Need help with Live Drum mix

Z

ZPphreak

New member
Hey guys, it's been a long time since I posted last. School kept me pretty busy. Anyway, I need some help mixing some drums. I'm doing some live concert mixing for this band and I have a HUGE problem. The Recording setup at the concert blew chunks. The guy had a single NT4 (fixed XY Stereo SDC)for overheads and a D112 for the kick drum and that's seriously it. Somehow the 57 on the snare didn't get patched into the recorder and it never got recorded.

The problem I'm having is that no matter what I do the drums seem to be REALLY distant in the mix. I have tried L1 compression, C4 compression, and a Stereo imaging processor. The real problem is the Overheads. They were nowhere near close enough to the kit. Compression seems to help level the kit out a bit but nothing seems to get the kit to sound good.

I can post a multitrack clip if someone wants to take a shot at it.
See the post below for sound clip download links.
 
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The sample is seriously over loaded. Can I get a sample of the original tracks with no processing?
 
Ok, I've got new samples that may help a bit more than what I had initially Envisioned. Here's what I've done. I decided to post the multitrack waves for the drum kit. I've included the raw Overhead and kick drum tracks and a snare track that I created to fill in the missing snare mic.

All files are 16/44.1 wave format

Snare Track
Overheads Track
Kick Drum Track

Here's the challenge. Anyone mix these guys up and post your findings. I've had very little success getting presence in the overheads without compressing the crap out of it. I could use any plugin info that anyone comes up with. Also, the kick drum required quite a bit of tweaking due to the fact that the stand that it was on apparently wasn't totally tightened. I think that by the end of the first song, the mic was on the floor in front of the drum instead of in front of the sound hole. I really wish that I could have been there to help with the recording but I was in school in Florida while the concert was in NYC. Oh well.
 
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Do the drums sound okay in the house? There's a good chance (and I could be wrong, cause I'm not there) that maybe all he needs are those two mics to make the drums sound good in that room. The bar I work at is small and I deal with very loud bands, and kick and snare suffice just fine. Sometimes, a kick is really all I need. Regardless of that, how exactly are you getting your dry tracks from the board? Direct outs of everything?
 
People person:
The tracks were recorded direct out into a Mackis SDR 24/96 Hard Disk Recorder on-site at the venue. I think he may have used Digipres... I'm not exactly sure what the situation was but I know that the tracks are completely dry. I THINK that the board was a digital one with a limited number of direct outs.... I THINK.

Check the updated tracks if you haven't already. I recognize that I shouldn't have put up processed samples right away.
 
If I knew how to put mp3's in posts, I'd do it. I think it's totally workable even without the sampled snare. The kick could stand some slight very low boosting, and a little pulled out in the upper mids to take out some of the slappiness, but I think it's fine.
 
check your PM's Peopleperson.

Anyone else that comes up with a mix post here and/or send the file to my email (zpphreak@comcast.net)
 
http://www.autocyt.com/jtgfiles/RAPDrumsThing.wav



In Wave format & MP3

The kick and snare are fine. What I did for them was apply lite compression on each track combined with a gate. I inserted a "hairy snare" reverb preset on the snare from the UAD-1 RealVerb plugin. The overheads also had moderate compression added and a pinch of stereoizing room verb added. The snare was panned slightly to the right everything else in the center.
 
hey, thanks JG. I've been doing more tweaking of the drums today. Your mix helped me get another point of view so thank you very much for taking the time to play with it. Since the Snare was replaced with a snare sample I recorded in the studio, I don't really have to gate it but I like your suggestions. The kick is tough to get a good gate going because of how much he plays the damn thing.. HAHA. The OH mics were just pitiful in general.

Here's what I came up with in my DAW after reviewing what you had done and what others had suggested.
Drum Mix

Comments please. If you guys do any EQ/Filtering try to explain what you did. I'd really appreciate that. I'm trying a few different things.
 
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