Mixing a whole drum kit that's in one stereo track

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Massacre23

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Hey guys, complete noobie here so I do apologise if this has been asked a thousand times and such.

Just wondering if anyone's had any experience in mixing a drum track that's in a single stereo track form. The little desk I've been using ( Behringer 1002 xenyx) only outs as stereo through usb, due to this I'm having a little trouble mixing it, has anyone got any tips if at all?

Cheers
 
If all the drums are on a single stereo track, there is nothing to mix. The only thing you can do to change the relative volumes of each drum would be to use EQ and compression to accentuate or de-accentuate certain instruments.

Basically, you have to get the mix right BEFORE it gets bounced to stereo.
 
That's what I feared, sadly the desk I'm using only has dedicated 3 bands on the 2 channels I have the over heads in, as they're the only 2 that kick out phantom.

I've only really been playing with compressors and Eq anyway just down them being the only tools I really have at my disposal in this situation. Any tips you could give me for crispy sound that still cuts through a mix at all? I knows it pretty far fetched but a stereo track is all I have to really work with unfortunately.

Cheers for the swift reply btw.
 
If you know that you want to brighten the kick and snare, but only have EQ on the overheads, you could try using the EQ to make the overheads darker, so when you brighten up the stereo track, the overheads don't end up overly bright.

Without getting an interface that lets you record all the mics separately, you will just have to experiment with ideas like that.

I would start by taking the stereo track I have, deciding what I needed to do to make the kick and snare sound right, and then seeing if it made the overhead sound bad or out of place. If so, then I would do what I had to do on the overhead input channels to counteract what you know you will be doing to the stereo tack later in the mix.
 
Or you could clone the stereo track a few times, aggressively filter out different parts of the frequency spectrum and work on each "track" separately.

But it's not ideal.
 
It ould be better to.spend that time saving money to get an interface that allows you to record the mics to separate tracks.
 
Ha ha, my first album was done to a 4 track, the drums were recorded to a single mono track. We recorded the music live in the studio and a engineer friend had the job of listening to the drums and making sure the drum balance was correct. That recording still sounds pretty good today. Most of the Beatles stuff was recorded like this.

If can be done, I would mic the kit with the 4 mic method (Glyn Johns).

Alan.
 
Massacre23 said:
Hey guys, complete noobie here so I do apologise if this has been asked a thousand times and such.

Just wondering if anyone's had any experience in mixing a drum track that's in a single stereo track form. The little desk I've been using ( Behringer 1002 xenyx) only outs as stereo through usb, due to this I'm having a little trouble mixing it, has anyone got any tips if at all?

Cheers
Click to expand...


Let's hear what you have. Not really possible to give any good advice without it.
 
Fix it with convoluted programming!

Let's say you have kick, snare, high-hat, crash, and 1 tom.

First, mic the kit so that each instrument sounds as unique as it can be. The less frequency overlap the better.

Then, hard pan the mics so that similar sounding instruments are opposite each other as much as possible. (e.g. if the crash is left, the hi-hat should be right)

Then, route your two tracks into 6 different channels in your daw (kick, snare, crash, hi-hat open, hi-hat closed, tom).

EQ and gate the crap out of each of those channels until you can only hear the hits you want. (They won't sound good. This is fine.)

Run each of those signals into a midi converter.

Route all 6 of those midi signals into EZ Drummer (or equivalent).

Bam! Drum replacement!
 
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