New Dry Drum track! Please Critque!

  • Thread starter Thread starter dumass
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The cymbals sound too distant and reverb-y and the bass sounds dead. It all sounds boxy in general -- try adding some treble.
 
Well, I don't think I'd boost too much high end, it'd would more than likely just get strident than airy.
The kick is a little week. It's my guess it would dissapear in an aggressive mix. I feel that's your weakest link. How's the kick sound in the room? Is it punchy or flabby? If you don't have the sound there, you'll never get it back down the road. If you feel it sounds good and you've moved the mic around and have it dialed in as much as you can, maybe try a 3 or 4 dB boost and start sweeping it from around 4k up around 6k or so. Also maybe some parallel compression. I prefer using sub group outputs on my mixer to do this as if you have the tomms panned it preserves the stereo panning but if you don't have 'em, aux sends will do. I set up a drum mix that I'm happy with and then I'll have the kick, snare and tom tracks assigned as a stereo pair to a sub group as well as the main stereo outs, and send this sub mix to a compressor and step on it hard. I bring that back to to more channels and push that up under my existing drum mix to taste. you can put a lot of ass in the drums like this.
 
The bass drum sounds really lifeless. I don't mind the snare or the toms.
 
yea i agree about the bass drum...i'm def going to eq it, cutting some mids and some lows, leaving mostly highs, with still some bass of course.

how do i fix the boxy soundingness..?
 
trackrat:

i kinda lost you on where you where talking about parallel compression.

i dont have a hardware compressor, the only compressor i have to use is the timeworks compressor plug-in. any tips on working with that?
 
Sure. Same as above as far as step one; set up a drum mix you're happy with. Solo the kick track, snare and toms and render that to a new track (in stereo). Put your compressor plug on that and push that up under your existing drum mix (now un-soloed).
 
I took the liberty of remixing your drums.

Tried to lift the bass with a low boost - didn't really make a lot of difference.
Added some delay - gives it an interesting 32nd note/triplet kind of feel.
Also some compression, and well why not some reverb while we're at it.
Hear it here
 
Track Rat said:
Sure. Same as above as far as step one; set up a drum mix you're happy with. Solo the kick track, snare and toms and render that to a new track (in stereo). Put your compressor plug on that and push that up under your existing drum mix (now un-soloed).
Click to expand...

so you wouldnt compress them individually? and can i jus use the virtual mains in cakewalk? put the bass, snare, and tom tracks to a different main and then put a compressor on them
 
i tried doing what i thought you meant...n it sure as hell sounds a lot more lively..thanks!

i posted it up on the same site as before and teh description is drum mix or something liek that

anything else needs to be done?
 
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I'm ont real familiar with potential eq-solutions, but in addition to what everyone else has said, the hi hat sounds a little dry/flat to my ears.
 
Ha Bulls Hit, what's with that delay dude? What on earth...?
 
Just a bit of fun. Don't you mess around with delay on your recordings?

Also Fox mentioned the hats. They've got a definite tone to them that gets kind of annoying after a while. It's somewhere around an F. I'm picking they're not Zildjians
 
As far as cymbals and hats go, thinner records MUCH better than the thicker ones most drummers have for playing live. Thicker cuts through but when recording they're all overtone and no fundamental "splash".
 
I don't use delay on drums, though I'm sure it could be useful in some ways. I might fuss with it today for fun.
 
so you guys like the mixed version more?
haha

is there a big improvement?
 
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