Punchy Drums

This week I have been working a few of the tracks for Local Animality. I have been focusing on the drums mostly. This defiantly one of my favourite elements to work on in a mix so I am always looking for ways to improve my drum sound. I personally think that drums are one of the most important parts of the mix despite people to paying the most attention to them generally while listening. They are the back bone for the song and have a lot of supporting frequency content. for instance by mixing my drums to a high standard and making them really think and punchy it means I have to mix up to this.

The track I was working on this week that made be have this realisation was Bad Sext's Polyester girl. I brought trigger a little while ago and had used it on some songs that I thought 'needed' it but hadn't used it on tracks that I felt the drums were sounding good. I decided to add some samples on top of the Bad Sext song on the kick and Snare and all of a sudden I felt as if the vocals were thin sounding in comparison.

I had used some parallel processing such as a mid rangy distortion on the snare which I think is where a lot of the thickness is coming from as well. So I tried it with the vocals but only just a small amount as an AUX send with the upper mids boosted. This worked really well and added some of the thickness that I wanted. I also used some really harsh parallel compression which brought to more of the high end in the vocals which made the pop more.

I was now feeling as if the mix was over all sounding a lot thicker now that the vocals and snare matched and cut through the same amount rather than the vocals being squashed by the snare.