KVR Mix Workshop - Week 4: Drum Kit

[Kim Lajoie]

Week 4: Drum Kit

This week we're going add in the rest of the kit.

Original Full Mix
A7's version
GeckoEE's version
Ngarjuna's version
Yonyz' version
Raw tracks (warning: 57MB zip of uncompressed WAV files)
Produced tracks
Note: The raw and produced tracks linked above only cover crash, hats, ride and toms. For the rest of the kit (and other tracks) you'll need to get them from the previous weeks (linked at the bottom of each post).

When mixing in the rest of the drum kit elements, it's useful to think in terms of tone and balance. There's not too much processing required here and there's a wider scope for tasteful variation, so I think this week should be quite a bit easier than last week!

Tone
The crash, hats and ride will all take a similar approach to tone. They're all cymbals, so try to reduce the mud and bring out the shine. Reducing the mud is a simple task of using high pass filters and dipping the low mids. You probably can set the high pass cutoff frequency fairly high without worrying about losing the body of the sound. These cymbals don't need any warmth or thickness - they are there to add articulation to the rhythm of the song. Bringing out the shine might be a little difficult though. It's easy to overdo it and end up with a harsh or unrealistic sound. More often than not, a lower mid dip will sound more natural than an upper mid or top boost. Sometimes a slight amount of top boost or even subtle harmonic exciter can work well, but be careful - it can be a fine line between too little and far too much! Try to stay away from the strident mids (about 1kHz to 5kHz) - keep your dips or cuts below that range and your boosts above it.

The toms, on the other hand, benefit from a different approach. The raw sound is very boxy. I usually treat the toms like a set of kicks in stereo. You'll notice comparing the raw and produced versions of the toms track that I've made them sound very similar to the kick - saturation to crush the transient and bring up the upper mids, a lower mid dip and low bass boost.

Balance
The balance of the kit elements is particularly important - especially as we continue to add tracks to the mix. Like the tone, there's quite a bit of freedom here for your own personal taste. Just remember that the four elements we've already covered (vocal, snare, kick and bass) MUST remain in the foreground. It's ok for the hats or the ride to become a little lost in the mix, but the kick and especially the snare must always be audible. The crash can afford to be almost at the same level as the snare, because it is is quite rare and serves as structural (sections, etc) punctuation for the song. Likewise, the toms can afford to be a little up, as their even rarer. Usually I have them at a similar level to the kick.

Drum kit group processing
I usually route all the drum kit elements to a group bus, and apply some subtle processing to the kit as a whole. On Flesh And Bone, I added some subtle (stereo) room reverb and compression. The reverb adds a little air around the drum kit - without it the drums sound a little like they're being played in a vacuum. It helps the kit sit better in the mix, making it less obvious that they're samples. The compression adds just a little shaping and "glue" to bring the kit together a bit. Usually I wait until the mix is almost complete before doing this though - it's very difficult to judge the correct amount before the rest of the tracks are in place. Reverb settings are particularly troublesome - sometimes a longer bright room is appropriate, sometimes a short dark "deep" room sounds better, but I never know this until close to the end. Often the right reverb will sound quite wrong when the kit is played in isolation, but it does the right thing in the rest of the mix. What I'm saying is - send the drum kit to a group now, not don't add any plugins to that group. Just keep it in the back of your head for now.

<- Week 3 Week 5 ->

-Kim.

[asnor]

Not much to say this week. Seemed pretty straight forward.

[pandashake]

Hey Kim, are you planning on doing an electronic drum kit tutorial like the 909 or 808? I would be interested in hearing your take on how to deal with the percussive stuff like shaker, claves, cowbell, zip, and those resonant synth toms.

[Daniel LaRusso]

Hey Kim, think these workshops are great. I was just wondering if you could expand a little more on the drum group processing? I'm interested in learning more about this for my electronic music production. ie. what settings do you recommend to get nice, glued, warm sounding drums? Are the volume levels of the hits important when being sent to the compressor channel or is it better to EQ them properly before hand and send at a relatively comparative volume? If there are any detailed lessons on drum group compression i would love to hear them! Sorry for the bombardment and not sure if it is the correct place to ask?? Cheers

[Kim Lajoie]

Hey Kim, are you planning on doing an electronic drum kit tutorial like the 909 or 808? I would be interested in hearing your take on how to deal with the percussive stuff like shaker, claves, cowbell, zip, and those resonant synth toms.

I wasn't planning on doing a tutorial on electronic drums and percussion. Do you think something like that could be useful?

-Kim.

[runagate]

Kill the transient of toms?!

Sweet, I definitely just learned something. I tend to do the opposite, and rarely like my tom sounds. Then again I find them hardest to score in midi so I rarely even use them.

Gotta go bust open Ironhead and see what I can do. Thanks Kim, you da man.

[Kim Lajoie]

Hey Kim, think these workshops are great. I was just wondering if you could expand a little more on the drum group processing? I'm interested in learning more about this for my electronic music production. ie. what settings do you recommend to get nice, glued, warm sounding drums?

When I use comrpess a drum group I do it for character, not control (of dynamics). For that reason I'll use a character compressor, but set it up in such a way as to impart a lot of that character without adversly affecting the dynamics of the kit.

Typically I'll go for a medium attack and release. For control (which I'm not doing here) I'd use a faster attack, but the slower attack emphasises the character by bringing out the attack shape.

The particular compressor that I like to use imparts its character without needing a lot of gain reduction, so I don't have to drive it too hard. Other compressors, on the other hand, need to be driven hard to bring out an interesting character. This is where parallel comrpession can be helpful. Parallel compression allows you to drive a compressor hard to get that character, because mixing it with the dry signal lets you keep the dynamics. So you get the character without the crush.

Are the volume levels of the hits important when being sent to the compressor channel or is it better to EQ them properly before hand and send at a relatively comparative volume?

The volume levels of the hits are always important. Without compression, you need to set the correct volumes to give a convincing foreground-background depth (or at least establish a hierarchy of importance).

When you add group compression, you add another dimension of complication, because the level of each drum hit is modulated by the level of every other drum hit. You might find that, for example, the snare is too loud. Reducing the level of the snare slightly, however, might instead increase the level of the background percussion while the snare actually remains the same volume. If you're not focused, disciplined, and paying attention to what you're doing, you can then mistakenly reduce the level of the percussion to "fix the mix", which may then reduce the overall compression effect (because the levels are now lower), which then causes you to reduce the threshold of the compressor, which then crushes your kick drum too much, etc etc etc. Similar complications happen when you change the tone of the drums as well (with EQ or saturation).

You can see how group compression can easly cause you to waste your time chasing your tail. This is why it's so important to get the drum mix right BEFORE adding group compression.

Does that help?

-Kim.

[Kim Lajoie]

Kill the transient of toms?!

Sweet, I definitely just learned something. I tend to do the opposite, and rarely like my tom sounds.

For me, the key characteristic that makes toms so awesome is their boom. It's how they speak (wheras the snare is all about the crack, and the kick about the thud). So if you're emphasising the transient of the toms, you're also de-emphasising the body. At an extreme, you could boost the tranisent so much that they aren't much mroe than a snap, which eats massive headroom (because short sounds are quieter, psychoacoustically, which means you have to turn them up more to get the same perceived volume) and simultaneously makes you turn them down because they're spiking out of the mix (which, of course, also turns down the body of the sound).

Uh... did that make any sense?

Then again I find them hardest to score in midi so I rarely even use them.

Gotta go bust open Ironhead and see what I can do. Thanks Kim, you da man.

When you see bands play live, watch the drummer. Pay close attention to how the drummer performs, how right and left sticks are used, what kinds of patterns are comfortable. Learn to think like a drummer.

-Kim.

[poonna]

Hi Kim,

Are you going to post the raws for this week? I'd be interested, too.

[Daniel LaRusso]

You can see how group compression can easly cause you to waste your time chasing your tail. This is why it's so important to get the drum mix right BEFORE adding group compression.

Does that help?

-Kim.

Yeah, definitely. I know what you mean by chasing your tail all the time when compressing, can end up being a nightmare! I tend to move on when it starts to happen to myself and just try and get my drums sounding as good as i can so i can get other ideas down. I guess i want to learn some good techniques before i pick up some bad habits...

I would love it if you would put together a dance one on here, would be very helpful. I think a lot of people (inc me) struggle to successfully mix down their kicks and bass lines without muddying the mix. I know i am never satisfied as i feel my kicks get way too lost and never sound as good as when they are solo'd.

Another question i have is in regards to layering kicks. This is a trick that Eric Prydz tends to use but there are many who do employ it. Basically, at the 2nd drop (typically), a heavier kick comes in, its much meatier yet doesn't muddy the mix... How do you think this is acheived? Can you send this second kick straight to the master channel, or is it boosting the lows on your existing kick? For an example go to ericprydz.com and listen to aftermath (the heavy kick comes in at 2.30). Sorry for jacking this thread too, mods move it if you see fit! Cheers

[egbert]

Hi Kim,

This workshop series is an excellent idea.

I have been working with your raw wavs for kick, bass and snare so far. In view of what you are saying this week about mixing toms and cymbals, do you have any more of the raw wav files for download?

Stereo pairs with the untreated toms, the room mics and the overheads for the cymbals and perhaps a mono track for the hat (if you mic'ed it separately) would complete the drum mix.

Regards,
Eg

[lazerkind]

I just wanted to say thanks Kim.
This is excellent reading to demystify the mixing process.

And +1 for a electronic drum example. Although many of the tricks used for acoustic drums can be moved to the synthesis stage, it could be useful if are working with samples and loops.

//L

[mrjameskent]

+1 for an electronic drum kit session.

Thanks
J

[living sounds]

So, here's my finished mix:

www.scherer.de/Download/FleshAndBone_LS.mp3


It was a lot more work than anticipated and I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I call it done now.

It was also a lot of fun and I've learned tons, as this is not the kind of music I usually mix. Part of the challenge was all the different parts in the song, it's not easy to find settings that fit the whole mix. I used some automation for this, which is not usually my mixing style.

As far as mixing philosphy is concerned, my approach is vastly different than yours. I usually try to get the most agressive kick and snare the mix can stand. Which was very hard to do with this song.


Anyway, thanks for offering this, I really appreciate it and will still follow the rest of the tutorial, of course!

[Kim Lajoie]

Another question i have is in regards to layering kicks. This is a trick that Eric Prydz tends to use but there are many who do employ it. Basically, at the 2nd drop (typically), a heavier kick comes in, its much meatier yet doesn't muddy the mix... How do you think this is acheived? Can you send this second kick straight to the master channel, or is it boosting the lows on your existing kick? For an example go to ericprydz.com and listen to aftermath (the heavy kick comes in at 2.30). Sorry for jacking this thread too, mods move it if you see fit! Cheers

You'll have to point me to the song. I listed to a low quality version on , but it didn't sound like the kick at the end was any heavier than any other part of the song.

-Kim.