recording drums

[hugolp]

Hi!

Just one simple question.

Do u need a compressor for recording drums just after the preamp? (Like you do with vocals or other instruments). Or as the levels of the drums are not like a voice and the drum dont move, is not necesary?

Thanks

Hugo

 

[Track Rat]

No simple answer. If you think it sounds better with compression, use it. Personally, I use a bit of limiting on snare on the way in, the rest of the kit is dry. That's just the way I like to do it. There's nothing wrong with compressing on the way in (if you have decent compresors). Just realize that if you don't know much about it and you have it miss adjusted, you're stuck with the result as there's no taking it off.

 

[Ronan]

Compression is used a lot on drums ( compress drums on every record I do, but if you are newbie I would avoid compressing when you record and dealing with it when you mix.

ONe of the best tricks for compressing drums is to create a sub mix of the drums and compress that and mix that in with the uncompressed drums. It gives you some of the fullness of the compression and the dynamics of the natural attack.

 

[Track Rat]

ONe of the best tricks for compressing drums is to create a sub mix of the drums and compress that and mix that in with the uncompressed drums. It gives you some of the fullness of the compression and the dynamics of the natural attack.

Yeah, this is my favorite way to treat drums.

 

[drummerdude666]

how do you do that? thought it'd b simple (probally is) then i htought about it and got confussed. do you use group traks but thats not it.....im using cubase. can you explapin how to do it. i wanna try it out and i cant think of how to do it. Without of course copying and pasting the drums again and just treat them diffrently - is there a proper way?

 

[Laynestaley]

how do you do that? thought it'd b simple (probally is) then i htought about it and got confussed. do you use group traks but thats not it.....im using cubase. can you explapin how to do it. i wanna try it out and i cant think of how to do it. Without of course copying and pasting the drums again and just treat them diffrently - is there a proper way?

Once you’ve recorded the different drumtracks, export the audio as a stereo wav.-file. Import that file again in Cubase. This is your submix. Compress this one track and mix it in with the other separate drumtracks which you do not compress.
I’m not saying this is the best way to go, just trying to explain to you how to do what Ronan described..

 

[Ronan]

I do not use Cubase (I am a real console guy, that knows pro tools quite well), but this should be easy to do in cuebase:

What you want to do is set up aux sends on each drum channel and create a new fader/channel whose input is the out put of the aux send. Strap your compressor across your new input channel.

The advantage of this approach versus the previous posters suggestion is that you can make a seperate mix to go out to the compression group (Usually less overheads.)

Then you bring your compression track into the mix. This works much better with analog consoles and compressors, but should still be a valuable tool to people mixing in the box as well.

PS also try putting your bass guitar in the sub group.