Drum Mixing in Pro Tools LE

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UnlikeKurt
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Drum Mixing in Pro Tools LE

Post by UnlikeKurt » Tue Feb 08, 2005 4:55 pm

Hey all...could some of yall post about how you do your drum mixes in le? I'm looking for some ideas on how to do it without losing everything without the ability for analog summing.

I have been starting my mixes by doing a solid drum mix with proper eq and compression.
Then i buss the drum mix to two stereo aux tracks
the first is clean and is then my drum submix which i use to adjust overall volume in the mix.
the second is compressed down a bit and then brought up slowly to fatten out the drums in the overall mix once the rest of the instrauments are mixed in. (of course it adds volume..but it seems to add some SIZE to the drums without losing anything by compressing them directly)

Any ideas from anyone else would be greatly appreciated..
James

bert
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Re: Drum Mixing in Pro Tools LE

Post by bert » Wed Feb 09, 2005 1:21 am

UnlikeKurt wrote:Hey all...could some of yall post about how you do your drum mixes in le? I'm looking for some ideas on how to do it without losing everything without the ability for analog summing.

I have been starting my mixes by doing a solid drum mix with proper eq and compression.
Then i buss the drum mix to two stereo aux tracks
the first is clean and is then my drum submix which i use to adjust overall volume in the mix.
the second is compressed down a bit and then brought up slowly to fatten out the drums in the overall mix once the rest of the instrauments are mixed in. (of course it adds volume..but it seems to add some SIZE to the drums without losing anything by compressing them directly)

Any ideas from anyone else would be greatly appreciated..
James
you could totally just do it that way if that's what you're used to. you can even go a bit over what the meters read, level-wise. Just listen for digital distortion, you can't miss it.

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kcrusher
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Re: Drum Mixing in Pro Tools LE

Post by kcrusher » Wed Feb 09, 2005 8:48 am

Is there something wrong with the way you're doing it - soundwise, that is? Are you just looking for other ideas or ??

The way you're doing it sounds fine - I wouldn't necessarily change it unless you're not happy with the results you're getting.
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T-rex
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Re: Drum Mixing in Pro Tools LE

Post by T-rex » Wed Feb 09, 2005 9:30 am

I agree with bombastique, if it sounds good then that's great.

One thing I recently starting really appreciating is the proper use of gates for the bass and snare. You don't want to cut too much out, and if you are doing lighter styles or jazz then gating may not an answer, but for rock it's great. Soloed the track may not sound as well but mixed with the OH's it sounds natural and opens up a little more space to let everything else sit in the track better. Gate then EQ so there are no weird frequencies and the drums sit well in the overal track. I used to compress an entire drum submix but recently I have only been sending the bass dr and snare and really hitting them hard on a compressor. I may or may not compress the OH's. Then bring those up as you described.

Another thing is EQ on not only the drums but the REST of the tracks. If you have a great sounding drum mix by itself but you just lose something when the rest of the tracks are brought up, then most likely you need to do some subtle EQ. Maybe the guitars and the snare are in about the same frequeny range, so you have to play around and cut some frequencies somewhere. It's amazing how much more clear my mixes have started sounding once I started experimenting with this.

Hope that helps.
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