Intro to Mixing Drums

[futurerocker77]

This might be a stupid question, but I was doing some mixing of a song the other day when I realized whenever there were really hard snare hits, it caused the volume of the song to breathe, or swell. It's as if there was some really weird compression effect that turned down the song's volume for just a second and brought it back up on loud snare hits. What is this? How do I stop it? I also realized that if a EQed it a certain way, it would stop, but it would stound worse.

[ALDOFCOCABUTO]

Hello, VERY INTERERSANTE, EXCELLENT USE APPLICATIONS WAVES, TE FELEICITO, WE HELP MANY OF THESE VIDEOS TO DO.

[adminallen]

Just checked out you band and I love your music.

[baboonlurker]

Thats actually not a bad song haha

[MsCurwin]

Great vid. Thanks

[BenjaminHooper1979]

Great vid, I knew much of it but it's great to have things like this reconfirmed & explain in such a clear way. Thanks

[0tto777]

Boosting eq sounds very unnatural. To me you made that snare sound quite papery and unnatural. If you can always pull down all the frequencies except the ones you want to sound boosted then raise the volume. It'll sound a lot more natural and your mix will reflect that

[Soundon]

I must admit, I can't really get into that snare sound.

[AccapellaStudio]

Your tricks work very great,

Thank you !

[bigbirdtalent]

i want that song 

[Onetruthrgv]

Daniel how are you able to know what frequencies to boost and cut? Is it by ear or is there just good rules of thumb to go by? If so could you point me to a Good source to learn some stuff like that?

[danielwaves]

@Onetruthrgv It really depends on how the audio sounds to begin with so yes, it's a lot by ear. However there are frequency ranges wherein each instrument lies. For instance, with the kick drum you will be working in the low frequencies while with cymbals you will be in the high frequencies. There are many great resources out there that can help you, including our other video tutorials and webinars.

[vmc25]

Shachar you are very articulate and organized in your presentation of content... Finally someone with brains and talent... Great job! Using Waves plug-ins... Can you list your gear software and hardware.. Thanks

[pirell]

it would be nice to have more Hip hop and RnB mixing tutorials and tips.

[raimagnum1]

Thanks learnt good application of Parallel Compressoion.

[Austin4a]

Subscribed. Great tutorials!

[jobimboy]

wats the order in mixing? EQ then compress then add reverb??

[PuppetGovernmentLV]

I heared that eaven 5 db is very extreme boost or cut.

[ajayrife]

@PuppetGovernmentLV Whoever told you that is spot on. When I saw some of the cuts and boosts this guy was making, I thought he must be insane. Buutttt.. I must say that the way the drums sit in the mix when all is said and done is pretty interesting.

[gcalvanetten]

Great tutorial, very helpful. Thanks so much!

[Thunderfock]

Hi Daniel, thank for the mixing tips. Just wanted to know who the artist is, and where I can get a link to that song because it sounds like a very good track! Thanks.

[danielwaves]

@Thunderfock

Thanks. The song is called 'Inside Out' by Shachar Gilad

[Dylannnnnnnn91]

I assume you have to use a firewire mixer, or multiple usb interfaces to get each mic or dedicated mic group to their own track, right?

[fauzigulo]

Very helpfull.. thanks :)

[stripes5150]

it's all subjective...however, i would have built the master from the drums up, bass, vocals then everything else.....your drums are very buried...sorry...cool song tho.

[miracleworkingpower]

@stripes5150 interesting response, and when i listen to this track i hear more intentional emphasis on the guitar and vocals than i do the drums... so i think burying the drums a little bit works because theyre not the most important thing mood-wise. the vocals and general dreamy washiness of the track as a whole seems to be a better focus... think about what the song as a whole is trying to 'say'. however i could be blurring the lines between producer and engineer here lol.good video nice job

[jblairbiz]

Thank you so much for this video

[IamPeavey]

i just subscribed to your channel. very helpful. though i wanna ask... where or how do you stand on which comes first... EQ or compressor? and why? hehe. thanks!

[destinosangre]

your master is cliping...

[Surrilium]

Wow, that really helps me, thanks, I thought I was lost^^

[thekobsta]

i want the room where the drums were recorded

[TheKidProductions]

I really want to buy some Waves Plugins because I know there great plugins, but I don't want to buy something have it not work with my cpu somehow and then i'm out a few hundred bucks because yo can't return software. Or have trouble with the installation and the dongle key thing. So if you can you should do a video on how to install waves plugins on your cpu with the registration and everything.

[robbykband]

Wonderful tutorial, thanks!

[haquall]

Hello Daniel,

nice mix you did here. I got 1 question, I like the parallel compression that you did, but didn't quite get how you put the buses. You mean you open 2 AUX tracks with the same input, pass all the drum tracks thru the AUX input and only on 1 AUX you put the compressor on? This is the only thing I'd like to know.

Cheers

[danielwaves]

@haquall

That's exactly right.

[Itzoficial]

@danielwaves invisible compression?

[ventsintheedge]

Nice job,thanks!

[JazzNaySean]

ok i need some help

i have protools with only an mbox mini :(

i have a mixer an alesis 8 channel and i have some very expensive mics and i also bought a cad 7 pro mic set

i swapped out the over heads with my at4050mic but it still doesnt sound so clean and i cant use it with protools cuhz i onlt have a mixer which as you know isnt compatible

how do u make it sound good and how should i record it?

should i just get a new interface and recording software?

[920connor]

I'm lookin to start mixing drums and have no clue wat to start with... I was going to get mics, and a mixing board. Do I need a program to upload the recording on my computer or how do i get it onto the computer? Thanks

[danielwaves]

@920connor

There's a 'Home Recording Quickstart' tutorial on the Waves website.

[Renato27ify]

Daniel can you send me samples of the kick and snare? the sound is fantastic that you took this battery, here in Brazil is very high price for good mirofones battery and my home studio is quite modest and would like to use this excellent sound that you recorded ... is possible? Parabens are very good the music of his band where I can get the music?

[danielwaves]

@Renato27ify

Thanks Renato. The recording is a drum kit recorded specifically for this song, and we can't distribute samples of the recording, but you can get great drum samples with programs like EZDrummer or Addictive Drums. To answer your second question this song is from 'Shachar Gilad'.

[zenstain]

Excellent video for someone really getting into mixing and sound engineering (like me). Loved the EQ bits and the overhead after processing sounds amazing. My only critique, and this is probably just personal taste, is that I found the drums to be a little bit too far back in the final mix. But great job!

[anderbor]

Great video. Thanks!

[Einheit396]

If my set would sound like his one...

[beardaaengineer]

to orenben1 ur mixer has 4 6 10 12 up to 32 mic inputs

[Audiowithalex]

Love the Renaissance Eq's

[nikar0]

Hi Daniel. Cool tutorial!

Don´t you gate stuff like the snare, toms, and kick? ´Cause otherwise when you compress it will bring the other pieces of the kit up as well. Although your soloed tracks sound really clean. Is it sampled or something? Kinda strange the fact you didn´t have some noise from the kit on each piece

[johnnyPfromNYC]

sounds great.....what's the name of the song? Is it available anywhere to listen to?

[BillyTalentRocks2010]

I must admit, the fx did make a big difference in the overall mix, but your drums sound pretty damn good by themselves. How do you get the drums to sound that good just straight? is it just awesome mics?

[BIGSABMUSIC]

i wanna know why do i have to use a mac to record music with is it better in sound quality with mac as it is with a pc?

[MartinJohnstonDrums]

They overheads sound amazing. What kind of mics were they?

[fv3video]

Well said! thanks

[dart1105]

This a different song than "fall" isn'it? Is your album avalaible in europe and precisely in Belgium? Can I order on you website? I didn't understand anything due to the langage. But I like your music very much!

[dart1105]

Interesting! Really. But.. Who's the band playing? I like very much!

[danielwaves]

@dart1105

Thanks! It's my band actually. you can look for Shachar Gilad.

[hitobedut]

Man Americans and Compression !

[localpm]

Thanks for this gr8t.

[cainmayne84]

This video....is definitely insightful man. Seriously.

[gbman123]

whats the best system to use for recording and mixing music for an absolute beginner? anybody?

[EvenTheAtlantic]

very nice video!

[kanank7]

Im sorry about the question, but OVERHEAD TRACK would be a GROUP CHANNEL TRACK? By the way, im a heavy WAVES plug ins user. Just one very small tip, if you are into dance music, Try Api 2500 Comp on your bass, couldnt find any better! Cheers

[dannyheff1]

Thanks Dannywaves good video -- you kinda remind me of Ben Stiller -- and I hear a lot of U2 influence in the band

[TheProgmagog]

This guys cuts right to it. Excellent results really quickly. I think he forgot to mention why he made 2 aux returns. I believe he set one WITH the same compressor in bypass, using that as the uncompressed bus for easy level setting between the two. He installed the bypassed compressor (same one) to keep the phase alligned. Otherwise there would be latency between the two causing a phase cancillation. His Stereo Master bus was too hot though. Best keep that at -3 db below the red or even lower.

[kakahich]

and if you EQ the kick this way where or how will you put the bass in the mix?

frequences will have a conflict

[kanank7]

@kakahich that's called... shock wave

[goreri]

You should use sidechain compression. Put the kick track as a send to the compressor of your bass. In this way, the bass is a little more compressed every time the kick is there. By doing this, the conflict should be solved.

[strad5]

I'll attempt an explanation for a noob. Compression is way to control loud bursts of volume. Think of your volume as a really big car trying to park in one of those underground parkings. That big yellow overhead bar is your compressor....It will only allow a certain amount of volume to go through. I know it's a crude comparison. I know that dynamic processing is one of the hardest sound concepts to wrap ones head around. Keep listening !!!!

[papasmall]

@strad5

also brings up lower volumes

[elJefeMedia]

Is this Pro Tools?

[dapik5]

NOOB QUESTION: what is compressing?

[wholettheledout]

Thankyou so much! I can't believe how much this helped. espiecially liked the way the overheads turned out.. 5 stars plus subscription.

[vertigopulse]

bay far one of the better eq and mixing tutorials Ive viewed on here. *****

[MunkyBo11ecks]

Good job dude, this will help further my understanding of compression, and what you might wanna use an EQ for. Its easy to say, we boost eq here, but you say, I boost it here because I want this or that outta it. Cheers

[orenben1]

i have a question for anyone willing to answer, pro tools interfaces have a max of 4 mic inputs, so my question is how do producers always have like every single drum micd, this is probably an easy problem but i just started and im confused

[danielwaves]

Often people use external mic pres (sometimes those in a console or a mixer) to go into the line inputs.

[agilblom]

This was the case until recently when M-Audio came out with the Fast Track Ultra 8R. It has 8 simultaneous recording XLR inputs. I just picked one up and I'm very happy with it. Just for reference, I use Pro Tools M-Powered 8 and my last interface was a Fast Track Ultra (4 simultaneous XLR inputs).

[nopo182]

@agilblom

did your fast track ultra 8r come with pro tools m powered as well? or did you just have it?

[LegacyRecordzTV]

You can get high end Pro Tools interfaces which have 32 channels of I/O, such as the " Digi 192 ". This is the interface you will find in all recording setups involving a recording console / mixer going into Pro Tools. That is how they do it ... for example, a studio which has a 100 channel console will be able to plug in up to 100 mics at once, and then be able to run all those channels to Pro Tools individually using three or four Digi 192s.

[mike110492]

@orenben1 You can get interfaces for pro-tools with more than 4 mic inputs. Mine has 8, and there are ones that have even more.

[JazzNaySean]

@orenben1 usually the big name recording studios have pro tools hd which requires a big expensive setup

that has mixers with up to 60 different channels

but for me i only have a mbox 2 so i just use a different 8 channel mixer and just use the q1/4 inch line straight into the box cheap but effective :) hope that helps a bit

[virgogreg]

great examples with toggle demonstrations a  good t Teacher !

Cheers!

[blueredfred2]

damn i never knew how much of a difference parallel compression made!

[jmsslave]

what mics and interface are you using?

[sonnetg2]

Very helpful. Thank you.

[joe0404]

Great job

[dak8]

this is reeeally helpful for me much appreciated

only thing i dont understand what overhead is...is it basicly like a douber? but with less lows?

[ChicoPunk13]

OHs are for cymbals (namely crashes and ride, though some people mic the ride separate from the OHs)

[beduikissme]

WOW! Excelente tutorial!

WOW! Excellent tutorial!

[rrussell21]

Yeah, that's how you make a video!

[airborneseepage]

Mate compensate your gain when you A/B the compression otherwise you'll never know if you've made it better.

[roz860]

I agree Airborn. Louder automatically equals better!!! LOL!!!

[brisack]

This is a great place to start. I had to mod some of the eq settings but its still a great place to start. I never knew about Parallel compression! It has raised the bar on my track! :0) Thanks so much for sharing!

[YoungMalcomX1]

what is the overhead

[LittleNemoTheDreamer]

is the pumping of the guitar at the end an effect or did something went wrong?

[guypie]

your master is peaking, check for masking signals, the track sounds good but u could have too much masking going off in the mid ranges since u took alot out of the drums, try boosting the mids a little more on some tracks to get more tonal balance and to let the frequencies of each track cut through each other more.

[wheezechisel]

waaa mate!

[skateagainstthelaw]

Yea that's great when your drum recordings sound amazing from the get go... With modern drumming there's no chance you'd be able to get away with a 10db rise at 5k. These techniques worked very well on this song (and kudos for that) but my advice to others watching this is don't use it as a universal template for your drums.

On a side note, I love those SSL plugins. If you can get a hold of them, definately learn how to use them properly.

[ivarthurvi]

Can't figure out how to do parallel compression like that in acid 7.0. acid 8.0, fix this!

[happyronbin]

You need to set up the compressor as a send effect, (like you would with a reverb or delay) rather than an insert. Once you've got the compressor set up the way you want, play back your mix without sending any of the signal into the compressor, then gradually send more and more signal into the compressor till you get the sound you want.

[LittleNemoTheDreamer]

this is a way of doing it but youll get a different sound and you need to watch for phase problems..

[ivarthurvi]

there were a couple of numbers he didn't tell us though, and i could have really used them, but this is the best out there. Yeah, definitely a toontracks drumkit. Sounds more like ezdrummer to me (i have it, and it sounds like it).

[JJNProductions]

I could almost guarantee those drum sounds are from Superio 2. Wich to me they sound like they been premixed. Well that's my take on it what do you guy's think?

Anyway- Awsome video 5 stars!!

[alvar072]

You're rigth

[yuvi85]

great video!

[Pollero20]

thanx for the info dude... my bass drums are sounding better right now

[chuckawobbly]

same here these were some really great tips, 5 stars

[l0nni]

And suddenly mixing ain't easy at all. GOOD POST.

5 Stars.

[Pollero20]

duuuuude..!! my bass drum is sounding greeeat!!

thanx for the tutorial

[andrewt248]

I've found that when I use parallel compression on anything (and I set it up the same way he does - with 2 auxes receiving the same input signal) I have to put a compressor on both to compensate for latency in the plugins. Then one compressor is set light to none and the other is completely smashing it to about -20dB. I love to use the BF 1176LN compressor on the drums!

[briauc]

these waves videos never talk about top and bottom mics like a snare should be recorded. There is just one track for snare in all of them. Not how it works. Much harder than that

[timlaroche]

Usually they get the drums premixed, like the snare in one track and the toms in a stereo track, and already sounding pretty good. But I agree, they should take one or two steps back and explain how they premixed to get the drums sounding like that.

[WelcomeToRapture08]

i agree ...this is blue peter style mixing..heres one we mixed to perfection earlier

[thestartingline182]

ezdrummer maybe?

great sounding stuff and great tutorial

[TheDigitalMafia]

Dude, I love your videos being a total Noob at recording, you've helped me soo much.  thank you.

TDM

[oachcruda]

this is one of the best tutorial that I've seen so far.. thansk you so much

[RTjman]

I agree jim- drums recorded good from the beginning are so much easier to mix! :)

[jimcabtv]

Man those drums were recorded well!

[BBLENDER]

Awesome tut, I love Waves! Thanks for letting me know.

[edward892]

Excellent tutorial...I'll give it a shot.

[Justin1524]

Thanks good lesson for sure. I'm curious why you chose to use the C1 over the RCompressor. Same question for the REQ6 over the Q6.

[tomin87]

nice video. I love the parallel comp...

But don't you wanna gate some of the tracks?

[modchipx]

nice man..

[timlaroche]

Well done. the snare sounds great, even in the overheads. Nice overall sound and atmosphere. What do you think about rev+gate on snare drums? too 80s?

[extremevideopro]

Sounds Great. Love the parallel comp trick, I use that all the time.

[dededey]

very good!thanks