Mixing Drums Problem. Help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter gez
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gez

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I have a few songs to mix, all have this problem: The snare is too loud on the overheads in relation to the cymbal levels! I realise there's no true fix other than to re-record, but has anyone out there ever had any joy with a specific technique please?
I thought of maybe using the close mic'd snare track for ducking the overheads, or maybe just using a stereo limiter on the overheads?
Haven't tried them yet, I thought I'd collect all the suggestions first and compare them!
Any thoughts?......
Cheers!
 
Multiband compression - lets you hone in and adjust areas of the frequency spectrum.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
Multiband compression - lets you hone in and adjust areas of the frequency spectrum.
Click to expand...

idd, but be very carefull with that: lower the frequencies where your snare is but don't compress the cymbal frequncies too much! Nothing as freaky as compressed overheads.
 
If you dont have a multiband compressor, you might try rolling off the lows (from 250 hz or so down) in you overhead tracks.
As a last resort, if you are on a DAW, take the snare track and invert the phase on it. Mute all the other tracks other than the overheads and the invert snare and slowly bring the invert snare up until you start hearing the snare dissappear to a manageable level, then do a bounce to 2 new tracks-effectively creating a new set of overhead tracks with a little less snare in them. then mute or earse the others to get them out of the way.

Just an idea.
 
If the overheads are just cymbal mics and not meant to pick up the entire kit, I would try rolling off the low end (maybe around 250hz area) to get rid of a big chunk of the fundamental snare tones without touching much of the cymbals. If you want the entire kit, but it is out of balance, I would consider using a multiband compressor.
 
Thanks all for your very helpful suggestions! I shall try them all out this week. Neither overhead mic pointed at the snare, the toms are nicely balanced on them too, it's just that his snare was so damn loud! Oh well, thanks again guys!
 
When I close mic the toms and snare, I'll roll off anything below 3k with the overhead mics so I mostly pick up the cymbals. You might try moving the overheads slighly just incase they are in line-of-sight of the snare or it's reflextions.
 
prw said:
When I close mic the toms and snare, I'll roll off anything below 3k with the overhead mics so I mostly pick up the cymbals. You might try moving the overheads slighly just incase they are in line-of-sight of the snare or it's reflextions.
Click to expand...


Welcome PRW


malcolm
 
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