Some questions on mixing drums

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Euan_Fox

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Hey, I have a few things I wanted to know about mixing drums.

Firstly, someone I know said that when he mixed he put in a sub kick on the kick beats, quietly, just to make them bigger. This seemed like a great idea, and I was wondering if there was any way to do this on Cubase 5?

Another thing, is that I don't think that compression and gating are too important. I prefer natural sounding drums and don't like to take away all the dynamics and because all the tracks will spill into each other is there any harm in not gating the tracks?

I think I can manage with the other aspects, but any other information that is really useful and really effective would be awesome!

Thanks!
 
The use of compression on drums is influenced by what music you're playing. If it's something like metal, yeah most of your drums are going to be hammered with compression, softer stuff might not need any dynamic control at all. Compression when used in moderation won't kill the natural sound of your drums, just helps tidy them up. Are you compressing individual tracks or the whole kit? Cubase has some decent presets on VST dynamics, enough to get you close at least.

I've heard of people sidechaining a 60hz tone to kick (just listen to immure and you'll hear it), but i haven't been able to pull that off in cubase 5, i only have LE though.

Gating again depends on the music i think. Metal, again, you see mics all over the place, on everything with a head and then some, so yeah they'll probably be gating anything but the overheads just because there's so much going on.

No, there's no harm in not gating tracks, as long as it sounds good!
 
Oh, if you're trying to thicken things up don't dismiss delays and reverbs. Play around with an fx sends channel and suuuper short delay, or a reverb. sneak it up below the dry track and eq it to taste.
 
Thanks for the replies! I listen to a lot of rhythm and blues and rock music from the 60's and 70's. Almost exclusively. I can see the advantages of compression, but I prefer to keep the kit sounding as real as I can without taking anything away. I haven't recorded any drums with more than 7 channels yet, so I think that's not too much that any spill would bring the levels too high and put the sound off balance. I normally EQ the individual tracks but I am going to give parallel compression a go soon. Sounds do-able.

I have done sidechain compression, but I have no idea how to sidechain a tone :/

I definitely use reverb, I love it and have gotten pretty into the different settings. I just want to get the drums more powerful and 'big' than any others. Makes a track really stand out. Reverb definitely helps and it's great, but I haven't given delay a go. I'll try that out!
 
Yeah give delay a shot, try panning your fx sends around too, that will help you get a wider sound. I tend to cut a lot of low eq on a reverb send, that darkness will bunch up and muddy a track real fast, that and the higher freq's will stick out on a fx send. Solo your fx channel and tweak it til it sounds healthy, then put the fader down and play it along with your dry track and sneak up the fader until you've got it where you want it.

Sorry i'm no help with the tone side chaining, that might be a topic for the cubase users forum. I've been using the rotary vst on drum tracks, that might get you in the ballpark... try duplicating your kick track and setting a rotary (under modulation) on it and play around with eq. Just make sure to 'stop' the rotary and 100% mix might have that beefy thump you're looking for. Danger though that will introduce a TON of mud so you might need to get fancy with eq. Low and High pass it and leave the top of your curve to just touch +/- 0 db at 60 hz. again play that with your dry signal and sneak it up.


Try anywhere from 20-5 ms delay on a snare, something that you can't really pick out, but if you remove it you'll notice a difference. 16ms seems to be the sweet spot i keep going to.
 
You're on the right track and you know what you want. That puts you miles ahead of many people, even people who have been doing this for years and have great "text book" knowledge but not a musical bone in their body.

I'd say play around with compression and other effects, like gianelli280 suggested. But, in the end, go with your own musical vision of what you want each track and song to sound like. There is no rule that says you have to compress, but try some and then scrap it if you don't like it. I, personally never use gates on my drums. Doesn't mean you shouldn't either, but there's certainly no obligation to use anything if you prefer the sound without it.
 
You got some good advice here. The only thing I would add is that compressing drums doesn't automatically mean they won't sound natural. You can get away with a fair amount of compression on a kick and snare and they will still sound like a kick and snare.
 
As far as I know, to side chain a tone you just need a track with the 60Hz tone recorded on it. Then gate that track and trigger the gate with the kick track. If I was doing it, I would record the tone through the whole song, put a gate in the insert of that channel then run a direct out from the kick track (I'd use the output of the inset on that channel) and run that into the sidechain in on the gate. I'm not sure how you would do that in cubase but the method should be sort of the same.
 
Thanks a lot for the feedback guys! Really helped a lot to answer my questions! :) I'm still trying to figure out the sidechain thing, but I think I'll get there through trial and error :P
 
You can check this tutorial which is for Cubase 6 but i think you can make the same things in Cubase 5.

P.S. I'm not able to post links in here -btw i'm a newbie in this forum :D- so search in Youtube for "Tutorial: Sidechaining in Cubase 6"
 
Man, that is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks so much! Bass drum, now sounds nicer, I only used it a tiny little bit, you had any experience with it yourself? Any tips?
 
I found it helpful to create a dedicated (throw-away) kick track for the triggering. Then you can experiment with EQ, compression on that trigger track. But I dunno how to do in Cubase...
 
I don't actually use that technique a lot but it helped me to get a solid kick drum sound on some bad recording drums. Make some experiments on what sound you want and use some tools like EQ and compression.
 
Howdy, is there anyway to fix clipped overheads without re-tracking?
 
loopaxe said:
Howdy, is there anyway to fix clipped overheads without re-tracking?
Click to expand...

Not really. You can attempt to eq out harsh frequencies, but it is just damage control.

Post a sample. You will need 10 posts before you can do that easily.
 
volltreffer said:
I found it helpful to create a dedicated (throw-away) kick track for the triggering. Then you can experiment with EQ, compression on that trigger track. But I dunno how to do in Cubase...
Click to expand...

Right click, Duplicate Track
 
fixing stuff

jimmys69 said:
Not really. You can attempt to eq out harsh frequencies, but it is just damage control.

Post a sample. You will need 10 posts before you can do that easily.
Click to expand...

thx! i see now that i've recieved clipped (the wave is cut off at the top and the bottom) overheads and snare, jeez, okay well i have aptrigga2 for snare but its latent. mmm wonder if i trigger snare and record the other drum tracks as overheads and use a room impulse response on those tracks to make fake overheads!?


i7960 6gb ram firestudio project studio one 2
 
Don't resort to using triggers/samples to clean things up, get it right in the first place. Take some time and mess around before ending up with a recording which you can't change.
 
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