan of sound replacer. I use it to layer samples under the real drum tracks. I'll take the kick, snare and toms, find samples that have what the original drum tracks are lacking and create replaced tracks of the samples that I layer under the original drum tracks. I never out-right replace the original tracks.

The way I look at it, why try to eq in something that isn't there? If you're real kick has a nice bottom end to it and you want some more attack out of it, take a sampled kick that fits the bill and blend it with the original. That way you're not battling the bleed from the cymbals when you try to eq in some attack. Plus it gives you a great trigger for reverb. You're triggering your verb with only pure kick, snare and tom as opposed to triggering it with the original tracks where the bleed can make the reverb sound washy.
 
Whoah, Falken has green chicklets. Did you get so many red ones they went back on themselves and now it's green? :p

I'd go with what mshilarious recommends, as well as Chibi Nappa.
 
pappy999 said:
Is there a way to avoid spending hours on a drum kit (ie: a magic plug in)?
Click to expand...


It's called "hire a good drummer" :)

It's done all the time.
 
I'll hire a good drummer when I go insane and want to be in a band myself. For now I have to put up with bad drummers who come into my inexpensive studio and pay me to make them sound good.
 
pappy999 said:
I'll hire a good drummer when I go insane and want to be in a band myself. For now I have to put up with bad drummers who come into my inexpensive studio and pay me to make them sound good.
Click to expand...


Well in that case...


The method you're using is simply refered to as "sound replacement". Very common. You have sound replacer, drumagog (I've never used it), and the good ol fasion "cut and paste".

Also, requantizing tools like Digidesign's "Beat Detective" further enhance the performance.

But if you really want to go ol school, and in my opinion the best sounding approach, you can simply make great use of basic dynamic tools and a well rehearsed drummer.

Compressing hits to even them out really goes a long way. You don't even really have to normalize. Normalizing is more of a mastering tool or for general work.

I mean if you have to adjust some things every once in a while, then go for it. The unfortunate thing is when you have to be surgical and replace every last hit. Not only does it sound unatural, it's not who the drummer is.

The first step to making a drummer sound good on tape is to make him sound good in real life. Treat him like a compressor. If he sounds like shit, then send him back and get him fixed. There's no shame in that honesty. For that, there is no magic plug-in, just good ol fashioned practice.

If I see a band with a shitty drummer and they expect me to make him sound like Neil Pert, then in my honest opinion, someone is not doing thier job right.

So by addressing your drummer's weak points, it makes you work much less in the end, which makes you happier, which makes the drummer happier. :)


Or...

you can hire a professional studio drummer.

It's done all the time.
 
When recording drums, you need these:

A drummer that hits the shit out of the drums and hits the cymbals very lightly (except hi-hat). Thus you need a VERY GOOD drummer.

Good drum mics

A good noise gate/plug in to shut the drums off between hits

A good compressor/plug-in that allows you to compress the shit out of the drums.

Another compressor to compress again...

And another compressor to compress again...

Eq the drums (mostly bass boosts and mid cuts with treble boosts). For rock, you want your drums to be scooped up.

Hi Pass the overheads and hi-hat mic so you only get the cymbals in there

Then push the toms and snare and cymbals through a lush big room reverb.

After that, I'm usually done.
 
If you're using Cubase to lay down the tracks, try this:
Duplicate the kick and snare tracks. Use the Hitpoints feature to slice them up. Open the part, and drag the fade out handles for all the slices (Ctrl-A to select all, then drag the handle for one of the slices) all the way to the left, all you want to keep is the initial attack transient. Compress the shit out of this, layer it below the original tracks.

Personally I don't like the idea of replacing the hits with samples as that would eliminate the natural variations of the different hits. If I was really anal, then I'd do what you do, but I don't have to be since I don't deal with acoustic drums at all :)
 
"Sound replacement" is the last option. Most of time, i use normalize and compression techniques as well. :)
 
LeeRosario said:
The first step to making a drummer sound good on tape is to make him sound good in real life. Treat him like a compressor. If he sounds like shit, then send him back and get him fixed. There's no shame in that honesty. For that, there is no magic plug-in, just good ol fashioned practice.

If I see a band with a shitty drummer and they expect me to make him sound like Neil Pert, then in my honest opinion, someone is not doing thier job right.

So by addressing your drummer's weak points, it makes you work much less in the end, which makes you happier, which makes the drummer happier. :)


Or...

you can hire a professional studio drummer.

It's done all the time.
Click to expand...


It is not the job of the engineer to make the drummer a better player. It is our job, however, to make them sound as good as we can. I think the original point was that there may be an easier way to make the drums sound good. Sure, a better drummer would be great. But if a band comes bouncing into my studio with a crappy drummer, I can't just start throwing out session drummers to fill in.



Pappy, if it works, go with it. Personally, I would use compression or normalization to do that because I am lazy. If it were a few hits here and there, then maybe. But if the volume is all over the place, then I will let the electronics do their jobs. That is why I have them. If a drummer is truly so crappy that it is just a herky jerky mess, then I might suggest a different route. "There is nothing wrong with using drum machines/samples for demos"

That quote came from an A&R rep who has spents many endless hours listening to every crappy band you can think of.
 
Thunder33 said:
It is not the job of the engineer to make the drummer a better player.
Click to expand...
Maybe not, but part of the "honesty" process from the mix/track engineer involves telling the drummer there is only "so much" we can do to help the sound of the band and that this limitation is due to him.

After saying that, most drummers will ask how they can make it better.
Then you simply tell them to hit as loud as they can and be done with it.
As long as the hits of the drums are all "as loud as he can", good rock tone can be acheived using compression techniques.
 
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