hey what's going on out there I'm Sean Divine hope you all are doing well
today's video we are going to talk about seven tips for mixing drums that knock
I've got some things to consider here let's go ahead and dive right in I'm
gonna play a new beat and it has some really hard drums in it so this will be
hopefully a good example for you guys
all right so you get the idea here let's go ahead and dive into number one on my
list of tips for mixing drums that knock compression and buss compression is not
always your friend especially when it comes to drums a lot of you have this
perspective out there that you have to compress your drums and that you have to
utilize you know buss compression I think because you know it's just been
common practice especially in some of the more you know acoustic drum oriented
genres like rock where your miking up a drum kit
you know buss compression and compression for those individual drum
sounds is much more prevalent and much more important versus nowadays you know
if we're using a lot of these modern samples that have already been
compressed they've already been processed if you're gonna then compress
them again or send all those compressed sounds to a buss compressor then you're
just gonna kind of control the transients you're gonna tame a lot of
the dynamics and transients that are already in those punchy impactful
samples and we don't want to necessarily do that picking the right samples I
can't emphasize this enough you've heard me talk about you know if you start with
weak samples you're just gonna be you know kind of diving down the rabbit hole
trying to do a lot of mixing processes to get the sound where it needs to be or
maybe close to where it needs to be but ultimately you know if you just pick the
right sample it's a lot less work and you're also gonna be able to more
closely match the aesthetic of the rest of the instrumentation and the music in
your song which is the ultimate goal you know you want to pick cool drum samples
but you also want to pick samples that really fit in terms of you know just
contextually and sonically for the song and once you do that again it just makes
it a lot easier tasks to go in here and get them to knock really well so whether
you're utilizing something like splice or loop cloud - you know download new
samples or your trading samples with producers or if you're building your own
drum kits you know you're processing sounds make sure that you're organizing
them that's a really big part of you know picking the right drum sounds is
knowing what you have and kind of having some go twos for different situations
going along with selecting the right samples for mix engineers or producers
don't be afraid to utilize drum replacement so actually as a mix
engineer I do drum replacement more than you would think I will get sessions a
lot of times where you know the kick or the snare is just not hitting the way
that it needs to be and rather than spend an hour two hours you know sitting
there and finally cueing and compressing a kick drum I will just replace it and
put a sample that I know is going to be a lot closer to where I need it to be
and then you know I can do the minimal process when we talked about and even in
this session Jurd had sent me his original kick and again rather than go
through all that I just utilized the sample replacement and logic which it's
very easy you can just select the audio track go up here to track replace or
double drum track and then you can select another sample in this case I you
utilize battery and just load it up the sample that I wanted there very easy to
do and saves you a lot of time utilize a Maximizer or a brick wall limiter of
some sort and there's two options really you can utilize it on the track itself
so whether it's the actual kick or the snare depending upon how you're mixing
in this case I utilized it on the master buss so I have an l2 ultra Maximizer and
this is just maximizing really my whole mix and so you know just as a result it
is also bringing those drums up and bringing out a lot of the the impact and
the transients in them I'm also utilizing I am pusher the clip mode to
you know give us some of that push and some of that impact also but utilizing a
Maximizer is just gonna allow you to get the most out of the samples you're using
and specifically in the genres that were working with these days and the types of
drums that were creating you know we want to utilize that Maximizer to really
pump up the levels but to also do it in a way that's very transparent so I do
want to just note as I always do that no limiter is made equally and especially
in terms of getting drums that knock hard you want to be very mindful of the
limiter or the Maximizer that you're using you're gonna find that some of the
maximizers and limiters have more of a compressed glued sound and that's just
not really what we're looking for with a lot of these drum tones you want
something that's very transparent and something that's going to retain the
transients and the dynamics sidechain compression is definitely something that
you want to utilize to get the most out of your drum impact you'll see that I am
using sidechain compression on the 808 so whenever that kick hits
we've got just a few DB of attenuation there just so that that kit can punch
through even more I'm also side-chaining some of the instrumentation with the
kick drum which again this is not as traditional or I guess common people you
know kind of presenting this but for instance with the guitars these are
really heavy guitars obviously guitars eat up a lot of room in the mix so in
order to make sure that the kick is being able to punch through and we're
getting that tone out of it I'm also sidechain compressing those so if we go
here
so again very subtle not heavy pumping kind of compression but just that little
bit of gain reduction when the kick comes through is going to make sure that
we're getting the tone we want out of those drums fifth tip I have for you for
mixing drums that knock is to select the right EQ so a lot of you out there are
just using you know channeling cues or stocky cues on your drums which if
you're getting the sound you want that's great but I'm just really picky when it
comes to the drum tones and I just kind of know which eq's are gonna get the
results I want and so in the instance of you know getting kicks that hit really
hard and even processing the snare drum as well I like to use the Puigtec EQ
P1A from Waves you can find a lot of other versions of this out there they're
all built very similarly and you're gonna see that the low-frequency control
has got a twenty Hertz thirty Hertz and sixty Hertz knotch and
these are crucial when it comes to getting kicks that hit really hard and
poke through the mix I've just found if you dial these in boost it a little bit
you're gonna get what you want down under with this EQ and then you can also
you know use the attenuation to get some really unique curves versus you know
just a traditional channel EQ or stock EQ plug-in snare drums I really like to
use the SSL EQ or the SSL channel you can see I'm doing some very aggressive
boosting to some of the mids high mids here and then I also like to use the
filters on snares just to get rid of a lot of that and once again the the SSL
EQ just have unique curves to them they're very musical and they just cater
themselves really well once again to the snare drum next tip I have for you is
less is more when it comes to reverb in terms of mixing drums so people tend to
just get carried away with the amount of reverb that they're putting on their
drum sounds and what that's gonna do is when you put a traditional halt or you
know like a big space onto your drums and then you have you know really heavy
mix it's going to give the listener the perspective that the drum is further
back the entire balance right so we don't
want to do that you know you can utilize things like pre-delay but what I like to
do is just use very small spaces small decay times and very subtle amounts of
wetness so for instance if we just solo this snare I'm gonna let y'all just hear
that snare dry because with the the SSL EQ and then also the smack attack which
another tip we'll just throw this in there is to utilize transient processing
I like smack attack but so let's just turn all those plugins off so you can
hear the snare tune
so that's what Jurd sent me and then with the processing and the reverb
so that reverb is very subtle and in the context of the mix you know you're not
hearing this big washy tone to it I know that it's easy to you know put reverb on
even a hi-hat and feel like oh man it sounds better but you're gonna notice
especially when you start referencing your mix on outside systems I find when
I hear drums on a phone or a small speaker and there's too much reverb on
them it will make the drums sound you know more washy and just weaker in terms
of playing back on those smaller systems so just be careful with that all right
so the final tip I have for you for mixing drums that knock is to be aware
of the balancing and the levels of your drum tracks so what I mean by this is a
lot of you just feel like oh well if I want the kick in the 808 to be really
loud and hit hard I need to just crank them up and turn them up super loud that
is a recipe to get Distortion it's a recipe to wreck the rest of the dynamics
of your mix and it's actually gonna do the opposite that 808 and kick if you do
the levels and balancing recklessly it's going to make your mix not as punchy you
know I always stress focusing on the core essential balancing especially to
start with in a mix and so if you want to get drums that knock you want to make
sure that you're making those a focal point they don't necessarily have to be
you know excessively loud you just want them to be more of a focal point than
some of the other elements in the mix it's all about a balance right so you
want to create room for them as well you can see a lot of the e cueing I'm doing
is to carve out the low end to carve out you know some of the high end so that
the kick and the snare can really poke through but you want to create that
space by controlling the balance of the rest of the instrumentation that's
around the drums and then you direct the listeners attention to the fact that
your drums are smacking super hard if you've made it this far in the video I'm
just gonna mention another little you know secret sauce
sort of plug-in that a lot of producers use on their kick drums
it gives it a signature crunch and fatness so let me just solo the kick
it's sausage fattener by dada life so this is without
pretty good get that extra little bit of crunch and I'm not even you know
touching really anything I'm just clipping it just a bit to to get that
tone out of it so a cool plugin to use on your drums alright guys so I hope
these tips help you get the drum sound that you're after get more impactful
drums that are gonna cut through the mix and really knock properly if you have
any questions about the tips we covered in the video or any the plugins feel
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