A mix/master I did a while ago. Drums by Travis Orbin, 100% live.

[Max Morton]

I must confess, these were by far the tightest and best played drums I ever mixed. Plus, the cool song. Please tell me what you guys think about it.

Song:


Drums playthrough:

 

[Mago]

sick man!
guitars are a bit shrill, but the drums sound sick. especially for beeing natural.

Any chance you could upload a clip of the raw drums in comparison?
I guess you don't have details on the mic list, since you didn't record?
Great work all around!

 

[Max Morton]

Uh thanks man! Well, I agree. Guitars were Pod HD, and I was not completely free to eq them to my liking. A bit more fat would've been good.

With drums, Travis did mark some of the tracks with mic models, plus there's a video playthough. So, if I'm not mistaken (I should check):
- Shure SM7 + subkick on a kick drum
- Something like Shure KSM's on toms
- Shure Beta57 on snare top (can't recall about bottom mic)
- A pair of Blue Bottles as overheads
- Don't know what he used on room, but I used a lot of room and overhead mics to shape that tone.

Oh, and I'll ask the guys if it's OK to upload a short clip of dry drums.

 

[Max Morton]

I'm back with some raw drums! Here's the clip with no processing, I just set the levels real quick:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10636494/drums_raw.zip

 

[Mago]

Thanks man! Obviously the drums where also going to sound awesome raw haha

Great work!

 

[Max Morton]

Thanks man! Obviously the drums where also going to sound awesome raw haha

Great work!

Oh yes. It once again proves that great musician is like 75% of a great tone. With drums it's most crucial. Thanks for your support mate!

 

[worldwideweapon]

I really love your work Max and on this particular song the natural drum vibe suits the song well. Nice!

How are you treating the mixbus compression wise, as lot of your work seem to breathe really openly and retain punch?

 

[Max Morton]

I really love your work Max and on this particular song the natural drum vibe suits the song well. Nice!

How are you treating the mixbus compression wise, as lot of your work seem to breathe really openly and retain punch?

Thanks a lot man!

I'm always trying to keep my mixbus processing very simple: Waves SSL comp reducing no more then 2 db on loud parts with 30 ms attack and 100 ms release, and a clipper and/or loudness maximizer. In very rare cases I'm adding some sort of gentle saturation or eq out a db of low mids before compressor. But it's only when I'm aiming for specific colour (saturation) or when I'm happy with the mix, but it's a tiny bit low-mids heavy (eq).