I need help with my drums.

[kylendm]

I feel the weak spot in all my mixes are my drums. I can't ever get them to sound right as much as I try.

I'll try my best to explain my process and maybe you guys can correct me with a few things.

Basically I have Superior Drummer and SSD like most people. I only have ever used Superior for it's cymbals/OH/Amband toms. I send the OH/Amb to two drum buses. A Raw Drum bus and a Compressed Drum bus. Raw contains some EQ and a little saturation while Comp bus is a completely smashed compressed drum bus with some EQ as well. I mix the two together and that's how I get my OH/Amb sounds apart from compression,eq, and verb on the tracks themselves.

Snare is a headache in itself. It's SDD snare samples that get sent to the the drum buses, a verb bus and another raw snare bus with compression that also gets sent to the drum buses. The last part is the only way I can get the snare to stand out and now be buried. By the time the snare is done it's run through three chains of compression.

Kick is Deathkicks with an SSD kick sample as well. EQed and sent to the drum buses and a separate kick bus that gets sent to the master that has loads of compression.

At the end of the day this is what I get.

[SOUNDCLOUD]https://soundcloud.com/kylendm/silence/s-L76OE[/SOUNDCLOUD]

The drums do sound stock and weak but it's the only way I can get all parts of the drums level. Maybe some advice would be helpful because this has just become an incredible headache for me.

 

[Mashreef]

it sounds preety good man

 

[Mashreef]

if you want a bigger sound
you can parallel comp on the drum bus..
or the snare for a bigger snare sound..
use some saturation for the edge..
add some room reverb for more live feeling

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah, I think it sounds fine. WISH I could get drum sounds that good.

 

[Mashreef]

lol same here

 

[nezvers]

I would be more concerned about master bus compression, your snare hits duck everything and compression have impact on snare itself, so that could be your problem.

 

[kylendm]

it's also too loud, maybe turning it down could even things out.

 

[RedDog]

Your guitars eat up a lot of attack space for your drum hits. The weight is there, but there's some masking happening in the upper ranges.

 

[kylendm]

Sorry but what do you mean masking?

 

[botus99]

Your guitars eat up a lot of attack space for your drum hits. The weight is there, but there's some masking happening in the upper ranges.

That's what I'm hearing in the mix. Masking is when, for instance, you have the bass and kick drum occupying the same frequencies in a way that muddies the sound of both. It can be any 2, or more, instruments and it can be an infinite amount of different frequencies.

Its a great start IMO, but some subtractive EQ work could help certain elements in the mix to have greater separation and clarity.

 

[FarBeyondMetal]

I could be overthinking this, but it sounds like the cymbals and the shells aren't part of the same kit/recording. My suggestion would be to use the shell sounds in the sampler you use as your main sound, and use the other samples you have to layer underneath in the same way you would a real drum kit.

 

[ShipwreckSoundWorks]

I am not a fan of your snare drum. It doesn't seem to have a whole lot of body to it, just a lot of crack and presence. Unfortunately, your kick styling you have got going on there isn't really my favorite either. The entire this is well balanced in the drums, there's no doubt about that. But I would try working with different samples. These aren't my favorite, but of course that is definitely just a personal thing. To each his own.

 

[ShipwreckSoundWorks]

I suppose what I am trying to say is all around I feel like the mix lacks a bit of body due in part to the drums, and their lack of tone in my opinion.

 

[Shinozoku]

Kyle, you don't like it because you are comfortable with it. You're doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Try something totally different. Use all new samples. Grab some of the free ones like the AD Big Mono and find a way to use them. Just pick up something you'd never think you'd use, and use it! Drive that screw in with that rubber chicken and see what comes of it!

 

[SethTheGreat]

I think it sounds great. The only thing I would change is that the kick sounds.... almost 'distant' in a way? Kind of pushed back.. Are you sure you need the 'loads of compression' on the kick bus?

 

[Charles J]

I think this sounds great... i'd defo push up the ambience though and compress it SEPERATELY from the OH's...

To me it sounds like you're over complicating the matter with all your different buses, etc...

Th cymbals are really peaky and poking out of the mix, sort of 'hovering above' everything else. They have nice width and seperation but it just doesn't gel. Make sure to INCLUDE the shells in superior on your OH/AMB tracks as I find that's where you get a lot of your glue.

I don't mind the SNR personally; I'd like to hear some more real ROOM on it (set up an aux with trigger loaded with JUST some of Slate's room sound and use a send from the SNR track to your SNR ROOM aux...

Kick sounds great in the lows and highs BUT needs a bit more midrange bite. Hunt around in my Deathkicks pack for a Kick that has a SOLID midrange; filter the highs and lows if necessary and blend that with the kick sound you have now.

I'd also suggest AGAINST compressing the kick; I've always found it causes the kick to become way more smeared and lost in a dense, heavy mix like this. Try it and just crank the kick back up the level it's at now.

You can TRY parallel compression but I find it just doesn't work ITB for me (unless whatever comp you're using has a BUILT IN wet/dry knob). I can ALWAYS hear weird phasing bullshit when TRYING to do parallel totally ITB... with hardware it works but the delay compensation issues inherent in almost all DAW's make for, like I said, weird phasing.

SIMPLIFY is basically what I'm saying... think of the kit as a REAL set that YOU recorded and process it accordingly (assuming you've recorded/mixed a real kit before).

BUt honestly, the drums sound fine to me.. your problems lay mostly in your kick/bass/gtr low-end relationships... it's just a blur, smudge, smeary type sound.

Get your low end elements all 'bouncing'and working together and you'd be a much happier person, IMO. Don't underestimate the power of simple, high quality High + Low pass filters.

 

[kylendm]

Damn thanks guys. I'll definitely take everyone's advice to mind and go through the song a bit tomorrow. There's actually nothing coming from Superior at all as far as kick and snare go. I just added it in there and noticed a lot more life in the snare, thanks for that Charles! And I realize it is a bit low end heavy. I'll try and mess with a few more things. But again thanks for all the feedback!

 

[hks350d]

EZ-Mix

 

[kylendm]

So I took your guys advice. I finally got around to mixing this intro for our band. I used the samples from the SD2 kit for the kick and snare. The guitars are a little overgained but how does it sound?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3602793/Intro.mp3

 

[bryan_kilco]

Sounds fucking crushing to my ears!

Only on laptop speakers now, but the OH's still seem to be poking out a bit. Not much, just a tad.