So we have come to the end of this little series on mixing rock drums ! The first one on mixing kick drum can be found here and the one about the snare drum here . So after you check those out you will be prepared for the final piece of the puzzle and those are overhead mics and room mics !
- OVERHEADS
Overheads are extremely important part of the drum sound . They represent an anchor point from which you can take two approaches to mixing - the one where you mainly use the close mics and add overheads just to introduce cymbals , and the other one where you treat the overhead mics as the driving force of the sound and add the close mics a tiny bit just to enhance certain parts of the kit . The latter being more used in the old days and gives your drum track a vintage vibe . Modern rock production requires mainly the body of the sound coming out of the close mics and using overheads just for the cymbals .
Ok , so since the music i was working on is in the modern idiom , i will take the first approach . Cymbals are usually recorded using a stereo pair of microphones , so you'll have two tracks - the right and left channel . I usually bus them together and process them that way just because it is more convenient . Overhead mics capture a whole kit , and that may be to your advantage or disadvantage . You might have spent hours perfecting the individual mics and getting them just right only to get you heart broken by unmuting overhead mics and hearing your drums sound totally different :D So unless the overhead mics add something valuable to the sound , you'll generally want to cut all the frequencies of kick , snare and toms .
In this example i was quite gentle actually as some mix engineers like to cut even higher up to 800 or even 100 Hz ( listen to the ''Give It Away'' by the RHCP ) In my example i wanted to get rid of the nasty frequencies that were messing up my kick drum and just a hefty boost of highs for the sparkle and shimmer !
As far as compression goes , i usually use multiband compression as it gives me better controll over crafting the sound i want and they generally don't need a whole lot of it unless your cymbals loose sustain right after the hit . So here is a snapshot of the multiband compressor
One band to tame the lows ( just to be sure :D ) , one across 200 - 500 Hz region to take care of the snare hits , then around 1k to 5k is actually expansion since they cut in the mix in that region and a compression for the highs just to keep it sounding nice and smooth . There's nothing else really to say about those , you just want them to crash and splash and leave you alone :D EQ and compression are sufficient . You could if you wanted send some of it to a reverb channel , but i usually do that i have some very nasty cymbals , and a nice sounding room will make it sound a bit gentle and not so harsh as well give a nice sense of space if that's what you need . Okay off to the room mics !
2 . THE ROOM
For me room mics are an integral part of the drum sound , as that is the way you usually hear them . You never place your ear right above the snare or right atthe kick , but instead we hear reflections coming off the walls . Ambience is just as important as the rest . Also with a little trick i use , you'll make them sound like a monster ! It's the single thing that really makes a difference for me between okay sounding drums and AMAZING ones ! The trick goes as follows :
You want compress your room mics really hard . And i mean reeeeeealy hard ! Just take a look at these settings:
The room is compressed beyond all limits of proper reasoning but that is actually great ! You want your ratio max:1 to create a hard limit , treshold pretty hefty , attack and release on fastest settings to slam it ! So , once you start pulling the fader up you'll notice a huge difference in sound - your drums will get a lot of energy . So much that you'll actually want to tame them a little bit , in order not to ruin that precious low end that you've been working so hard on . So right after the compression plugin i also add an eq . Cut a healthy sum of lows ( but not too much ) to keep the kick sounding tight , and i also like to cut some of the high frequencies as well cause i like the drum rooms to sound a bit dark .
And there you have it , now you should get a lot of energy and life without muddying up your mix . This eq trick is also known as Abbey Road trick , apparently that setting has been used all over that place :D
This wraps my little mixing tutorial about drums , hope that somebody has found it useful or been inspired by it . I will make some other tutorials on mixing other instruments in the near future so keep an eye on that if this might be the topic that interests you .
Take care and thanks for hanging in there :)