How to Mix Rock Drums in Minutes

hey this is Joe with the recording Revolution Let's make drum mixing fun again somewhere along the way we all do this we get to a point where drums are just frustrating some people revert to just not producing songs with drums in them because they're so frustrated with drums that's a shame because drums are awesome today I want to share with you a technique that I use when I mix drums that is super simple arguably stupid simple and gets incredible results so stick around I'm going to show you exactly how that works by the way if you want to learn my whole mixing process this part of mixing drums falls under that bigger category of my five-step mix process I've got a free guide you can have just go to recordingrevolution.com five step mix to download that for free you can divide this video into two parts the first we'll talk about this process and explain what it is the second I'll dive into some drum tracks and show you how it works so the first piece of advice is spend plenty of time with the raw drum tracks people love to skip ahead and start slapping plugins on everything but that's the worst thing you can do because then every plugin causes a problem usually that you have to solve and you end up chasing your tail trying to solve all these problems that you caused by adding plugins too early a better solution is to spend time with just the raw tracks and get them balanced figure out where the overheads need to go in relation to the kick you need to decide that early then you can add plugins to further shape the tone but if you get this wrong at the beginning you're going to be using plugins to solve balance issues that you could have solved a long time ago by spending just a few extra minutes to getting those balances right we call it the static mix but specifically with drums it's especially important because there's certain tracks that to me no single track in the drum kit defines the sound it's typically the combination of everything so let's make sure we spend time getting that combination right once you do that you're going to play a game and it's a really fun game it's a little like the name that tune game remember that TV show the game is called how great can I make these drums sound by only putting plugins on the drum bus so you've got all these drum tracks you route them all to a stereo drum bus this part of the process you're gonna just put some plug-ins on that bus and see how great you can make things sound that's the way I really approach my entire mixing process how great can I make this mix sound without plugins which is the static mix we already talked about then it's how great can I make it sound with the fewest number of plugins just on individual buses and then from there I go in and put plugins on individual tracks if they need it but a lot of times what happens if you start on the top and work your way down if you start with the bigger picture drum bus you can a lot of times solve a lot of problems that you would have had to solve on the individual tracks by putting it just on the bus itself for example the snare drum is ringing too much right you want to get rid of that well guess what there's a bunch of mics on the drum kit chances are more than one microphone picked up that ringing in the snare so a lot of times what you can do is put your Notch EQ on the drum bus and that takes care of the ringing everywhere so instead of putting that same EQ on four or five tracks on the individual tracks you're putting it on your drum bus and you've solved the problem for everybody it's a very cool way of working and what you'll find out is man these sound amazing and sometimes you'll realize I haven't put any plugins on the individual tracks I just put plugins on the drum bus and I'm really happy with the way the mix sounds that's a win here's a quick rule of thumb when deciding what order to put the plugins on your drum bus typically I'm just talking about EQ and compression but you may say okay which which one goes first here's my rule of thumb it's super simple if you're happy with the way the drums sound just from the static mix put a compressor first and then an EQ if you're not happy with it if there are still some inherent frequency problems that need to be addressed put an EQ first address those problems and then compress I like to compress sounds that I already like and then that will just make me like them even more that's the idea all right enough of my blab and let's actually apply this to a set of drums so uh first thing I want to do is get a good static mix of the drums just get the levels right I've got drum tracks here this is my drum bus the way it works in Studio One this is a folder and a bus these are my individual drum tracks so I'm going to come in and just slowly set levels for these and spend as much time with them as I need to you can start wherever you want I like to start with things like overhead and the room mics get kind of an ambient feel for the drums then bring kick snare and Toms in so let's do that now [Music] by the way everyone's going to ask what is the fat mic that is a fat head ribbon mic positioned directly over the kick drum facing the drummer like the drum throne it sounds like this it's just thick goodness and I like to have a lot of that in my drum mix [Music] so now that I've got my kind of ambient mics feeling pretty good it's I love even this is like another version of that game how great can it sound with just overhead rooms and the fat mic pretty great it turns out now I'm going to bring in the individual kick and snare to get that presence that we're obviously wanting [Music] let me find one more Tom Phil here that feels good okay so now we've got a basic static mix the toms are pan left and right the overhead of stereo everything else is up the middle uh now let's just live with it for a second and see if we're happy we'll go back to like a verse and see if we're happy with it there [Music] all right that feels pretty good to me I like to get the kick and snare a little bit hotter than maybe I want in the Final Mix because I know that when I add the compression to it it's going to squash them down a little bit and make it glorious without them getting lost so now I'm digging the way this sounds I recorded these drums here in my studio so we spent a lot of time getting them right at the source so since I'm happy with that I'm gonna do a compressor first I'm going to use fat Channel which is just a kind of a channel strip plug-in in Studio One and I'm gonna have the compressor first and I'm going to use I'm going to use this tube compressor normally I use a stock one but where I'm feeling feisty today so I'm going to use this compressor because it has all the controls I want but it sounds kind of like one of those cool vintage tube compressors here now let's just dial this in and how good can I get everything including symbols kick snare from just this one plug-in let's see [Music] I dig it I want to mess with the snare and kick balance a little bit I want a little more snare I'm gonna adjust the gain on this one up a little bit just so it hits that compressor a little bit more foreign probably screaming it in the chat oh there's it needs some EQ that kicks a little boomy sure but that's the the point of this process is how good can I get it here knowing that maybe I need to go EQ that kick or maybe an overall EQ to take care of some of that that's there uh but this I just love this process is it the perfect best process every time you want to mix drums I don't know but I use it a lot and I like the results that I get it now comes the EQ to kind of shape things a little bit I'll use I'll use just this vintage EQ here to do that final piece now this is coming after the compressor [Music] so already to me to my ears and you're welcome to disagree but I'm digging that sound that we've got let me just turn this plug-in on and off and we can hear the difference between with and without these just two plugins an EQ and a compressor well compressor then an EQ [Music] it's just it's just glorious I will tell you I know having mixed this song before there's a ringing here on this uh room mic so the next step for me would be okay now do I need to do some stuff on the individual tracks and a lot of times the answer is yes sometimes it's not because I can get it to sound great without needing to go any further but on this specific one this room mic I don't know I still don't know what it was but there's this redonkulous ringing around 2.6 K or so [Music] it's just right there and it just rings for days so I'm just gonna Notch that joker out on the room mic and I think that solves it on the whole mix now this squarely is probably more geared towards rock music right for a pop song I'd probably mix this differently but when I'm going for just this cool organic kind of everything mushed together into a compressor sound which is what I love this is the approach that I take I like the way the kick and snare are hitting the same compressor so when you get those balanced together they hit it at a fairly similar level and get a fairly similar type of compression um but that's to me that's what's most fun about this is I get I can cover kick and snare and get them sounding really great with just a single compressor which as a person who nerds out on being efficient this is just wonderful listen just listen to the kick and snare one more time just with a compressor on the drum bus I gets me every time I just love it now all that's left is for you to go try this on your own drum tracks if you don't have any I've got some that you can have for free just go to recordingrevolution.com Mt M for mix t for together that's a series of videos that includes multi-tracks once you sign up you get the tracks you can watch the videos mix the songs there's actually three songs that you can mix there all free go check that out thanks for watching happy mixing

Channel: recordingrevolution

Views: 18,895

Keywords: drums, mix, bus, compression, eq, rock, kit

Id: QIW2a_aDyVs

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023