my drums never sound "up front in the mix"

[mostfamiliar]

Does anyone have any techniques/tutorials on mixing drums?
Do you start out mixing drums?

[Chris_Meck]

I know that for me, being a guitar player, my tendencies were to mix the drums too low to begin with.

I've found that starting with drums and vocal first is a good way to make sure that the drums stay up front. I like to get the vocal up as loud as I can without clipping and then start bringing the overheads up. then I fill in the close mics to taste. Guitars and keys, that stuff I usually pan hard and bring it up last.

I don't know. Works for me.

chris

[thethingwiththestuff]

obviously, i haven't heard any of your tracks, but you may need to mix with a lot more compression (serial and parallel), more reverb and timed delays, possibly more consistent and even performances, and it's always good to track one extra mic through whatever guitar pedal you've got handy.

it's often hard for acoustic drums to remain present when they're competing with instruments of a much smaller dynamic range. you'll hear the initial hits cut through the guitars or keyboards, but there won't be any body of the drum because that part of the signal is just too low compared to the sustain of an amplified instrument. compression and all these other tricks will help make the whole drum sound thicker, without necessarily sounding like it's effected.

[drumsound]

obviously, i haven't heard any of your tracks, but you may need to mix with a lot more compression (serial and parallel), more reverb and timed delays, possibly more consistent and even performances, and it's always good to track one extra mic through whatever guitar pedal you've got handy.

it's often hard for acoustic drums to remain present when they're competing with instruments of a much smaller dynamic range. you'll hear the initial hits cut through the guitars or keyboards, but there won't be any body of the drum because that part of the signal is just too low compared to the sustain of an amplified instrument. compression and all these other tricks will help make the whole drum sound thicker, without necessarily sounding like it's effected.

That's where parallel compression really helps a drum mix!

[kayagum]

Are you using mostly close mics (level-wise), with fill in with overheads?

Try it the other way around: mostly overheads with fill in with close mics (for extra crack or guts).

[cgarges]

Turn them up. I know it sounds ridiculously simple, but that's a really good way to bring something forward in a mix. You can also play with the panning and stereo placement and that will have an effect as well. It's not necessarily a matter of making them more mono or wider. It's more about playing with them in relation to the other stuff that's happening in the mix.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i just mute all the guitars.

[donny]

i like small drums way back in the mix

[chris harris]

Turn them up. I know it sounds ridiculously simple, but that's a really good way to bring something forward in a mix.

Or, if you're out of headroom, turn everything else down in the mix. These kinds of problems are made worse when you try to combine the mixing and mastering process in an attempt to achieve a mix that sounds like a finished master. Mixing to reasonable levels on your stereo bus can have as big of an impact on the clarity and quality of your mixes as tracking at reasonable levels does on the tracks you're recording.

You can also play with the panning and stereo placement and that will have an effect as well. It's not necessarily a matter of making them more mono or wider. It's more about playing with them in relation to the other stuff that's happening in the mix.

Totally. The stereo mix of a drum kit doesn't have to sound like you're sitting right on the drum throne listening to the drums. Sometimes, in a dense mix, it makes sense to pan some drums around to find a place where there's actually some space for them to be heard.

[CedarSound]

Hey Drumsound,

I have played with parallel compression on drums before and tend to mainly parallel the kick and snare... is this your usual approach or do you favor compressing the whole bus usually?

[Chris_Meck]

I usually parallel the whole thing.

[chris harris]

my starting point for parallel compression is usually crushing room mics.

[fossiltooth]

Do you start out mixing drums?

If the sonics of the drums are going to be a focus, then yeah, I'd start with the drums, get them to a point where they have real impact, and work around them a bit. When something interferes with the sound you've created, you can carve the interloper and give it its own personality so it occupies it's own little world and stays out of the way.

If you're going for a really aggressive, sticks-to-the-front-of-the-speaker kind of drum sound, don't be afraid to use more EQ and compression than the magazines tell you to. Way more. Getting that kind of impact is a good trick to have in the bag, but be careful! Developing a crazed dogma: "drums-must-always-sound-super-impressive-and-up-front-in-the-mix." can lead to some pretty vanilla-sounding records.

It's good to ask "do the drums need to be at the very front of the soundstage, or do I just have major penis envy for some big assembly-line record that I don't even dig?" If some weird underwater-electric-clarinet-solo should be the loudest thing in the universe, go for it. Sure,, you can go too far with that too, ending up with mixes that sound like a Visconti/Eno production on a bad hair day. You know, one where a new synth comes in and the RMS doubles?

[cgarges]

i like small drums way back in the mix

Sometimes it's the right thing. Don Zientara said it at the TapeOp conference a few years ago:
"Sometimes the big guitar sounds on those old punk records sound so big because the drums sound so crappy!"

I was having this discussion with another engineer the other day. There's a band that I record frequently and I usually make the ffort to record kind of less-exciting, less up-front drums with them-- mostly mono sources and kind of dull drum sounds. This drummer is totally great, so there's no lack of excitement in the playing. But doing this allows me to put all the energy of the guitars and vocals way up-front in the mix. The mixes on this stuff are kind of dense, so having the drums sit on a cool place without fighting everything makes it all work. They're plenty loud and certainly drive the band, but having them smoothed out (without resorting to massive amounts of EQ and compression) helps make the mixes more exciting overall.

It's not something I do all the time, but it's certainly something I've been more aware of in the last few years.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[MoreSpaceEcho]

kind of dull drum sounds.

yeah a dull snare is sometimes cool cause it then kinda automatically sits behind the vocal.

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

as far as the parallel thing goes, i sometimes end up with parallel everything...