Source Tones/Recording/Mix Critique

[jheckath]

Hey all,

I'm a drummer who I've recently (in the last year) entered the fray of recording/engineering. It's been both frustrating and fulfilling, jury is still out on which I've seen more of at such an early point in figuring all this out.

I've lurked on here and learned a ton from so many different posters, and while this track is not metal, I was looking for some advice and criticism from those who I feel can give it. From reading and absorbing much info from here I'm confident the collective knowledge and experience here that I currently lack can give me something to build further on.

My goal is to do more within the hard rock/metal genre, but I've been taking on really any small solo projects of varying genres just to get some experience doing the work and getting repetition and methods developed.

For this particular project I played/recorded/processed drums and reamped/processed the raw guitars sent from the songwriter who wanted real acoustic drums for his tune.

You will find the raw stems of the drums and the completed mix, I will refrain from linking his guitar parts because I'm not entirely comfortable since they're his own. Also attached will be a screenshot of the DAW with visible plugins so you can see what the mix looks like under the hood.

What I'm looking for is some critique with the overall drum mix but also some input on the source tones for the drums and things you guys may hear that I need to work on. I've been experimenting with summing buses and really cutting down on unnecessary or redundant plugins, you'll notice it is similar to Nolly's recent CreativeLive Session, I can't take credit for the theory regarding the mix strategy. Took me a bit to get the routing right, but I like how simple and easy it is to not only get a picture of the entire kit but also fine tuning individual track stack buses. Still learning!

I can go into mic placement if you need that info, but be aware that the room they were recorded in require a lot of EQ to remove ringing frequencies due to the room.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to listen to and make recommendations to help me improve my craft,

Best Regards,

John

DAW Screenshot

https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0sf552gp7hcoot/IMG_1921.jpg?dl=0

Stems

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nqwctii5z4owcqo/AAAh3_T84R2ZOMYa1qE2hQ-4a?dl=0

Processed Mix

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0mgqlvnn0w5fb7z/DrumSessionJNMix1.mp3?dl=0

 

[Lupus1984]

Did you flip the phase on one of your snare mics? I'm asking because I did and suddenly the nsare had way more body. Just curious.

I really like the tracks. I mean it's a more chilled track but for me the tracks are very good and I like that there is not that much bleed going on.

 

[jheckath]

Did you flip the phase on one of your snare mics? I'm asking because I did and suddenly the nsare had way more body. Just curious.

I really like the tracks. I mean it's a more chilled track but for me the tracks are very good and I like that there is not that much bleed going on.

Dang, that's usually the first thing I check for and I think I overlooked it with this mix trying to get the busses routed correctly. You're absolutely right I flipped the phase of the SN TOP mic and that gave it a bit more beef.

The bleed is something I've really tried to improve on with every recording, both with mic choice, placement, gating, and MB comp plugins. Retaining ghost note clarity can be a challenge with gating alone, at least for me.

Thanks for listening and the critique!

 

[Lupus1984]

Dang, that's usually the first thing I check for and I think I overlooked it with this mix trying to get the busses routed correctly. You're absolutely right I flipped the phase of the SN TOP mic and that gave it a bit more beef.

The bleed is something I've really tried to improve on with every recording, both with mic choice, placement, gating, and MB comp plugins. Retaining ghost note clarity can be a challenge with gating alone, at least for me.

Thanks for listening and the critique!

I'm trying to mix those drums myself since I need to learn to mix slow and chilled drums. Usually more
the blast beat guy

 

[jheckath]

I'm trying to mix those drums myself since I need to learn to mix slow and chilled drums. Usually more
the blast beat guy

Feel free, I'd love to hear what you do with them. Mine aren't compressed as heavily as I might if there were thicker and heavier guitars on top, but I bet you could get a great ballad sound out of them with more metal-esque mixing techniques.

I'm still figuring out compression, I'm not very consistent getting the sound I'm after and have to start from scratch a few times before I get something resembling what I'm after.

 

[Lupus1984]

There you go:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q6vqwm1d8n2856/Drums Stems UMM Test.wav?dl=0

 

[jheckath]

There you go:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q6vqwm1d8n2856/Drums Stems UMM Test.wav?dl=0

Really dig what you've got out of the shells, what kinds of compression/eq on those?

 

[Lupus1984]

Actually I was really holding back. Just some standard EQ moves and like 4:1 compression with slow attack/fast release plus some additional parallel compression.

I think what really helps the tone is Slate pre amp and console emulation.

Anything specific you wanna know?

 

[jheckath]

Actually I was really holding back. Just some standard EQ moves and like 4:1 compression with slow attack/fast release plus some additional parallel compression.

I think what really helps the tone is Slate pre amp and console emulation.

Anything specific you wanna know?

By slow compression/release what we talking? I'm using around 30 for attack 130 for release on a metric halo compressor, a Logic FET comp on the bus for parallel

 

[mertmix]

Here is my mix: https://we.tl/FOh3XyHrmk
check and comment

 

[jheckath]

Here is my mix: https://we.tl/FOh3XyHrmk
check and comment

Sounds good, really dig the snare sound. What compressor you using?

 

[mertmix]

Sounds good, really dig the snare sound. What compressor you using?

hey, Thank you. I used limiter(just slightly touching) maybe 1 or 2 db.. i didn't use any compression except masterbus( 1 or 2 db compression - Izotope).