So I got the drum tracks mixed....uh, now what?

[Madferrett]

I've read countless articles on recording and mixing drum tracks. When I listen to a cheap recording, the first thing that sticks out to me is the poor quality drum sound, so when I got ready to record my first project, I looked for anything I could find on drum recordings. So I tracked the drums yesterday and mixed them last night. They came out incredible, especially for my first time to record anything. BTW, tuning and new heads make drums a piece of cake.

So anyway, I tracked the vocals, bass, and guitar today. I was so paranoid about messing up the drums that I didn't read a single article about mixing vocals, bass, or guitar. So now I have a great sounding drum track, and mediocre sounding everything else.

I did a search, but could not find any basic pointers on mixing. What I want to know is what are some basic rules of thumb to go by when mixing everything? What effects do you always put on stuff? What frequencies always get tweaked. I realize that there are too many variables to make definate statements, but something like, "bump about the 1000kHz frequency mark up to accentuate the slap of the kick drum beater" would be perfect. Thanks!

 

[earworm]

i feel ya ! i'm in the same kind of situation right now,
i'm a drummer myself and always concentrated on getting good drum sounds,
now i'm working on little cd for a local band and i found that i had troubles with the guitars...

i always want to hear the kick in a song, so i give it a boost at around 2 khz or 4 khz, its always somewhere else, in every song, but i start tweaking at those frequencies, and definately experiment with Multiband compression on a kick !, in cubase you got a real simple multiband compressor (effects - dynamics - multiband compressor) , cut away some mid frequencies , boost the bottom and high end with this machine and see what it says..

the rule of thumb for the Kick, Snare and Bass guitar is to pan them dead center

guitars go a bit to the left and the right of the speakers, this gives you a little more stereo image and if you put it all in the center you eat up all your headroom over there.

keep your vocals in the center too, and try to track the vocals double in some parts of the song,,,,might work well on the chorus of your tunes,
double voices there to fatten the tune up, and the doubled voices might sound nice if you pan those a bit more to the left or right

and how do you pan your drumkit? hihat on the right or on the left?
most of the time i still put it on the left cause its a habit...i always hear my own hihat there,,,and the ride on the right...but thats me !

in case you don't know, put some compression on the kick,snare, toms,
bass guitar, vocals,

i wouldn't compress the guitars, try giving them a little boost at 4 khz to give them a little more precense, and boost the vocals a bit at 3 khz to cut more trough the mix

guitars...;don't put too much Fx on them all the time,
its great to start with a clean or dry sound and give a peak of FX from time to time .... its easy to do that with cubase, effect automation rocks...

a bit of chorus on the bassguitar or guitars might sound nice sometimes

....for the rest...always make backups so you don't destroy your original recordings...

have fun

cheers,
earworm

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Here's my advice:

Don't mix the drums before laying the rest of the song down. Reason: drums that sound great on their own can sound like crap in the song because "good" sounding drums relate to the ENTIRE mix.

It's a common mistake for new people to make, so don't sweat it. It was probably good practice. More than likely you will have to change stuff to accomodate the bass guitar, vocals and so on.

 

[aaroncomp]

Check out this link

As far as the drum mixing goes, the following link has been a great help to me. I would also recommend exploring other links on the site. I've started using DFH Superior for my drum tracks, and highly recommend it also, if you don't want to hassle with recording them yourself (plus you can control bleeding in ways that are impossible in standard recordings).

http://www.recordingproject.com/articles/article.php?article=5