my drums never sound "up front in the mix"

[cgarges]

was that the mike strauss record? those mixes had a real nice depth to them.

Thanks man! No, the new Mike Strauss was just a good bit of 100Hz in the snare and a little bit of top added. Probably either 5k or 7.5k. Don't remember. Also, David Kim's left hand. He's got a good one. I've also got a handful of tricks for getting the vocal to sit in front of other stuff if the need arises. It's mostly got to do with different electronics stuff. That and oftentimes a Federal compressor.

This particular record I mentioned is for this guy Bruce Hazel. Sort of punkier version of Springsteen.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Snarl 12/8]

Try hi-passing every track that doesn't have explicit low frequency information that you need. (IE everything except kick) and even on the kick, hi-pass it, but at a lower frequency. It could be that you have a fuckload of low-frequency information that's chewing up all your headroom. Do this before any compression.

Also, have you tried carving out frequency ranges for the stuff that's getting buried? IE, decide whether you want the kick or bass-guitar to be the lowest thing in the mix, then high pass one at a higher frequency than the others. Cut a little 3k in the guitars and boost the snare there. Maybe even low-pass guitars, bass, background vocals, so that the hi-hats and cymbals can sit on top of everything except the lead vocals.

Don't get too carried away. Maybe just cut the frequencies of stuff that's on top of the drums where you don't want it, but don't boost the drums if you only have shitty eq at your disposal.

[cgarges]

Good advice!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[Snarl 12/8]

Good advice!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Me? That's a first.

I gotta say that I've always hoped the above approach would be a panacea to effed up tracking and it never really works when I feel the need to go totally apeshit, but it can help get something "out front" if you're *almost there* via other means.

Ideally you'd do the "eq'ing" via playing, amp choice, instrument settings, amp settings, mic choice, mic placement, tuning, etc. in tracking rather than at the console come mix time.

I remember when I went to see the Bad Brains live. When they were warming up I was starting to get really dissappointed at how thin the guitar sounded on its own. I really wanted to hear a crushingly heavy show. Once they all started playing it sounded perfect to me. The bass had no real info above probably 1-2kHz and the guitar nothing below that. The drums were a little on the clicky side, vox very midrangey. Now I hear how thin the guitar sounds on the records, and how everything's in its sonic niche, but it's balanced. The thickness comes from the mix of everything, the energy of the playing, the subject matter and the arrangements. Everything out front, just like Jah intended.

[jgimbel]

Try hi-passing every track that doesn't have explicit low frequency information that you need. (IE everything except kick) and even on the kick, hi-pass it, but at a lower frequency. It could be that you have a fuckload of low-frequency information that's chewing up all your headroom. Do this before any compression.

Good to hear I'm not doing something insane. I've mentioned in a few threads that my "big aha moment" of the past year has been low cuts (and sometimes high cuts). I'm working on an album now which is sounding better than anything I've recorded before, and I'm almost always hi-passing guitars (when they don't need those frequencies), always hi-passing vocals, often hi-passing kick at a low frequency, and sometimes hi-passing bass at a lower frequency. It's amazing, it completely solves the problem of endlessly adding more top end to one thing after another to try to get it to sound "present". My recording's sound so much more professional since I started doing this, though I think I'm doing it a lot more extremely than I usually read about.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i sometimes wonder if i'm the only one who doesn't like the hipass so much...

[Snarl 12/8]

i sometimes wonder if i'm the only one who doesn't like the hipass so much...

I only said to try it. It might help with the specific problem. I also said I haven't found it to be the panacea that I hoped for, but that I think it's definitely helped in some cases.

Are you generally recording using a pro, treated space, pro mics, pro musicians, pro gear, etc.? I could imagine that the law of diminishing returns spikes pretty quickly when things start off more ideal to begin with.

[vivalastblues]

thanks thethingwiththestuff and Snarl for the awesome posts in this thread!

[Waltz Mastering]

i sometimes wonder if i'm the only one who doesn't like the hipass so much...

I only use them as a last resort, and only if something really funky is happening down there.

Are you generally recording using a pro, treated space, pro mics, pro musicians, pro gear, etc.? I could imagine that the law of diminishing returns spikes pretty quickly when things start off more ideal to begin with.

I think even more than that, it's really a matter that a lot of monitors really don't give you to much accurate info below 40 Hz or so, so a lot of people just seem to default to hp filtering because they aren't using a full range speaker system and would rather error on the side of caution with out realizing that they're creating a bump right around the cut-off frequency that will sometimes cause you to lose a dB or two of head room and also propagate the problem that one is trying to alleviate.

[W DeMarco]

I couldnt imagine mixing drums without hpf's. Once I started using them more often my drumsound became very upfront. However I tend not to hit the kick if at all, and the floor is always if it really needs it I might. Great thread and lots of good tips in here

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i'm in full agreement with Mr. Waltz here. i used to be all about the hipass until i got good monitors and a sub and could actually hear what was going on in the bottom two octaves. and i realized that subs weren't something to be afraid of.

i'd say that in mastering i use a hipass maybe 5% of the time. but i cut somewhere between 80 and 400 probably like 75% of the time. so i really think that in tracking and mixing, the real low stuff is less likely to be your enemy than the stuff that builds up in the upper bass/low midrange.

also i think that if you're doing parallel drum stuff, a hipass on the parallel can do weird things with the phase, which will not be your friend when you go to combine it with the dry tracks. maybe i'm nuts, i dunno.

snarl, i wasn't trying to imply you were giving bad advice or anything, i just see the 'highpass everything' so often on teh interwebz that it makes my knee jerk. don't get me started on time-aligning.

[cgarges]

also i think that if you're doing parallel drum stuff, a hipass on the parallel can do weird things with the phase, which will not be your friend when you go to combine it with the dry tracks. maybe i'm nuts, i dunno.

A high-pass or a low-pass filter on ANYTHING in parallel will mess with the phase. This applies to compression, distortion, reverb, whatever. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage, but it's DEFINITELY something of which to be aware.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[chris harris]

also i think that if you're doing parallel drum stuff, a hipass on the parallel can do weird things with the phase, which will not be your friend when you go to combine it with the dry tracks. maybe i'm nuts, i dunno.

A high-pass or a low-pass filter on ANYTHING in parallel will mess with the phase. This applies to compression, distortion, reverb, whatever. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage, but it's DEFINITELY something of which to be aware.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

Is this if the actual parallel bus is high-passed? Or, if the tracks being sent to the parallel bus are high-passed? Or, both?

[thethingwiththestuff]

I agree. I always mix with my sub in. I hi pass like crazy at my live sound job, but only when necessary when mixing. Then I'm much more likely to carve out low mids than kill all bass & sub bass.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

subatomic, i'm saying if you're combining the hipassed parallel with non hipassed dry tracks, in my experience it can get weird.