
Monkey Allen
Fork and spoon operator
See next post. I buggered it up here.
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I'd see me mixing and then maybe thinking the snares a bit too much, so I'd compress it maybe a tiny bit - but if I have it as a separate source, I just pull back the fader. I'd find a similar song on spotify to just check how loud that was. It's a quite traditional song - so plenty of examples and none of them are that dipped in maximum levels and compression.I've started recently getting more into clippers to control the drum bus...aiming for -23lufs (roughly) and peaking like -7 or 8dbfs. Which I thought sounds reasonable enough. The snare and kick are usually the 2 most peaky aspects of a mix. And the issue I get is that I want my song to be -12lufs integrated right...not slammed by any means at all. However to get the song up to that level unless I take care of the peaks in the drum bus I'll have a limiter or a limiter and compressor on the mastering bus potentially clamping down like 6 or 7db to keep the peaks below 0 while getting the lufs up to -12db. This seems wrong to me or really far from ideal if you've got a limiter chopping 6, 7, 8db peaks. So that's why I try to control the drum bus average level and peaks before mastering.
VST drums and EZD are already processed - aside from a little reverb they don't need much.Hi, I've been trying to get better at mixing. Gonna cut a long story short and get to it...
My drums (EDIT: VST drums...EZD, AD2, Ujam etc) are sounding really compressed and weak when played back on laptops especially.
I got the same impression..."Another Time" sounded good to me, much better snare. Overall, the drums seem to suit the genre/style...
thats like reverse quantization. like have you ever recorded your beats and thought..im too 'on time'..lets ruin it. it never seems robotic.Listening an EZD "humanize" like MTPDK? You might try to do that on the snare drum, in addition to pulling the level down some. Drummers will vary things to keep it interesting, otherwise it can sound too much like a metronome.
Man, it's a universal concept. Increased entropy is the way the universe is headed. Randomness is the future..... Order must be abolished!thats like reverse quantization. like have you ever recorded your beats and thought..im too 'on time'..lets ruin it. it never seems robotic.
unless you go 'vocoded roto toms' each with their own notes in key with each other.
no , I decoded the future scriptures. even order harmonics will prevail, and build a new middle east..Music will be the new peace. and Its currency will flow!Man, it's a universal concept. Increased entropy is the way the universe is headed. Randomness is the future..... Order must be abolished!
(you of all people should understand this!)
Ok, I'm going to try to be really minimal on the VST drum stuff.Similarly to what @rob aylestone says -- in my experience, VST drums generally sound best with minimal processing. I usually just put a touch of saturation on the master buss and leave it at that.
Yep. Ok, ditto to this. Will try a very light hand.VST drums and EZD are already processed - aside from a little reverb they don't need much.
Ok yeah see this kind of waveform is one I seem to end up with on my mixes a lot. And this could be the reason why the mixes sound particularly bad on soundcloud...because Soundcloud sees those large peaks and stamps on them which I presume sucks the life out of everything else including the drums/ snare. I don't think I linked to my Soundcloud. But Soundcloud sounds worse than the mp3 versions I attached. As for the uniformity/ precision of the snare hits...I think this is either just like you say a humanize thing or it's the clipper that I got in the habit of using on the drum bus to handle the levels as described in my earlier posts. Getting back to the waveform...I know it's wrong to judge by waveforms. But I have always thought that something is wrong...I'm doing something wrong when my songs end up looking like that. It just doesn't look right.Listening to the two tracks, I think the problem is more that the snare level is high relative to the other drums. It really pops out. When I look at the track, all you see are the snare peaks, which seem to be 3-5dB above all the rest of the music. I have the snare in my MTPDK pulled down compared to the toms. Plus, they are very precise, each hit it basically the same dynamic.
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Can EZD "humanize" like MTPDK? You might try to do that on the snare drum, in addition to pulling the level down some. Drummers will vary things to keep it interesting, otherwise it can sound too much like a metronome.
I just listened to both songs. They are both great songs, with character.
To me, the drums on Caterpillar sounded detached, until the guitar solo, when it all came together.
Maybe the composition of the drums coud be tweaked.
On 'Another Time' it is just a simple driving rhythm, same all the way, which does make it a bit dull.
Around 2:15, the music goes dum - dum - dum. I wanted to hear the drums pick out that same sequence, with a different cymbal for each dum.
You're using artificial drums, but you need to get your head into real drummer mode, and think what would a real hot drummer play to the music.
There's got to be variety to keep the drums interesting, but also you have to think about how the drummer's arms and legs would move, to keep it real sounding.
The toms don't get a look-in.
You might switch from hi-hats to ride cymbal for a section.
A snare hit and crash cymbal together sounds good.
Hitting two toms at once sounds good.
Chuck a flam in here and there, if it fits.
If you're not a drummer yourself, study what top drummers do on Youtube, to make performances interesting.
As far as compression, I'd say do it spareingly, while picking over the results.
Just the Holy Grail of home recording...mixes that translate on as many playback situations as possible. I appear to have made the mistake in mixing these recent songs of a) only using Farfield speakers in one Slate VSX room, b) only checking the mix on HD600's at generous volume, c) only checking the mix on my phone - where things didn't sound so bad to me. I failed to check on my laptop or anything else. The mixes when heard on Soundcloud on my laptop just sound lame. Thanks for the kind words. But I'm a long way off yet."Another Time" sounded good to me, much better snare. Overall, the drums seem to suit the genre/style...
So, I guess the question is, what kind of sound are you shooting for?
Right. Well I need to follow a similar game plan here. Instead of me trying to be Mr Big Mix King here on already mixed drums.On processed drums, the old SD2, I almost never compress. I either edit the volume in the mixer or the velocity in the MIDI.
I wouldn't. Just don't clip. I don't think I could tell you what the level of any of my tracks are in any of my songs. I just make sure they don't individually or collectively peak past 0.EDIT: Oh...I wanted to ask if anyone has any thoughts on lufs level of a drum bus? Should I care?