I need help High Passing

[winky dinglehoffer]

If I'm remembering this right, Jim Stewart at Stax would insist on high passing the mix at 180 Hz when cutting 45s.

[Nick Sevilla]

You'd be surprised at the number of albums on vinyl that have all sorts of low end taken off, both during the mix, and/or the mastering.

Totally. Listening critically to classic rock and roll and soul recordings from the 60's and 70's it's weird how things sound 'huge' but then you realize there's barely bass in the kick and bass guitar, it's more low mid, and the guitars have none of the girth of modern big rhythm guitars. It's like all of the space had to be shared in a narrower bandwidth, and they did it so well.

Yep. None have that huge bass. Except for that stuff coming out of Kingston
They mixed that with far less of the other frequencies, to make room for the bass.

The "hugeness" of those records, was made by making many things small, and focusing the attention on what mattered, which was vocal, The melody. That was always the loudest damn thing on the record. I just listened to a "new to me" band today, "Metric". They sound good and full, but your ear just wanders around after a minute, and there is nothing there to focus on. Different style of music today. More about a "vibe", than anything else.

[vvv]

True dat about Metric. Sounds good, but not memorable.

Foals is like that, also - I love to put a record on, they sound great, but there's kinda just vibe.

Listening right now to the latest Dylan. Some of it is like hi-fi garage rock in the best way. Awesome, balanced low-end from the bass, subtle drums, and that voice.

[losthighway]

I think Dr. Dog hits a lot of the points we're talking about here.

They have a somewhat old school approach to their production style and they are good at making smaller sounds that are integral to the arrangement as opposed to a wall of huge guitars, or ad hoc keyboard textures.

[permanent hearing damage]

Does anybody high pass toms? 80 Hz? Maybe not the floor tom?

always. rack toms usually 60-70Hz ish. floor toms often around 50-60Hz. i am usually working with toms that are tuned pretty low.

i literally high pass everything except the kick drum on like 95% of my mixes. most things don't get cuts above like 70-80Hz, but (as always) that depends.

I don't think I've even done more than a slight lo shelf cut on toms, and that is not often.

i used to go up to like 75-80Hz all the time and have been slowly bringing them back down over the years. i mic both heads on toms and the low end can just be overwhelming sometimes. in dense mixes with a shit ton of processing, it helps them cut through better, is all. admittedly, i haven't even tried going without in a long time - maybe i give it a shot next project.

[drumsound]

always. rack toms usually 60-70Hz ish. floor toms often around 50-60Hz. i am usually working with toms that are tuned pretty low.

i literally high pass everything except the kick drum on like 95% of my mixes. most things don't get cuts above like 70-80Hz, but (as always) that depends.

I don't think I've even done more than a slight lo shelf cut on toms, and that is not often.

i used to go up to like 75-80Hz all the time and have been slowly bringing them back down over the years. i mic both heads on toms and the low end can just be overwhelming sometimes. in dense mixes with a shit ton of processing, it helps them cut through better, is all. admittedly, i haven't even tried going without in a long time - maybe i give it a shot next project.

I've only miced both heads a small handful of times. I don't remember if I did any type of low cutting when mixing those things...

[drumsound]

I personally feel like the snare tone is better 99% of the time because of the tom mics.

I get that, especially when you're thinking about it as a couple of resonators that are subtly adding a little more of another frequency in sympathy with the snare hits. I think it's probably about cymbal wash management more than anything else for me. I record a lot of bashers.

Yeah, cymbal bashers just make life difficult.

[losthighway]

I don't think I've even done more than a slight lo shelf cut on toms, and that is not often.

i used to go up to like 75-80Hz all the time and have been slowly bringing them back down over the years. i mic both heads on toms and the low end can just be overwhelming sometimes. in dense mixes with a shit ton of processing, it helps them cut through better, is all. admittedly, i haven't even tried going without in a long time - maybe i give it a shot next project.

I've only miced both heads a small handful of times. I don't remember if I did any type of low cutting when mixing those things...

I know Albini religiously does top and bottom on toms, but I've rarely used the extra couple tracks. I kind of want to, just to see what- if anything- I get as a bonus. Of course he's doing it with a pair of Josephsons on each, but we do what we can.

[losthighway]

I personally feel like the snare tone is better 99% of the time because of the tom mics.

I get that, especially when you're thinking about it as a couple of resonators that are subtly adding a little more of another frequency in sympathy with the snare hits. I think it's probably about cymbal wash management more than anything else for me. I record a lot of bashers.

Yeah, cymbal bashers just make life difficult.

There should be popular memes shaming cymbal bashers into finding finesse.

My first would say "Cymbal bashers french kiss with their teeth".... not sure what the image would be.

"Cymbal bashers yell in the library"

"Cymbal bashers spit when they talk"

[drumsound]

i used to go up to like 75-80Hz all the time and have been slowly bringing them back down over the years. i mic both heads on toms and the low end can just be overwhelming sometimes. in dense mixes with a shit ton of processing, it helps them cut through better, is all. admittedly, i haven't even tried going without in a long time - maybe i give it a shot next project.

I've only miced both heads a small handful of times. I don't remember if I did any type of low cutting when mixing those things...

I know Albini religiously does top and bottom on toms, but I've rarely used the extra couple tracks. I kind of want to, just to see what- if anything- I get as a bonus. Of course he's doing it with a pair of Josephsons on each, but we do what we can.

Most people bus them to the same recording track. Steve does for sure, because of tape rel estate.
It didn't blow me away, to be honest. It's kind of one of those "engineer-y" things to me. It isn't enhancing musically enough for me to spend the client's money on.

I get that, especially when you're thinking about it as a couple of resonators that are subtly adding a little more of another frequency in sympathy with the snare hits. I think it's probably about cymbal wash management more than anything else for me. I record a lot of bashers.

Yeah, cymbal bashers just make life difficult.

There should be popular memes shaming cymbal bashers into finding finesse.

My first would say "Cymbal bashers french kiss with their teeth".... not sure what the image would be.

"Cymbal bashers yell in the library"

"Cymbal bashers spit when they talk"

That would be brilliant.

[permanent hearing damage]

The first few times I tried it, yeah, it didn’t do much for me. But when I tried it again a couple years later when I had a sub in my monitoring setup, it made a huge difference. Like night and day. Typically top and bottom mics are equally loud in the mix for me. Now anytime I’m mixing something where both heads aren’t mic’d, they really feel like they’re missing something. I dunno. If you have the mics and channels, you should try it.