LYNDA Drum Mixing Practice

This is just more of a refresher for me to get back into mixing. I recorded some drums a few weeks ago before COVID19 was bad. I hadn’t put too much thought into beginning mixing this however I woke up today with the absolute itch to mix something. I was feeling a little nervous. It has been a little while since I have begun such a mammoth mix. I honestly have not taken as much advantage of Lynda over the past year as I should have. I found it super inspiring and I found the progression of this was although a lot of familiar information a solid work flow plan that I could begin with.

At the beginning of the video Ryan mentions a few basics about mixing principles. He goes over the analogue console that it is working from adn shows where everything sits in the channel strip. He mentions the principles of compression, gates, and EQ in relation to the desk and specifics that they have. The song that he mixes I thought would be a good drum style for the tracks I have been working on. I am going for a really reverby track with washy guitars and synths. I really want the drums to be punchy with a big snare sound. The song that Ryan is mixing is a loud rock song with really big almost gospel vocals. I think that this mixing approach will work well as a starting point at least for the drum sound that I want. He mentions the importance of checking the rest of your instruments against the drum processing. He says there are no rules. Sometimes the most important thing with drums is not to be heard but to be felt. Having a really loud attack on your kick drum may not be needed for it to be heard. He states that making these choices regarding the groove of the song and what elements you want to be most prominent in your kit. For instance, I know I want a really punchy snare sound and really airy high hats.

His approach as far as what to start with he works up from the kick -snare -hats -toms-ohs -rooms. This is how I have approached most mixes in the past when mixing drums first. Sometimes I have begun with guitars and then mixed the drums around them level, frequency wise using side chaining around conflicting frequencies.

His track list is similar to mine and his kick in and kick out sounds are similar to mine. Pretty simple EQ and compression using an expander to tidy up the track makes the inside kick drum sound heap punchier. Ryan discusses the importance of picking to use your compressor or EQ first in the processing chain.

He goes through some pretty basic processing but helpful nonetheless. He talks through the importance of EQ-ing for separation and differentiation between the drums. This wasn’t anything crazy to me. He talks through a simple kick, snare side-chain compression EQ technique used for cleaning up the low end of the bass drum. But using the key input on the compressor you can take away some of the low end of the snare to make room for the kick to be more punchy.

The next step to making the drums sound punchy is getting clarity in this mix. The next thing to add clarity too is the Overhead mics. He talks through some simple overhead eq’s for tighter sound. This involves taking out some of the lower mids and some upper mids around 3-5k. He also adds some top end to add some air. I tried this EQ on my mix and I found that right away by taking out those frequencies that my overhead mics were sounding way clearer. They were less boomy sounding and more precise.

After this is of course to add compression to the overhead mics. My overheads were recorded as a spaced pair and therefore I have a roomier drum sound that is quite dynamic. He states that this is a place where transparent compression is thrown out the window. You want to make this compression breath and flow with the song. He suggests using a fast attack to pull back the snare drum and allow the cymbals to shine through. This is something I was really anxious to try as I really like the sound of punchy compressed drums. This technique of compressing the overheads to breath with the song and really support the punchy-ness to the entire song. Another trick he uses that worked really well for me was using setting the key input of the compressor to the snare top mic. This means that the snare is not compromised when trying to affect your overheads. You are then able to work better with the snare close mics rather than a combination of overheads and close mics.

Next is getting groove out of this hi hat mic. I have always turned to compression on hats and cymbals however in this drum recording the drummer intentionally played the hi hat dynamic. Adding compression just took the dynamics away and made the track sound flat. Instead he cleans the hats up with the de-esser and a little bit of distortion. This adds attack to the hits and therefore adds clarity.

Ryan talks about the use of recording a crush track during recording. This is a print of the kick and snare heavily compressed using out board compression. He raves about this adding this in during recording as it makes the drum sound great right off the bat with the addition of compression it acts like glue. I am keen to try this next time I’m recording in the NEVE this is definitely something Mike and I need to add to the input list of our pre production plans in the future.

After this toms are next. Firstly he talks about editing out all the spill from the other drums when the toms are not being hit. He talks through a process of doing that that does not require a noise gate. The benefit of doing this manually is that you have way more control as you do not need to affect the whole track in order to do this method. This process takes a little more time as every tom hit is different. Some fills have loud cymbals after them that have bled into the mics there for sounds strange to cute out. Instead Ryan gains up the initial tom hit and fades out after the cymbal hits.

The processing for the toms he uses an exciter and a transient designer. He uses outboard gear but I found a plugin that does that same thing. We want boomy large sounding toms here. Using the transient shaper you are able to sustain the frequencies for longer. Adding lower or more mid sounding tones in this way can really add colour. I am super happy with the outcome of this as toms are always the part of my mixes I am unhappy with.

The next step is to add parallel compression. Ryan suggests using a slow attack and fast release to begin with a slow adjust depending on the sound. This particular kick drum sound requires more sustain. By sending the kick drum signal to this compressor you are able to further add punch to the sound which is what we need to achieve clarity. By setting the compressor to having a fast attack and slow release you are able to manipulate how much punch you want to add.

Next is to do the same with the snare. Set up a parallel snare compression bus. You want to set the compressor to a fast attack and medium release. By compressing and crushing this signal you get a really distorted snare sound. This is almost like an added snare sample. It is used to blend back into mix to add colour and crunch to the snare. This worked really well for my mix even though I only used a protools standard plug in vs his analogue Distressor.

The next step is to use a stereo parallel compression bus. You then try sending different parts of the kit to this bus and blend it back into the mix. Ryan sends the kick and snare to this bus and blends this heavily distorted signal back into this mix just a tiny bit. This gives the mix an overall grit and punch to it. This is a super cool technique that I am keen to try out using the NEVE. Again this worked well in my DAW however I think the grit that analogue gear creates is hard to recreate in a DAW in this setting.

The next step you really need to use your ears. Getting the balance between the dry tracks and the parallel compression. You add the bus tracks back into the dry mix to get this balance rather than listening to the crushed tracks by itself.

Using different compressors will have different outcomes for this is why I am really keen to try it in the studio where I have access to different compressors.

The next step is to distort the trash mic. I didn’t use a trash mix while recording but we are planning to use one when recording the EP. Ryan saturates this track to add ambience that isn’t so natural sounding as it was recorded from inside the kit and is coloured with lots of different textures. After distorting this track it is important to then fix up any popping frequencies with EQ.

After this the next step is to add more saturation and distortion. Send all the drum tracks to a bus called ‘Drum distortion’. Ryan uses a UAD distortion plug in. I just used a Sansamp with a preset on it and tweaked it from there. Playing around with the intensity of the disruption to create even digital clipping to crunch up the sound. When blended back into the mix you can really hear the sustain of the kick drum and snare. I sent my kick, snare, toms and overheads to the bus I created. I tweaked the punchiness of the preset to tighten to add more aggressiveness to the sound. I really like this cool industrial sound I got from this technique.

Next group all the drums tracks so you can control the balance and glue of the individual parts of the kit. After this Ryan jumps back out of isolated drum mixing to the whole mix. He uses a VCA drum bus to adjust the volume. Effecting the drums has added a fair bit of gain. Using VCA busses keep the integrity of the mix when adjusting the volume.

Last is to add some reverb using another stereo AUX track. Ryan suggests working at a lower volume when mixing using effects such as reverb and distortion so that you can really hear how they are affecting the over mix.

My mix turned out pretty well and I have learnt a lot of cool tricks from watching this short LYNDA video. I plan to watch more of these over the break in order to prepare for the mixing stage of Local Animality. Although I found the first half of this to be rather familiar I really liked the bus effect mixing. It really got me creatively inspired. I'd love to try these effects on guitars and keys as well!