Ideas For The Mix: Let There Be DRUMS - Pt 3

Thump, Snap, Attack, Sustain

When it comes to mixing drums, specifically multi-mic'd acoustic live drums, you can suddenly feel overwhelmed rather quickly. Presented with three Kick's, Two Snares, Hihat, Toms, Overhead and mono-stereo Room mic's, how on earth do you know where to even start. Well fear not whilst there are no rules to mixing, it's whatever fits the song material,  there are some definitive tried and tested methods to adhere to. To sum up drum mixing in four words, thump, snap, attack, sustain.

To sum up drum mixing in four words, thump, snap, attack, sustain.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

 First thing to lock down in any mix is to decide who is going to rule the low end, the kick drum or the bass guitar. There's so much low end information from both instruments somethings got to give.  Sometimes you can tell just by listening to the track. If the Bass guitarist is playing mostly high up the neck then that decision has been made for you, the kick can provide the low end energy for example. In certain genre's there are specific ideas applied. In EDM it's generally the Kick drum that rules the roost as that's what provides the beat and drives the song along getting people up to dance. In thrash metal there's a different approach as the Kick and Bass guitar have to be locked in sync to provide a tight rhythm section for the heavy guitars. In reggae you'll mostly want bass to take the low end.
 Everything from setting up a trigger on a gate to duck the bass guitar down when a kick drum hits to what you boost on your kick you duck down on your bass and vice versa with an EQ, can be methods adopted to get the two instruments to stay out of each others way in the mix.

decide who is going to rule the low end

Getting Technical

Your next job, albeit an unexciting one, is to check for phase and latency. Put more than one mic on any sound source and relative to distance between mic and source you can now have phase and time delay issues.

 Phase and latency come about from mic's not being equidistant from the centre of the sound source and room reflections. So for example it's common when setting your over head mic's, left & right, to measure from the centre of the Snare drum to each mic and have them the exact same distance away to minimise these problems. It can get quite complex when dealing with phase and latency but fortunately there are simple methods to help correct it. 

 In Studio One we have the 'Mix Tool' a simple trim fader with a polarity change button. Place that as an insert on a track and check if the sound lost it's bass and body by turning the polarity on/off. For latency, time delay, you can check my previous topic on it here; Dealing with Phase and Latency

Dealing With 'Bleed'

Of course as with all drum parts a gate can be used to cut out bleed but it doesn't necessarily give a natural sound and setting up a gate can be quite tricky and intensive requiring some skill to get it just right. Fortunately there are some very interesting plugins that take all the hard work out this task, most notably Drumleveller and Drumatom.

 The decision to cut out the bleed from other parts of the kit will depend on whether your going to compress that kit part (kick, snare, toms all close mic'd) as that will not only raise the level of the kick/snare/toms but all of the bleed from hihat, cymbals and room (distant mic's) as well. 

 On the other hand the overhead and room mic's is where you do want all of the bleed of the full kit coming through.

Bonzo's late Ludwig 26x14inch Bass Drum

Thump

When you think of thump it conjures up an image of very large speaker cones visibly pushing in and out as the kick drum hit's you in the chest knocking you off your feet, we'll especially if the neighbours are away on holiday. There is nothing like it. But before you reach for one of the many low end frequency booster plugins, Rbass, Lowender etc, don't forget about basic tools of the trade that have just as much power, in this case Eq.
 Boosting frequencies, especially adding a nice resonant musical bump around the 35-80hz region with a low shelf using an Eq can instantly add more thump, the secret is to keep a natural sound. You most certainly don't want to introduce sounds that aren't there, that aren't part of the original Kick. But if things still need more help down there then you could add some low end harmonics, that will have more of a natural tone than excessive Eq boosts with things like Waves Rbass, or reFuse Lowender plugins and many others to choose from. Solid and natural is the key.

 Next for an Eq move is to bring out the point of the Kick drum or the beater. That's the sound that can push it through the mix usually found between 2-4Khz but can depend on the Eq used. How to define that sound? It's the sound of the beater hitting of the drum head, almost a click, that adds the instant attack of the Kick.

 Now generally you can get the sound you want from just using the Kick 'In' mic using the methods mentioned above. Adding in a Kick 'Out' (mic placed further back from the kit) or a resonator (designed for sub bass information)  has the unwanted effect of adding more bleed (picking up the sound of the rest of the kit) that using these can be more problematic than being beneficial. So don't be afraid to mute those tracks if you find there just adding stuff that doesn't sound good or adding phase issues (mic's placed various differences from the sound and the time it takes that sound to reach that mic presenting delay and latency). A good way to decide is if the presence of the Kick is very much to the forefront and bleed is more controlled (As in a Drum resonator mic where sometimes a blanket can be placed over it to cut down the bleed from the rest of the drum kit). 

Ludwig Supralite Snare Drum  14 x 6.5 in.

Snap

Yes we are talking about the all important Snare. It's possibly the most important part of the kit and matching the sound and tone and blending in just the right amount of reverb can have the most profound effect. But listing settings when there are so many variables is pretty much pointless but in saying that on a Neve 1073 Eq adding a nice smiley face Eq curve by high passing 50hz, adding some 220hz and boosting some 7.2khz and 12k shelf can give you a snappy snare but with a nice round bottom end, a favourite of Mr Andrew Scheps, can't but help. But what might work for his mix may be the total opposite to yours. For instance his drums, you can guarantee, where not recorded in a bedroom or basement but more like a special acoustically treated room with thousands of dollars of outboard gear and mic's. The point being you need to get the best sound out of what you've been presented with and that might be the most ridiculous Eq and Compression settings you ever had to use.
 Adding just a pinch 0.5dB of distortion to a snare can make it sound like the drummer is hitting the snare harder and help it cut through more if you find it's still note quite there in the mix.

Classic UAD 1176 compressor

Attack

When it comes to defining attack on drums the first thing comes to mind for most is compression. But is that the best way to go?
 Setting the attack time on a compressor is how quickly the compressor kicks in on the initial hit of the drum. Setting a fast attack, the compressor kicks in immediately grabbing the volume level of that initial hit and bringing it down, if it's too loud in relation to where you set your threshold level (At what volume do you want the compressor to start working) or the opposite of bringing it up. Setting a slow attack allows the hit to go through before the compressor kicks in and if you spend enough time getting it just right you can enhance the hit rather than taking it away. After all a compressor is just an automatic volume control. You tell it where you want your volume to be (threshold) and it highers or lowers, in relation to your setting, the sound going through it.

 But wait! What about the natural sound of the drum hit? If we over use compression as a direct insert on a snare or kick we are in danger of killing the dynamics (changes in volume) altogether. The strike of the drummer hitting down on a snare can be levelled of and now the compression is more detrimental than beneficial. Sometimes it's better to accentuate that hit with a simple Eq boost that will not change the volume levels but make that instant drum strike more apparent if that's what's needed to cut through your mix. That is where the power of parallel compression comes in. You can leave the natural transients alone, be as aggressive as you want with your setting on the parallel track and subtly blend those in, the best of both world so to speak.

 So attack may seem about compression but it's about keeping those lively transients in, let the aggressive natural strike of the drummer breathe and chose to enhance them in non-detrimental ways (harmonics, distortion, saturation, parallel compression) that don't take away, but add to the overall sound.

Sustain

Sustain or maybe better described as decay (how long the sound lasts after the initial strike) can be controlled by a few things in the mix the most obvious is the release time on a compressor, although delay or reverb can be used subtly too. Setting the release time is all important for maximum sustain if that's what your after. Think of it this way when a drummer hits the snare you want the initial hit to have impact and be up front the as that sound dies away you want it to last just until the next drum strike. That's how you decide where to set your release time. The easiest way to do this is to your threshold set, close to final attack set and then set your release time by watching a level meter. Solo the snare track watch the level meter for the initial strike. Then as you set your release time the level meter should show the volume drop almost to zero before the next snare hit. That is a perfect release time. Of course you may want certain effects that your going for so things would differ but that is a great foundation and basis to work from.

 That's why for anyone, in the early stages of learning about compression, drums are the best place to start and understand exactly what effect they have on sound. 

 On a lesser note using delay or reverb can obviously make a sound sustain for longer and works well on both snare and toms. But sometimes just adding in the room mic's and overheads can give you all the sustain you want as they capture reflections of the room your kit is set up in.

Too Trigger Happy

 When it comes to drums not having the quality sound we're looking for drum replacement has found an ever popular niche. Now when a Kick, Snare or any other drum part isn't cutting it, it can simply be replaced or have a replacement blended in with the original. Whilst this has become more and more of the norm in music production nowadays it's still maintains a level of controversy for some. If we think back to those classic recordings and performances of our percussion heroes ask yourself how would they have reacted to their sound being replaced. What was it about Bonham, Moon, Paice, Rudd, Collins and so many others that made them so special. It was how they hit those pigskins and how they poured there own personality into the art of keeping the beat and providing the all important rhythm section that made it so special.

 On top of that you had the engineer with not only years of experience but ears of experience who had it down to a fine art selecting the right mic and placement for optimal sound quality. Maybe if we spent more time on gaining the skill that these Guy's had, replacement would be null and void.

Slate Trigger

 It would seem we've almost gone full circle after complaining that drum machines and drum programs had no life, no soul, dare I say they were to perfect and lacked the human touch? However I feel about drum replacement it's here and it's likely here to stay. The best of these programs are most notably Slate Trigger and XLN Addictive Trigger which make the whole process as simple or as complex as you want it to be.

Starting Level

Coming from the analogue world and now mixing in the box this presented somewhat problematic to me. I was so used to watching VU meters I had to find a way to replicate that in the digital realm. Thankfully a friend pointed me to Klanghelm VU meter It has seriously changed my ability to operate and brought back a familiarity that I love to mixing.

 Jacquire King has a method he uses of having the VU meter calibration set at -18dB (OdB on the VU meter). He then aims his solo'ed kick drum to be hitting -3dB  on the meter at it's loudest section in the song. Then when he adds in his Bass guitar it should average around 0dB and he build the track around that whilst maintaining these levels.
Benny Faccone likes to have his Kick at -5dB and then with the Bass guitar added in the VU level hit -3dB. Whatever you decide mixing in the box is a different animal than analogue you can't mix the same way, things including levels are completely different. But a simple rule of thumb is to be around the 0db level on the VU meter with Kick and Bass solo'ed and playing back together.

 In the analogue world you could have your VU meters slamming on the needle and that would not have proved detrimental to your mix, sometimes it was even preferential when hitting tape and wanting more effect and saturation. But in the digital world, level meters, which confusingly differ so much from Daw to Daw, if they were allowed to peak the same way would prove catastrophic to your mix. Anyone who has heard digital distortion can verify that.

Summary

 In conclusion it's plain to see that recording and mixing drums is one of the greatest challenges you'll encounter when you pull up the faders for the first time. But take a deep breath, remain calm, get your kick sounding how you want it, then the snare, toms, all your close mic'd pieces of the drumkit, blend in your Overhead and Room mic's and your done. Of course as you mix the rest of your song you may have to revisit some settings but they'll be minor tweaks just to make something sit a little better or duck down if it's sticking up to much. 

Watch the video as I go over some of the highlights of what's been talked about here.

Gainstaging - Revised Edition

Easy & Simple

So with the first video on initial gain staging your project, I inadvertently added some confusion, sorry for that. So I just wanted to update everything and add in a little twist (kindly pointed out by others) to make things as simple and straightforward as possible so no-one was left in any doubt as to how to get it done fast.

Still using the Klanghelm VU meter but adding on a little bit extra to aid you in setting it up and getting on with mixing. This can be transported to any Daw as confusion reigns with each Daw having different level meters and different ways of working. Watch the demonstration below:

Ideas For The Mix: Panning & Balancing - Pt 2

L-C-R Panning 

 In the days of yore an old analogue console had a three way switch for panning. That was full right, full left or centre (both left & right). Nowadays when it comes to panning we can have any setting we desire but how does that come across to the average listener? If we go all out in panning things around the stereo image can anyone, apart from an engineer with trained ears, actually hear those subtle differences?

 There's still something to be said for the power of old school L-C-R panning in a mix and it's still very much a go to in modern mixes. But in saying that so much has changed as to how we now listen to music, ear buds, mono bluetooth speakers,crappy laptop speakers, that some would argue L-C-R has lost some of it's mojo as it was originally intended for the listener to be sitting at the required distance centralised in front of two speakers approximately 6-8 ft apart to create the optimum stereo image. That way there was no doubt as to something being, guitar solo for instance, panned hard right, as in the classic AC/DC - Back In Black song.
 But panning isn't just about deciding what speaker or what side a sound should be heard on in fact it can be used to add spatial transition to enhance your mix. For instance say you have two electric guitars. One panned 60 to the left, the other panned 60 to the right. That still has somewhat of a mono feel to it but when it comes to the chorus you could automate those two guitars to go full 100 right and left and now the width increase sounds to the listener like the whole mix just got bigger and wider adding more interest and excitment when it hits the chorus section of your song.
 Panning is more apparent on headphones which give more of an effect, almost a phantom illusion, to the listener as to where a sound is coming from. If your listening on your laptop your most likely not aware of a stereo image at all but that of mono sound. The same for someone not sitting directly centre in front of two speakers 6-8ft apart. If your across the room you won't notice what sound is coming from what side of the speakers just that there's a wall of sound that might as well be mono.
 So as you can see panning isn't as straight forward as it used to be, governed now, by how most people listen to music. But we created stereo and at the time it was revolutionary so for now panning still has validity in your mix, just an no more, the question being how many of us actually need stereo anymore? Yet as engineers we over think things and analyse the heck out of things spending hours painstakingly critiquing over our mix decisions for someone to then listen to it back on laptop speakers and not be aware of your panning or any other brilliant ideas you thought you had injected into the track.

Note: Panning full left or right can decrease the volume by 1.5dB or more due to Pan Law that differs from product to product and even Daw to Daw.

Balancing The Mix 

This is the part of mixing I love the best. You've loaded in the stems that have been sent to you, sorted them, gain staged them and maybe even done a little panning around. But then it comes to listening for the first time to the song and you start to bring up those faders hearing the different parts, different instruments and you level up how loud things are in context to others. No plugins to worry about, no major make or break a mix decision made, just levelling volumes of individual tracks so everything can be heard at just the right level when everything else is playing back.

 This is when you can build a relationship with the song and get a feel for where it wants to go without slapping a thousand plugins on it or using outboard gear. Simply just creating a nice balance and enjoying the track as a listener rather than a analytic sound engineer. Sometimes, depending on the quality of the recording, you can get a truly exceptional balance and panning mix going so well you'll think you have nothing else to do, job done you might say.

 Watch the video below as I show some of these ideas and how to possibly implement them.

Ideas For The Mix: Sorting & Gain Staging - Pt 1

Initial Setup

 When you're sent a bunch of stems (audio wavefiles) of someones mix and you've been given the task to turn it into an instant hit, things can seem daunting and a little overwhelming. As you import those stems and scroll through possibly 40 to 100+ audio files how do you know where to even start let alone hand the client back a finished two track mix?

 In this short series and rather than showing settings, for Eq's and compressors etc, as so many others have already done, I want to walk you through a mix and offer ideas, some philosophical, some practical  and examples as to how you would find your way to the finished song. It's not about the plugins used, it's not about the settings used, as these constantly change from song to song, it's about getting from raw to finished two track songs.

How and where to start

 This may seem to be the most monotonous and unexciting of tasks but believe me when I say sorting out stems, grouping, colourising, re-naming and finally gain-staging everything is the most important part of starting any mix project. Celebrity mixers (Chris Lord Alge) have junior engineers doing all the grunt work for him, like roadies setting up for a gig, he has them sorting and setting up the mix the way he likes it ready for him to walk in and do his thang! But for most of us we have to do this task ourselves, more is the pity. 

 Laying a good foundation at the start will dramatically reduce time spent on a mix and that is a good thing. It leaves more time to be allocated to actually listening to what your trying to achieve rather than being distracted searching for the other Kick Mic tracks or where the Lead vocal is at and seeing levels clipping etc.

 So lets dive in as I show an initial setup and preparation for getting ready to mix.

UPDATE NEWS: S1 Maintenance update 3.3.1 build 39379 Released.

After the recent update release of Studio One version 3.3  alas a few ghosts in the machine, bugs in the code appeared and some had trouble with various issues. Presonus being ever so customer friendly have moved extremely swiftly in releasing a maintenance update version 3.3.1 build 39379 that should apply all fixes.

The update can be downloaded inside of Studio One 3 or by going to your My Presonus account, logging in and downloading the installer from there.

The update specifically addresses the issues below;

Version 3.3.1 Release Notes (September 6, 2016)
The following issues have been fixed:

[Win] Melodyne 2.1.2 causes Studio One to lock up on launch
[Win] Older Win 7 machines are missing a MS dll
[Win] Softube Console 1 fails at launch
[Win] Moving an Arranger section does not move included events
[Win] Plug-in compatibility issue with outdated PACE implementation
[Win| compatibility issues with certain audio interfaces
Preview function for layers not working
Disabled Tracks and instruments lose bus routing
Missing a "Cancel" option in Combine/Load Instrument dialog
Disabled Channels are part of Mix Engine FX signal flow
Disable-state of Plug-ins not saved/restored in presets
Activate monitoring after enabling Track not working
Output routing changed for disabled instruments

Thanks for this Presonus great work, I'm sure you'll all agree.

What's Useful in the latest Update S1 v3.3

Pro's & Con's

When it comes to an update release for any software it usually starts with lots of "Oooh's" and "Aaah's" later on there's RUNNING AND SCREAMING! Things can transpose sweetly for some and for others endless mishaps with things suddenly not working as they used to and the inevitable roll back waiting it out for a fix to be issued.  So it's good advice to sit it out on the touchlines for a while and watch as others dive in an possibly hit their head on the bottom, so to speak. 

Rather than do a full in depth look into the update v3.3 (Which has already been done by others) I thought I would be more personal and say what I found to be Pro's or Con's for my own workflow. So with that, check out the list below and the short video.

Pro's

• One click global Fx's On/Off - Now that has been a feature we have all been waiting on. Nothing worse than spending endless hours splashing plugin inserts all over our mix thinking we have created a master piece, taking a break, and then coming back to hear how much we dislike what we thought was brilliant before. Now as we go along we can A/B things, with all our adding of plugin's and see if we making things better or worse or even no different at all.
• Combined On/Off for multiple selected Effects and Instruments - This has proved to be a major enhancement in speed to my workflow. Before hand wanting to send from various multiple tracks to say a Bus or Fx channel was ever so awkward, laborious and time consuming. Now as long as you have the tracks you want to work on highlighted adding a send to one automatically adds the same send on the other tracks to, brilliant!
• Disable Tracks, Instruments or Plug-ins - For those working on a lower spec computer this is fantastic as CPU hogging VST Instruments, plugin inserts or whole tracks can be temporarily disabled to allow you to carry on working when your CPU wants to give up the ghost and die. 
• Performance improvements for Mix Engine FX - Console shaper had proved to be a bit of a hog on CPU resources and now it comes with a tweak to lower that drain on power. Now in some plugins doing this can seriously effect it's signal quality but so far Console shaper sounds the same to my ears.
• Copy Track now includes automation - Duh well shouldn't it have always? Great to see it's now been implemented.

Con's

• Integration with Notion 6 - Not a major complaint, but as I personally don't own or use Notion this was of no consequence to me.
• S1 Freezing on startup - Some have experienced S1 freezing on startup, this is mainly due to Melodyne have a few issues. I'm told if you log into your Presonus account there is an update for the integrated Melodyne that fixes this issue, fingers crossed for all those affected.
• Soloing Layers Problem - A lot our finding trying to now solo layers in version 3.3 gives no sound, a fix is currently in the making.
• New Autofill option for multitrack drum quantization in Slice mode - I can understand why this was added (For Oldschool Pro Tools users) who may be so used to doing things this way but there's far better and more efficient ways of doing the exact same thing in Studio One it kind of makes it redundant to anyone who never worked this way in the first place.

Now that's what update version 3.3 brought to my workflow and overall a most welcome one for me. You on the other hand (depending on your own workflow) may have experienced other issues but as usual updates are system specific, what works for one doesn't work for another. Hopefully the few problems already identified will have a fix released in the very near future.