Death Metal Mixing Tips

[cosine]

Hey All, this is my first post on this forum, although i've been a silent member for quite some time, i think its time to stop my voyeuristic tendancies though.

I'm currently mixing a demo for a death metal band but i'm getting too much snare and not enough cymbals in my over heads, i hear there an old pro's trick where you trigger the O/H compressor via the sidechain from the snare, effectively ducking it, i read pros like Andy and James use this trick to great effect.
Any tips or comments on this subject would be very welcome.

 

[smy1]

"Not enough cymbals in OH" ... that's a new problem

Compressing the OH tracks should get rid of the problem because it will bring up the lower volumes.

 

[sparkyness]

I think it's probably more a case of too much other stuff than not enough cymbals. There's a bunch of threads on the board re: this (search engine is your friend). The Acoustic Drum guide thread is a great place to start.

 

[~BURNY~]

Try it.
And try MS encoding. Could work.

 

[joeymusicguy]

put an attack of 1 ms and a release of about 300

set the threshold to where the cymbals are barely touching it, but the snare is obviously going over it

this should keep that snare down a bit

but if your snare track isnt loud enough to compete, you'll just hear a louder, but more distant, room snare

 

[joeymusicguy]

p.s. there's also a way to use drumagog on two tracks (one on the snare, one on the overhead), to make the overheads "mute" when the snare cracks.

 

[chadsxe]

Set up a limiter to catch it...