Getting your drums upfront instead of sitting in the mix..

[Black neon bob]

If there is one thing i have noticed from Andy's mixes and some other big names out there, is that they have the kick and snare done really well.. upfront, instead of the kick and drum stting in the mix completely.
It's almost if they are seperated from the mix, how do you do this?

I always end up with drums drowning in the mix a bit.. with the OH's and toms, i find this to be perfectly okay.. but i would like to try and get them more in your face as well.

What i do now is sample the kick and snare, EQ and compression offcourse, then i send it to a seperate drumgroup track where a nice reverb and compression is waiting for the kick and the snare.
Reverb is there for more wideness of the snare mostly, but it certainly does not push the drums in front of the mix.

Gimme secrets!!

 

[Ermz]

Well there are a few main points as far as I see it.

1) Heavily blended samples. These allow you to coax a consistency out of the kick and snare hits that would otherwise be impossible from most drummers.
2) Slow attack, quick/medium release serial compression taking a few dB off.
3) Master bus compression with a medium to slow attack.

The last one in particular can really make this happen. The amount of GR you have with the mix bus comp is almost a 'punchiness' slider, as it will get all the transients to poke out more.

Now here's a real important one, not related to mix issues, yet people still somehow tend to get it confused:

4) Go easy on your output RMS level in mastering. If you want punch, don't over limit. Use clipping to chop the drum transients so they will be artificially recreated on the output DAC, and avoid brickwall limiting like the plague.

 

[TheDude]

Kick and snare 100% sample, preferably from a completely different session, and much louder than the rest of the drums.

 

[abyssofdreams]

Master bus compression with a medium to slow attack.

perfect post Ermz but for me this is the main reason, depends on the compressor of course

I suppose the slower the attack and the faster the release the more the snare and kick will melt your face

 

[fatalforce]

You can try some upward compression/expansion. I know waves c4 can do that or you can get a transient designer which is pretty solid for what you're trying to achieve.

 

[beyond dead]

I dont send my kick to any sub groups or anything, or even compress if i have a good sample i like. i send toms and snare and oh`s to a sub group, but never kicks. I`m pretty happy with the way my kicks sit up front in the mix! once i started clipping the snare/ master bus, my kicks and guitars and snares just fucking rock! IMO.

 

[Ermz]

Yes I've found since I've started using Gclip at the end of my snare chain, I get a ton more headroom with mastering. It isn't so much of a struggle to get a good level and maintain punch. It still varies from project to project of course.

 

[MarcusD777]

Yea Gclip or Event Horizon on the snare buss does the trick most of the time... Anytime I put Gclip on the 2buss it creates a weird haze over the whole mix... Event Horizon seems to be a little more transparent on the 2 buss as long as you leave the soft clipping knob down...

 

[brandy]

http://www.faderwear.com/guides/parallel_compression.shtml

 

[brandy]

^-- one way of doing this.

You can combine the use of samples AND parallel compression.