Low passing drum overheads

[losthighway]

I am wrapping up a cool project I worked on with a buddy. He has a go-to mastering engineer who's not in my list of usuals, but has been doing a great job. We've kicked back and forth a few revisions to fine tune a couple things. He mentioned moving my low pass filter on the overheads when I had some hesitation about having mixed the drums too far forward on a part of a complicated song.

Thing is, I don't have a low pass filter on the overheads, and I'm not sure if I ever have (room mic often). Seems as handy a tool as any.

Anyhow I ask because he spoke about it as a default approach like high passing a reverb, or low passing a bass guitar might be for me. It made me wonder if this is an approach that many folks are frequently using, and it alluded my mixing vocabulary as another self taught engineer.

Any of you folks use this frequently or occasionally?

[Nick Sevilla]

I've both used a low pass, and nothing, on drums.

As the famous T.O. saying goes, "it depends"... on how the drums were played, the music style, how the drums were recorded, etc.

Moving the low pass filter on the overheads would indeed give a perception of pushing them back, but only to a point. After that, if you need them to be further back, delaying the entire drumkit would be the way to go.

Brighter "higher / more up front."

Darker "lower / more back."

It is NOT a default thing to do. When mixing music, nothing should be a default. Unless you're mixing an entire album recorded the same way, there is no reason to always do things the same. The song style and the recording usually will tell you what you need to do to get to where the mix needs to be.

Question is: What does your client think of your mixes? Respect that if possible.

[vvv]

As a bedio mixer, I more often low-pass OH's then not, when I am using close mic's to be the main sound.

And not, or at least much less, when they are the main sound.

BUT, listen to Nick, first.

I do.

(also, "alluded" should be, "eluded"?)

[losthighway]

Question is: What does your client think of your mixes? Respect that if possible.

Yeah, that was one of those times where he didn't know it could be better until I spotted the problem and then was like, 'Oh, yeah. It didn't bug me before, but you're right. This is way better.' Which makes me feel like I'm more of a pro, except of course I didn't notice the deficiency until the first pass of mastering. Dang drums and vocal levels always seem to jump out at me in a different way after a mastering engineer has prettied things up. I often fantasize that if I were a rich man I'd mix an album, pay to get it mastered, then mix it again in reaction to the mastered version. How's that for efficiency?

(also, "alluded" should be, "eluded"?)

Yes it should. Homophones are hard.

[drumsound]

Pertaining to Overheads especially, it has a lot to do with the drummer, their technique AND their cymbal choices. On a few recent things, I found myself reaching for the free BX_Cleansweep on both overs and room mics. Other times it's literally just making sure have the levels on overheads right.

[vvv]

As a bedio mixer, I more often high-pass OH's then not, when I am using close mic's to be the main sound.

I messed that up, it is now corrected here.

Where I high-pass depends on lots, ex., if I just want to accent the snare in the room or lower the kick in the room or reduce the floor tom boom or whatever ...

I'll even add that, depending, I might do a dB or two boost shelf at 10 or 12kHz.

About the only things I ever use low-pass on are guitars and bass.

Bedio amateur - that's me.

And sometimes not too good at self-proof reads, either.

[digitaldrummer]

I typically HPF the overheads (80-120Hz) but don't very often LPF them. As stated it depends on so many things - cymbals, player, sticks, room, mics (the whole chain). Just yesterday I had a project where I had to go back and ADD more high end to the overhead tracks for a client, but the cymbals were big (18, 19) Soultone Vintage 1964's which are pretty dark sounding cymbals, and the client wanted them to have more air around them. EQ did the trick.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

Don't think I've ever low-passed overheads. IMO if cymbals are annoying the problems are gonna be around 8-12k, maybe 5k-ish. But not way up high. Best cured with a de-esser, sometimes two.

I've certainly HEARD some aggressively low passed drum sounds, seemed to be something of a trend a few years back, these super midrangey, obviously filtered drum sounds. I could never tell if it was people doing it on purpose or if they just didn't know how to record drums and/or had a terrible room. But it can be a cool sound sometimes.

[losthighway]

Don't think I've ever low-passed overheads. IMO if cymbals are annoying the problems are gonna be around 8-12k, maybe 5k-ish. But not way up high. Best cured with a de-esser, sometimes two.

That's usually been my take. My common sense is that those higher overtones are a natural part of the kit's presence to a degree. I can see de-essing or just doing a shallow octave wide cut centered on the harsh frequency if it doesn't mess up the snare.

I realize in talking to different people that my intuition as a mixer is to be light handed: volume and panning first. While I think it's a good approach it's nice to hear from people who throw a lot more processing around because every situation is unique and may require something outside of your normal mix moves. Otherwise we'd all make our own presets and be done before we started.

[emrr]

Haven’t ever low passed. If it’s a basher I’ve frequently notched the central cymbal frequencies and/or centered a dynamic eq there. I’m usually trying to keep as much clarity in the drums as possible, just tame cymbals as needed. The OH is always a large part of my overall drum sound.

[joninc]

I don't LP the overheads exactly but I have the waves KRAMER TAPE on my drum buss template and will turn it on a 7.5 IPS (which rolls off a fair bit of top end crispiness) when I have tracks that feel a bit too shrill/bright.

[digitaldrummer]

I don't LP the overheads exactly but I have the waves KRAMER TAPE on my drum buss template and will turn it on a 7.5 IPS (which rolls off a fair bit of top end crispiness) when I have tracks that feel a bit too shrill/bright.

come to think of it I've used the Waves J37 for something similar - they can both soften the tracks a bit at the slower settings. works for guitars too if they get too spikey

[losthighway]

It's such an interesting facet of our somewhat solitary craft that you can hear something like that (no knock on that guy, the technique might yield him results) and wonder if a somewhat unique practice is universal, like "Am I the only one who doesn't do this?".

Thanks for some perspective guys. Might be worth a shot should a need ever arise but since I've been putting up the Coles I probably will be adding high end

[I'm Painting Again]

apart from the playing and sound in the room at hand


digital with fast pres and condenser mics you might want to LP the OH

tape with ribbons and slow pres you might not

stuff like that

[Recycled_Brains]

I'm finding that for whatever reason, using HP or LP filters, especially in the context of a drum kit sounds weird in a way I can't explain. To that end, the linear phase mode that Fabfilter's EQ offers seems to alleviate that.

Having said that ( ), I tend to agree with MSE. Gently EQ'ing in the 4-9k region most often goes a long way if I'm trying to remove any harshness. I also use extremely narrow bandwidth cuts to notch out specific frequencies that are brutal and ring out constantly. I find the latter to be the best solution more often than not and it does wonders for alleviating problematic areas without fucking with the sound of the whole kit.

I sometimes use a dynamic EQ as well, if say, the problem area is only happening occasionally and/or when one particular cymbal is hit or whatever.

More heavy handedly, the Massey Tapehead and Soundtoys Decapitator plugins can work wonders for this, and the 1/4" 900 tape stock at 15ips on the UAD ATR-102 plugin is also effective.