The sound of the kit is very important when mixing and surprise surprise this can be one of the hardest instruments to get correct in the mix. My first tip would be to make sure you record the kit well as this will inevitably make life much easier at this stage and give your ears a break! You can’t get a good mix when you have been listening to someone beating away all day! Anyway... so without further ado here we go!
The kick (Bass) Drum.
The Kick drum I would say is the most important drum to get right along with the snare when mixing. Keeping the mix tight and full sounding. I would say the bass drum needs to be nice and punchy and clear!
EQ: When EQing it is important to bring the bass forward in the drum, if you feel there isn’t enough bass in your kick then I would advise to add a low boost at around 85 – 100hz this should make your kick nice a boomy, if you feel you don’t like the sound then play around with it a little. If your kick drum is more thumpy then you need to get the sound of the beater onto the mix as well! To do this play around searching between 2-4 khz. Depending on the genre will depend on where you find the beater, usually you can find a typical rock drum beater sound at around 2-2.5khz and a heavy metal beater at around 4khz. A boomy kick drum can also clog up the clarity of the sound, to clear things up you can make a cut around 200-250Hz if you now find your kick is sounding a bit boxy and flat you can EQ this bastard out by finding it around the 300-650Hz area.
Compression: Compression is all down to personal opinion really, everyone has their own opinions on how compression should be applied, same with the Eq’ing as well really but are some tips that should help, and if they don’t then I’m sorry. Depending on the drummers capability and genre I usually start off with a ration of 1:6 but sometimes knock it down to 1:5 then lower my threshold to around 6dbs. Once this done play around with the attack and release until you are satisfied with the sound.
The Snare!
The snare drum is yet another rhythmic defining drum on the kit, giving the song a steady backbone now, let’s not rush this one take your time!
EQ: First of all slap a high pass filter on to get rid of the low end, you can then give it a little boost at around 150hz to give the snare a bit of umph! This usually depends on the genre of the music! If your snare is giving you any problems with ringing you can cut it in the mids either around 500-800hz or the 1Khz region Boost the attack of the snare around 2-4khz.
Compression: again as I stated above its all personal preference, I usually start with a ratio of 4:1-6:1 you can play around with the threshold so that it’s just touching the peaks and making them less noticeable, here’s what I usually end up with but I mainly just play around with it for a while until I’m happy with it
· Ratio: 6:1
· Attack: 1ms
· Release: 200ms
· Threshold: adjust for 6-10dB gain reduction
Reverb: Play around with the reverb, adding more/taking reverb off this will help your snare sound ALOT so just play and see what you think sounds best!
The toms
EQ: I like my toms to usually sound punchy, best way I found is to find the nasty sounds at around 300-850khz (give or take) then find the nasty unwanted frequencies, take them out and then add low end and high end where you see fit.
Compression: again it’s subjective! So play around but here is what I was taught!
· Cut out the mids starting at 300 Hz then just search along the middle frequencies until your tom is sounding thicker.
· Add the lows to get a thicker sound, depending on the size of the tom depends on which frequencies are involved. (big floor – 80-110, smaller toms – 100-200 Hz)
· Your tom should be sounding nice and thick at this point, add some attack a small boost to the highs around 1-5Khz, take it easy on the highs, don’t want to undo what you’ve just done.
The Hi-hat/s with the hi-hat all you need is a specific frequency as the mic will be picking up the other drums, stick a high pass filter on it at around 180-220hz.
Overheads These bad boys pick up everything on the kit, they are here to give the kit a bigger much fuller sound, you can use the over heads in a couple of ways, one way is to mix every drum around how the overheads sound, or to use the overheads primarily for cymbals. My Tip would be to mix with these on all the time so you get an idea of how it will sound towards the end, this will help when you come to mix.
The Mix first off I would start by adding a 0.4-0.5 second reverb and use this as the drum room ambiance then just play around with the levels until you find a happy medium where you can hear every individual drum but it all sounds tight, this will come with playing around.
Below you will find a Mix I did of legendary Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook when he came in the studio with ex-orange juice front man Edwyn Collins.
Good luck and hope this helps!
